Carts aren’t used by everyone. But a lot of users to tend to use them as holding areas for a lot of products they like.
Thin of it like grabbing everything you like off the shelves before you go and try them on in the changing room. You take them all in and review them before choosing the final selection and discarding the rest.
Making changes to a cart will not affect everyone but it will make some people’s life a lot easier and may help them choose their final selection. It may even help them select items they would otherwise have removed and not bought.
Changes to make or things to note…
Allow a full page cart either in the checkout funnel or as a separate entity. Some designers, developers and UX specialists believe that removing it and reducing the journey steps by one is the better solution.
In some cases and on some sites it may work better to have a mini-cart and no full page cart, but on the sites we’ve worked on giving people the choice of mini or full page cart is always the better option.
Use images and details on the cart to give the most information to a person reviewing the products they’re close to buying. Details should include; price, size and colour but can also include the product ID or SKU.
The other important thing is a clear large image. It should be as the customer expects to see it so they don’t worry about it being the wrong item if it doesn’t look familiar.
Lastly customer should be able to remove and link back to the products they have added. Removal is essential and the easiest way to annoy someone. Most websites have a ‘remove’ link, but allowing a customer to reduce the quantity to zero is a great easy way to help people do what they want.
Linking back to the main product page is also a great way for people to check their addition to the cart. The cart will never have all the details available to a customer. Allowing the link back out, will let people see the full images, videos, description and specs of the items they saw originally.
In summary…
Make it as easy as possible to people to do what they want. We can help steer them and persuade them, but never refuse to let a customer out of a cart as it’ll annoy them and we may loose them forever.