AUTO CART UPDATE

Online buyers demand a frictionless shopping experience and any improvements that can help create those elevated experiences can also ultimately increase conversion rates. This experiment removes the manual steps a shopper has to take by automatically updating cart item quantities, thereby providing updated feedback to the shopper at all times.

*These results reflect the average findings of all participating merchants and are not guaranteed for all users.

What We Did

We hid the traditional “Update Cart” button and implemented a treatment code that automatically refreshes item totals when a shopper changes the quantities of items in their cart.

Why We Did It

A growing number of mainstream sites are implementing automatic cart updates to improve the checkout experience. Removing the “update cart” button simplifies the process for shoppers as they make changes to their purchase and eliminates unnecessary distractions for those who aren’t.

ANALYSIS OF DATA

What We Discovered

Implementing the Automatic Cart Update had a positive impact on 95.5% of visitors! There was a considerable lift particularly on desktop, where it saw a 32% RPV lift. For mobile, there was a modest 3.36% RPV lift and a -0.15% drop in RPV for tablet. When results were aggregated across all devices, the RPV lift was greater for new visitors, as opposed to returning visitors by a margin of 7%.

This experiment has a high likelihood of success for any given merchant. The strong results on desktop also suggest that shoppers are more likely to edit their cart quantities on desktop than on mobile — the more modest lifts on phones and tablets suggest that users benefit from the functionality, but don’t increase or change their item quantities as frequently.

The results revealed a significant gap in RPV lift between new and returning shoppers. Some returning shoppers may have expected to have to manually update their cart and became confused when the cart updated automatically. We can assume this type of friction will lessen over time.

Things To Consider

While this experiment has a high success rate, merchants with a large percentage of returning visitors should pay special attention to the results for those visitors. Merchants who sell multiple units of the same products more frequently have a greater potential to benefit from this experiment but will want to keep an eye on their returning visitors as well.

The Auto Cart Update Experiment is a great fit for merchants who currently only have manual update functionality on their cart page.

Get deeper insights into over 50 experiments available through the Initiative.