Alexis Kestler
Adding a shopping cart is an essential step in creating an e-commerce website. With a wide variety of solutions available today, integrating a fully-functional cart with seamless checkout flows has never been easier. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the top 11 tools that allow you to add shopping cart capabilities to your website in just minutes.
Why You Need a Shopping Cart
Having a shopping cart is the backbone of any successful online business. It allows you to easily showcase your products, calculate order totals and taxes, apply discounts, accept payments and more. Without one, customers cannot complete transactions on your site.
Key reasons you need a shopping cart:
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Convert website visitors to paying customers – A streamlined cart and checkout process boosts conversion rates by up to 40%, studies show.
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Offer a seamless shopping experience – The easier you make it for customers, the more likely they will complete their purchase.
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Reduce abandoned carts – On average, 69.5% of online shopping carts are abandoned. The easier your checkout, the lower abandonment.
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Scale your e-commerce ambitions – A full-featured cart positions you for business growth by handling increasing order volumes.
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Gain shopper insights – Analytics from your cart tool provide data to optimize your store for higher conversions.
Benefits of Third-Party Carts
Rather than build a shopping cart from scratch, third-party solutions offer crucial advantages:
Easy set up – Plug-and-play cart apps can be added to sites in minutes without coding.
Mobile readiness – Carts are optimized for seamless shopping across devices.
Design flexibility – Match cart style and flows to your brand with customization options.
Feature rich – Necessary features like discounts, taxes, and SSL security come built-in.
Affordability – Third party carts are cost effective, with many free versions available.
Secure payments – Integrated payment gateways keep sensitive customer data protected.
Time savings – No need to build and maintain your own cart functionality from the ground up.
Now let’s explore some of the top solutions for adding a fully-featured, conversion-focused shopping cart to your existing website quickly and easily.
Top 11 Shopping Cart Tools
1. Sellfy
Sellfy is a user-friendly cart primarily designed for selling digital products like ebooks, online courses, photography, graphics, music and more.
Key Features
- Cart embeds to showcase products anywhere on your site
- Customizable "Add to Cart" and "Buy Now" buttons
- Real-time order and sales tracking
- Top payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal
- 14-day free trial
Sellfy shopping carts can be embedded site-wide or on specific product pages with a few lines of code. Custom buttons allow you tailor user flows while the cart dashboard centralizes order management.
Pricing is straightforward with a 5% transaction fee and no monthly costs. For digital creators, Sellfy provides an affordable, conversion-focused cart solution.
2. OpenCart
OpenCart is an open source shopping cart most suitable for larger online stores. Flexible and feature rich, it powers over 420,000 businesses.
Key Features
- Centralized admin dashboard
- Multi-store management capabilities
- Extendable product attributes like color, size etc
- Mobile responsive storefront
- Integrations with shipping carriers, payment gateways and more
OpenCart is a great fit for merchants needing scalability to manage large inventories and transaction volumes across multiple online stores. Developer-friendly code also makes customization more accessible.
As an open source platform, Opencart itself is free. Revenue comes from plugin extensions, customization services and cloud-based plans starting at $10 per month.
3. SamCart
SamCart brings together shopping cart capabilities with built-in marketing tools for maximizing conversions.
Key Features
- Conversion focused checkout templates
- One click upsells and order bumps
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Built-in affiliate management
- A/B testing on checkout pages
- Google Analytics integration
SamCart positions itself as a cart solution for "selling more, selling fast, and scaling your sales." Templates and tools streamline creating optimized funnels and checkout flows.
Pricing starts at $49 per month for up to 100 orders/month. Their specialty is converting website traffic rather than serving high-volume merchants. SamCart is a good option for small to mid-sized ecommerce businesses.
4. Volusion
Volusion enables fast mobile-ready shopping cart integration paired with tools to manage day-to-day ecommerce operations.
