Optimizing your store design isn’t just about beautifying your design and making your product pages more interactive. It also includes tweaking and perfecting one of the most crucial shopper touchpoints— the cart page. Working with different kinds of Shopify stores, we’ve learnt through practice the most important cart page best practices to delight shoppers and give them a smoother experience when purchasing online.
In this blog, we want to dive into 10 cart page best practices that are crucial for every merchant to keep in mind when optimizing their Shopify store.
10 Cart Page Best Practices to Increase Conversions and Shopify Sales
1. Show product details
Imagine adding an item to cart and after browsing the rest of the products, coming back to the cart only to be clueless about the size of the product you added. Many cart pages often omit showing crucial product details that the visitor would want to recollect and review before proceeding to checkout. This is sure to make the shopper’s experience with your store more cumbersome.
Instead, always show the product details on the cart page— size, color, name of product, and even an image for visual recall. Some Shopify stores even show a high-rated review of the product to reassure the shopper of their choice.
Rowing Blazers has a cart page that gives the shopper an overview of the product they are buying. With this, shoppers can review their size and pricing before moving forward to checkout.
2. Keep your cart page clean and straightforward
You don’t want to clutter the cart page with too much information and overwhelm the shopper. Ideally, the cart page should just be details about the product, the total cost, and, if you prefer, a column of recommendations for what the shopper can add to their cart to increase their order value.
Lindsay Nicholas is a brand that creates elegant and luxury workwear for women and their website was designed to reflect this. Their cart page follows suit, with minimal design and only showing the most crucial information to the shopper.
3. Show personalized recommendations
77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. Providing your shopper a personalized experience on your store needs to start from search ads all the way to the cart page.
Use apps like Wiser and Bold Upsells to show personalized recommendations on your cart page. The shopper will be shown products similar to the item in their cart or even products that they have previously viewed. This ease in viewing items they would already be interested in will help you increase revenue without too much effort.
4 Be upfront about payment methods
You don’t want to blindside your shoppers about the payment methods you allow. Some shoppers may assume you allow a certain kind of wallet and start their checkout process only to learn that you don’t accommodate it. You can show the different payment methods within the cart page so that shoppers are aware of the payment options.
Moreover, it’s crucial that you have a payments page that outlines the different payment methods you are open to. By being straightforward, you can ensure your shoppers don’t have to abandon their cart just because of this small communication gap.
5. Clearly state that the promo code field is on the checkout page
If you provide coupon code for shoppers to grab discounts on your products, it’s important to let the shoppers know where they apply it to see an updated cart total.
More often than not, a shopper would view their cart and simply not be able to locate a promo code field to apply the discount coupon they have. This makes them abandon the purchase without thinking twice.
So make sure that your cart page clearly states that they can apply the discount in the next step - that is, your checkout page.
6. Use a cart drawer to allow shoppers to view their cart quickly
Unlike cart pages that load onto a separate page, the cart drawer appears like an overlay and can be minimized so that the shopper can go back to browsing your products without having to click through to another page.
Blue Door Organics has a cart drawer that allows their shoppers to view their cart quickly. We set this up to help them deliver a smooth and positive shopping experience.
7. Provide a field to include special instructions
Having a field to include special instructions can be a great way to give your shoppers flexibility to ask for customizations and requests. This field is especially important if you do have special messages or customization requests from customers frequently.
Island Tribe makes conscious fashion items and their cart page allows customers to add special instructions. Having this field allows shoppers to ask for customizations and request specific needs without having to separately email your store about it.
8. Use the announcement bar to show cart-related offers
Once a product is added to the cart, ensure that your storefront reflects this. Show offers about the shopper’s cart to quicken the checkout process. Some stores set up a countdown timer that shows how long the shopper has before their free shipping offer or discount expires.
This incentivizes them to complete their purchase. Such announcement bar tactics can be set up with apps like Fera Social Proof.
Another tactic that Shopify stores use on the announcement bar is showing discounts that the shopper can avail if their cart value is above a certain amount. Test out different offers on your announcement bar to see which one shoppers are more likely to convert on.
9. Set up cart abandonment reminders in case they forget mid-purchase
Cart abandonment is a huge problem for many merchants, with average abandonment rates as high as 69%. Ensure you are losing revenue with items being abandoned in your carts by setting up remarketing campaigns.
You can set up messages on marketing channels like email, SMS, Facebook Messenger, ads, and web push notifications. Create a series of 3 reminders and incentivize the purchase with shipping offers, loyalty points, and discounts.
Recovering abandoned carts is a priority for merchants and if you aren’t already, here’s a guide to cart recovery you must read.
10. Provide a gifting feature with wrapping paper options and a personalized message
Many Shopify stores allow their customers to gift wrap their product and add a personalized message, especially if they market their products to be good gifting items. Set up an option for shoppers to gift wrap and send a personalized message to their giftee.
You can even choose to provide handwritten note options to make gifting from your store more personal. This is a great way to earn additional revenue for your store and you can carve out a niche among your shoppers for being a gift-friendly store.
Shopify App Store has a large collection of gift wrapping apps that you can install and set up to allow your shoppers to customize their order.
Is your cart page optimized? Or are you seeing too many shoppers abandon purchases?
If your cart abandonment rate has only been increasing, it’s time for you to relook your optimization strategy.
Want to know how we keep the cart pages of our clients optimized?
