Stand with Magento shopping cart is an intermediary step your customer takes before moving to checkout. Correspondingly, it is often a step when customers exit a website, leaving you wondering — why?
To avoid cart abandonment in Magento and boost customer shopping experience you have to take a closer look at the shopping cart options.
So, we'll cover how to configure the cart redirect link, mini cart, cart thumbnails, and more so you can improve it for your customers.
Let's get on with it.
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Since the shopping cart is directly related to the checkout, the configuration options are under Stores > Configuration > Sales > Checkout. Navigate there to start with the Magento shopping cart options.
1. Configure My Cart Link
The shopping cart link is located in the upper-right corner of the website header. It displays the number of products customers added to the cart.
Correspondingly you can configure whether it displays the total number of items in the cart or the number of items in the cart disregarding the quantity.
So, all you have to do is find the My Cart Link section and define how to Display Cart Summary.
- Display item quantities — display the total number of items in the cart along with each product quantity.
- Display number of items in cart — displays the number of items in the cart without each product quantity.
2. Set Up Mini Cart
Once you click on the Magento shopping cart link, you trigger a mini cart. Same as the cart link, it is available on every page of the catalog. So, customers can quickly review what they've already added to the cart regardless of the page they're on.
To set up a mini cart in Magento you just need to configure three options in the Mini Cart section:
- Device whether to enable or disable the mini cart in the Display Mini Cart field.
- Enter the Number of Items to Display Scrollbar that defines how many items customers have to add before the scroll is enabled.
- Set the Maximum Number of recently added Items to Display in the mini cart.
Note: sometimes mini cart is not synchronized across multiple devices and browsers for registered customers. They just need to open the shopping cart page to view the items.
3. Set Redirect to Cart
All information about the products added to the cart is already in the mini cart. Correspondingly, there is no strong need to redirect customers to the shopping cart page after they add any products to the cart. By default the redirect is disabled.
You give your customer a choice to go to the shopping cart summary page whenever they please. This way checkout doesn't look forced.
However, you can choose whatever option you like. Go to the Shopping Cart section and enable or disable the After Adding a Product Redirect to Shopping Cart option.
4. Define Quote Lifetime
Sometimes customers leave their shopping carts for too long by still keep coming back to make a purchase later. Yet, the price of the products might change during that time.
Correspondingly, Quote Lifetime (days) option defines how many days the quoted price will be valid.
5. Configure Cart Thumbnails
Thumbnails help your customer get an idea of what products they've already added to the cart. Usually, they match the product customers added. However, when products have variations, thumbnails in the cart might not match the product added to the cart.
For configurable and grouped products, images match the product variation or the parent product image.
So, you can set the Grouped and Configurable Product Images.
- Product Thumbnail Itself — uses the thumbnail of the product customer adds to cart.
- Parent Product Thumbnail — uses the thumbnail of a parent product.
6. Specify Minimum Order Quantity
If you want to encourage more purchases or just have a specific amount to be sold to certain customer groups, you can configure the Minimum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart.
Go to Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Inventory > Product Stock Options to set it up.
Then, according to your configuration, different groups of customers will see the quantity they need to select to add items to the cart.
Note: don't overdo it, unless you have a reason to. People don't like being forced to purchase.
7. Configure Minimum Order Amount
Another option related to the shopping cart in Magento that also encourages purchases is the minimum order amount. According to it, customers have to meet certain subtotal to be able to checkout. Otherwise, the checkout button simply is not available.
Besides, you can also require orders shipped to multiple addresses to meet the minimum order amount per address.
To configure the minimum order amount go to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Sales > Minimum Order Amount and set up the following options:
- Enable minimum order amount.
- Enter the Minimum Amount for subtotal after discounts are applied.
- Decide whether to Include Discount Amount into the minimum amount.
If you select Yes the order will meet the minimum with the discounts applied. With No customers will have to make it to the minimum order amount even if the discounts are applied.
- Choose if the minimum order amount should Include Tax to Amount.
- Configure the Description Message about the minimum order amount customers see in the cart if they don't meet the requirement and the Error to Show in Shopping Cart, in case there are any errors.
- Enable the Validate Each Address Separately in Multi-address Checkout if you want to require minimum order amount for each address.
- Set up Multi-address Description Message and the Multi-address Error to Show in Shopping Cart.
8. Set Up Gift Options
Since the Magento shopping cart is the last step before checkout, it makes sense that customers can leave gift messages at this stage. Gift messages provide a personalized experience and leave an impression, regardless of the occasion customers make an order for.
Magento allows you to configure gift messages by default, so you just have to check out this option.
9. Check Shopping Cart Rules
Last, but not least are Magento shopping cart price rules you configure to provide discounts. Cart price rules allow you to set up certain conditions and provide coupons that customers can apply in the shopping cart or checkout.
Great way to encourage customers to buy more, isn't it?
When it comes to your store, customer experience is what matters the most. Shopping cart is an important step since it sometimes influences customers purchasing decisions. All of these options help you to improve the Magento shopping cart.
But then there is a Magento persistent shopping cart that does it even better. Check the article to learn how.