Key Features
- Multi-page and mini-cart options
- Real-time shipping rates
- Built-in SEO tools
- Automated inventory tracking
- Order processing & returns handling
- Marketing integrations
Businesses can choose between using Volusion‘s standalone cart or integrating cart capabilities directly into your existing website. A central dashboard also helps manage promotions, fulfillment, CRM and business insights.
Plans start at $29 per month with volume-based enterprise options for growing businesses managing high sales volumes. Volusion balances robust cart features with backend ecommerce management tools.
5. Shoprocket
Shoprocket allows adding flexible shopping carts to sites built on any platform. Their moto is "starting selling in under 5 minutes."
Key Features
- Easy copy-paste integration
- 30+ payment gateway options
- Centralized dashboard to manage orders
- In-cart discounts and coupons
- Tax and shipping cost calculation
- Complete branding customization
Shoprocket carts are designed to plug into blogs, custom-coded sites or platforms like WordPress and Wix without compatibility issues. You control the entire shopper experience while Shoprocket handles payments securely behind the scenes.
Pricing starts at $29 per month based on number of products with custom enterprise plans available. For fast cart integration irrespective of your tech stack, Shoprocket delivers.
6. Snipcart
Snipcart is a shopping cart tailored specifically for JAMstack websites and apps.
Key Features
- Headless cart integrates via API
- Works with any static site generator
- Customizable themes
- Over 20 payment gateways
- Webhook and Zapier integrations
- International pricing and taxes
Snippets of code connect Snipcart‘s pre-built, cloud-hosted cart to JAMstack sites decoupling front ends from back end infrastructure. Customization options give merchants flexibility over shopper experiences.
Snipcart pricing is based on a percentage of sales volume rather than fixed monthly costs, scaling flexibly together with your revenues. For JAMstack developers, Snipcart helps streamline selling online.
7. Ecwid
Ecwid provides free and paid shopping cart plans for small businesses to sell across multiple channels.
Key Features
- Sell on website, Instagram, Facebook etc
- Mobile POS for markets and pop up shops
- Integrated payment processing
- Shipping carrier integration
- Inventory synchronization
The Ecwid cart syncs store/product data across multiple storefronts in real-time. This helps small sellers easily manage orders whether selling on social, online or in-person.
The forever-free plan supports up to 10 products and basic cart/checkout functionality. Paid plans start at $12.50/month providing access to expanded features and no sales limits. Ecwid is a scalable, omnichannel cart solution.
8. ThriveCart
Conversion rate optimization is the focus with ThriveCart. Their slogan is "Convert more visitors into customers."
Key Features
- A/B testing on cart pages
- Cross-selling and upselling functionality
- Cart abandonment tools
- Subscription payment handling
- Affiliate management capabilities
- Integration with email and payment solutions
ThriveCart helps structure cart flows leveraging best practices for maximizing revenue. Customization and built-in growth tools simplify optimizing user journeys for increased transaction values and repeat business.
Pricing starts at $19/month for up to 1000 leads monthly. ThriveCart brings advanced conversion options absent in basic cart solutions. Ideal for serious ecommerce merchants.
9. Foxy.io
Foxy.io is an enterprise-grade headless cart supporting global brands with custom storefronts and complex fulfillment needs.
Key Features
- Handles 1M+ products with ease
- Developer-friendly APIs
- Cart recover and subscription tools
- Dynamic discount capabilities
- International shipping and tax support
- PCI compliance
Foxy.io provides the flexibility to customize shopper experiences completely while offloading cart management like taxes, fraud analysis and compliance to their infrastructure.
Pricing scales from $25 to thousands monthly based on sales volumes and features. For advanced cart requirements, Foxy.io enterprise plans deliver. Ideal for custom storefronts processing high volumes.
10. Big Cartel
Big Cartel brings easy shopping cart integrations to small creative businesses and indie makers selling specialized inventory.
