Shopping Cart

Also known as a shopping basket, a shopping cart is a tool customers use to collect products either online or in-store before completing a purchase. In the context of eCommerce, digital shopping carts allow shoppers to add, remove, or adjust the quantity of products in their baskets. Shopping carts also often contain a summary of product details, the total cost of the items selected, and an option to save products for future purchases.

Other than pricing, merchants should consider a user’s experience, acceptable payment methods, customization, and shipping options when selecting a shopping cart provider for their eCommerce businesses. Today, many digital shopping cart features are integrated with other tools that help merchants launch, run, and grow their eCommerce businesses.

Types of eCommerce shopping carts include:

• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) shopping carts, which operate online and can be purchased on a subscription basis
• Hosted shopping carts, which are managed by a third-party hosting company
• Self-hosted shopping carts, which are maintained by the merchant directly and are fully-customizable
• Open-source shopping carts, which available for free and can be self-hosted or hosted by a third party