eLearning Series
One of the key elements on an eCommerce site is a perpetual shopping cart that allows you to see what’s in your cart, without having to click to go to another page. It’s a small detail, but a recent study found 64% of eCommerce sites felt it significantly increased conversion to purchase.
eCommerce Tip #3: Perpetual Shopping Cart
One of the most successful strategies for eCommerce is the perpetual shopping cart. A perpetual shopping cart usually lives at the top of the web page, and is visible on each and every page of the website the visitor sees.
There are two main goals for a perpetual shopping cart:
1. Make it clear through the design of the site that you want someone to add products to their cart and make a purchase.
2. Make it easy for someone to know what’s in their cart, and then check out more easily.
Example of a Perpetual Cart: A perpetual cart is a visual indicator that the your site allows people to make a purchase. Here’s an example of a perpetual cart (from the DiscountDecorating.com website), that gives the total amount of products in a cart:
Other perpetual carts list the number of items in a cart: 
(This is often good if the total price is so high that it might scare the end user.) Here’s one more perpetual shopping cart , that also shows the name of the product, a mini-thumbnail of the product’s image, as well as the quantity and price. It also gives a running total for all of the products in the shopping cart as well. 
If you have room on the site for a cart like this, it can also help people visualize what they’re about to purchase.
One Other Reason For Perpetual Carts: Like it or not, some websites aren’t so easy to use. Many people will place things in their cart, knowing that they most likely won’t purchase everything. But it’s a place that allows them to toggle back and forth between items, to figure out which one they want to buy. With a perpetual cart on the site, it allows people one-click access to be able to find their recently-viewed items.