Key Features
- Simple product listing management
- Range of free and paid themes
- Real-time inventory tracking
- Built-in promotional capabilities
- Shipping label printing
- SEO URL management
Ideal for hobby sellers, artists and craftspeople, Big Cartel makes launching simple online stores fast with customized cart pages that match brand aesthetics.
There is a forever free plan for up to 5 products. Paid subscriptions start at $9.99/month for 300 products or $19.99 monthly for 1500 products. Additional transaction fees apply after product thresholds.
For creative entrepreneurs, Big Cartel provides an affordable cart and simple ecommerce store solution.
11. Roman Cart
Roman Cart focuses solely on easily embedding customized cart functionality into existing sites.
Key Features
- Copy-paste integration
- Mobile responsive design
- Multiple template options
- Top payment gateway integrations
- Discount code creation
- Detailed sales analytics
With Roman Cart, adding cart and checkout is a simple process of choosing a template then pasting the provided code snippet onto product pages. Design, payments and security are handled for you behind the scenes.
There is a free plan for basic stores. The Pro plan starts at $89.99/month supporting unlimited products and advanced features for growing your sales. For dead simple cart integration, Roman Cart delivers.
How to Choose the Best Shopping Cart Solution
With so many options available, here are key considerations when choosing a cart provider:
Features – Assess must-have functionality now and in the future as you scale up.
Platform compatibility – Ensure seamless integration irrespective of your site‘s tech stack.
Design adaptability – See if branding and customization options meet your needs before opting for default cart aesthetics.
Cost – Factor in transaction fees, payment processing rates and any recurring monthly costs impacting profitability.
Security – Make sure sensitive shopper data is protected and PCI standards for payment processing followed.
Support availability – Check service levels and access to documentation in case any setup or operational issues appear.
Scalability – Confirm that the solution can handle your current and projected sales volumes capably.
Choosing the right shopping cart comes down assessing both business and technical requirements. The goal is finding an optimal balance of essential features, flexibility, affordability and future-proof scalability.
Optimizing Your Shopping Cart for Higher Conversions
Once you‘ve picked a cart solution for achieving core functionality, further customizing user flows can drive even more sales.
Here are some best practice tips for shopping cart optimization:
Streamline design – Eliminate distractions and enable one-page mobile-friendly checkout.
Reduce fields – Only mandatory user details should be captured. Too many fields cause drop offs.
Highlight trust badges – Display security seals prominently to encourage confidence.
Surface shipping costs – Transparent, real-time rates reduce sticker shock and cart abandonment.
Offer guest checkout – Don‘t force account creation which causes drop-offs. Let guest checkouts drive more conversions.
Implement exit-intents – Exit popups can recover sales from users about to leave your site.
Make mobile optimization a priority – With over 50% of purchases now on mobile, seamless mobile commerce experiences are vital.
Provide multiple payment options – Allow preferred payment methods like Paypal. Support installment plans or financing options if relevant.
Send cart abandonment reminders – Email or retarget shoppers who left items saved in their carts incomplete purchase.
Experiment iteratively – Leverage A/B testing to figure out what checkout flows and messaging works. Analyze data, gain insights, optimize further.
Conclusion – Adding Shopping Carts Just Got Easier
Gone are the days when creating custom shopping cart functionality from scratch required intense technical heavy lifting. Now adding smooth, conversion focused cart experiences is achievable for any merchant irrespective of tech skills or resources.
Third party cart integrations handle the complexity behind the scenes saving time and money versus building your own solution. And with mobile and conversion optimization baked-in, they position you for ecommerce success from day one.
As we‘ve covered, there are excellent options across plan levels and specialties – from minimalist platforms focusing solely on seamless cart integration to advanced solutions encompassing the full range of ecommerce operations.
Finding the one matching technical and business requirements ensures you can focus on providing amazing shopper experiences instead of cart management.
So don‘t let shopping cart complexity hold you back from ecommerce ambitions. The diverse tools now available catering to needs across markets makes selling online easier than ever.
