5 Best UX Design Practices for Shopping Cart UI

Most e-commerce owners are all too familiar with abandoned shopping carts. The shopping cart UI (user interface) plays an essential role in preventing abandonment. Because the truth is that many customers will desert their cart if the checkout process is too complex.

Therefore, customers want a simple and quick solution to make their shopping experience hassle-free.

To make the most usable shopping cart interface, follow these tips for best practices.

1. Provide Shopping Cart Editing Options

When customers are ready to check out, they may view their cart to ensure they have the right items. However, sometimes customers can make mistakes. 

For example, they might choose the wrong size or add too many items to their cart. It can be frustrating for users to delete and return the item to add the right one to their cart.

To enhance the shopping cart UI, consider adding an option where they can edit their items.

For example, you could add inline editing where they can change the product specs directly within the cart without an extra pop-up. This UX design will come as a drop-down feature, steppers – plus and minus signs – and quantity input fields.

You should also allow customers to delete items and display a message with an “Undo” option if they want to return the removed item.

2. Allow Customers to Keep Items in Their Carts

Users will abandon their shopping carts sometimes — it’s an inevitable part of being an e-commerce owner. However, that doesn’t mean the cart should refresh whenever a visitor returns.

You never know the exact reason they abandoned it in the first place.

It could be that they want to save their items for later without logging into their account. Or they’re not entirely sure they want to check out that day. Instead, they might want to wait until they get paid by the end of the week.

Either way, if the cart does refresh, the user will not want to start their process again. Therefore, you’ll have to add code that establishes long-term cookies to have this feature.

In addition, you should have a button that allows customers to save items for later for safekeeping.

3. Include a Legible Table-Based Layout

While designing your shopping cart’s UI, creating a table-based layout is always best. Users need to be able to scan the information without interruption. 

Therefore, you should include standard fonts and avoid complex backgrounds. Always ensure there’s enough whitespace and the borders are prominent enough to separate each cell. 

The product information should be legible and scannable, so there shouldn’t be any other distracting elements.

Generally, it helps to have a clean design. Any unnecessary elements or complex styles may confuse customers and persuade them to abandon their cart. 

4. Avoid Adding Too Many Fields

One surefire way to get customers to abandon carts is having too many fields for them to fill out.

To avoid this, eliminate any unnecessary fields in the fill-out form. 

You want to be sure you make the checkout process seamless because an inconvenience like this keeps them from buying. As a result, they might not want to return.

Keep your mind at ease by retaining your number of fields to a minimum. Only ask for the necessary information you need to ship the order, including:

• Customer’s name

• Shipping address

• Payment information

5. Make Sure Your CTAs Are Prominent

Once users arrive at the cart’s page, ensure you provide two possible actions – “Continue Shopping” and “Checkout.”

Your primary call-to-action will be “Checkout,” while the secondary CTA will be “Continue Shopping.”

Once you provide these two options, ensure they’re clear by following the visual hierarchy principle in UX design. For example, your “Checkout” button should be the largest, boldest element on the checkout page. Ensure you include enough white space to make the button stand out more.

The “Continue Shopping” button should also be accessible to users. Yet, avoid making it as visually compelling as the primary CTA by making it smaller and a different color.

Make the Shopping Cart UI Enjoyable

You have many elements you can add or take away to create an enjoyable shopping experience. Remember, a simple checkout process is key to avoiding abandoned carts. However, you should always use heat mapping and A/B testing to get first-hand information about why users aren’t finishing their checkout.

User behavior and expectations always change. Therefore, it helps to keep track of your metrics and refine your shopping cart UI to ensure you keep winning them over.