A persistent cart stores items in a shopper’s cart for their next visit. If Jonah adds a number of items to his cart on Monday, he should find them when he comes back on Friday. For guest users, the feature is best implemented by use of cookies. For customers in possession of user accounts, cart items should be saved as part of their account data and be synchronized across all of their devices. If Jonah adds items to his cart while shopping on his phone, those items should still be available when he logs into his account on his laptop.

 

Why are persistent carts important?

  1. Online shopping involves a lot of starts and stops – Due to the nature of online shopping, a number of customers never make a purchase in a single session. They come and go. Purchases can take up to a week as shoppers explore, compare products, and even forget about their abandoned shopping carts for a while as they deal with other pressures of life.
  2. Shoppers expect the feature –  Since a lot of sites already have the feature, your customers will expect you to save their cart items whenever they exit a session. Having a persistent cart makes for a seamless customer experience while failing to save cart items causes a lot of frustration. A customer is also more likely to abandon a purchase if they have to re-add items to their cart.
  3. Customers use the cart as a product comparison feature – Customers tend to use the cart as a wishlist, adding multiple products of the same type so they can easily compare them. A persistent cart makes it possible for them to do this over multiple sessions.

Examples