How to Add a High-Converting Sliding Side Cart in WooCommerce (2024 Guide)
Are you looking to boost sales in your WooCommerce store? One highly effective tactic is adding a sliding side cart that appears whenever a shopper adds an item to their basket. A well-designed sliding cart makes it extremely convenient for customers to view their order and check out, without having to leave the page they‘re on.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll walk you through exactly how to add a sliding side cart to your WooCommerce store, including advanced tactics to maximize your conversions and average order value. We‘ll cover two main approaches – using a free plugin and using a more feature-rich premium option.
By the end of this article, you‘ll have a sleek, high-converting sliding cart set up on your store, ready to delight customers and grow your revenue. Let‘s jump in!
Benefits of Using a Sliding Side Cart in WooCommerce
Before we get into the technical details, let‘s discuss some key reasons why adding a sliding cart is so beneficial for WooCommerce stores:
Enhanced user experience: A sliding cart provides shoppers with a quick, accessible way to view and edit their order at any point while browsing your store. There‘s no need to navigate to a separate cart page, reducing friction in the buying process.
Increased average order value: With a sliding cart, you can dynamically display upsells, cross-sells, and other promotions based on the shopper‘s cart contents. This is a powerful way to drive up your AOV.
Reduced cart abandonment: The easier it is for customers to view their cart and complete their purchase, the less likely they are to abandon it. A sliding cart puts the shopper‘s order just a click away at all times.
Highlight deals and rewards: Limited-time promotions, free gift offers, discount tiers, and other incentives can be showcased right in the sliding cart. This motivates customers to buy more to unlock rewards.
Greater customization and branding: Sliding carts can be tailored to match your store‘s unique style and branding for a polished, professional look. You‘re in full control of the cart‘s contents and appearance.
With these compelling benefits in mind, let‘s explore how you can implement a sliding side cart on your own WooCommerce store.
Method 1: Adding a WooCommerce Sliding Cart Using a Free Plugin
If you‘re looking for a simple, no-cost way to add a sliding cart to your store, the free FunnelKit Cart for WooCommerce plugin is an excellent choice. This lightweight tool allows you to create an AJAX-powered slide-out cart in just a few clicks. Here‘s how to set it up:
Step 1: Install and activate the plugin
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New and search for "FunnelKit Cart for WooCommerce". Install and activate the plugin.
Step 2: Configure your cart settings
With the plugin activated, head to FunnelKit > Cart in your dashboard sidebar. This will bring up the main settings panel for your sliding cart.
The first option you‘ll see is Cart Position, which allows you to choose whether the cart icon will appear on the bottom left or right of the screen. You can preview how each setting looks using the real-time cart preview.
Next up is Icon Visibility. Here you can decide to show the cart icon across your entire site, only on WooCommerce pages, or hide it and add it manually to specific pages/posts using a shortcode. Choose the appropriate setting for your needs.
Further down, you‘ll see options to customize the cart‘s contents, such as:
- The heading that appears at the top (e.g. "Your Cart")
- Whether to show a coupon code field for customers to enter discounts
- The text for the "Proceed to Checkout" and "Continue Shopping" buttons
- What happens when "Continue Shopping" is clicked (close cart or redirect to shop page)
Spend some time here tweaking each option to your liking. The preview will update in real-time to give you a sense of how your changes look.
Step 3: Style your cart to match your brand
In the Styling tab, you can fully customize your sliding cart‘s appearance to align with your store‘s unique aesthetic. Change the color scheme, button styles, typography, and more.
To edit a specific element, simply click on the corresponding color block. This will bring up a color picker where you can enter a hex code or select a shade visually.
If you want to give your sliding cart a totally unique look, you can add your own custom CSS under the Custom CSS tab. This is ideal for more advanced style tweaks.
Step 4: Create your cart icon
Rather than manually inserting your sliding cart, you can add a clickable icon to your store‘s navigation menu, header, or any widget-ready area.
To set this up, jump to the Cart Menu tab. Here, click the Enable Cart Menu toggle to active the feature.
Now, choose from six different icon designs and specify whether to show the number of items and/or total price next to the icon. You can also adjust the size to ensure it fits in seamlessly with your store layout.
Under the Add to Menu section, select which navigation menu you‘d like to automatically add the cart icon to. Hit Save and you‘re all set! The icon will now appear on your live store, letting customers access their cart with a single click.
Step 5: Publish your cart
When you‘re satisfied with how your sliding cart looks and functions, head back to the General settings tab and turn the Enable Cart toggle to the On position. That‘s it – your new sliding cart is now live and ready to help you boost sales!
To make changes in the future, simply head back to the FunnelKit Cart settings. You can reconfigure any aspect of your cart‘s functionality or styling and the updates will automatically sync to the front-end.
Advanced Tactic: Suggest Related Products with Cart Upsells and Cross-Sells
One of the most powerful features of a sliding cart is the ability to dynamically suggest other relevant products based on what the shopper has in their cart. These personalized recommendations can significantly increase your store‘s average order size.
To set this up, you‘ll need to upgrade to the premium version of FunnelKit, which includes advanced upselling and cross-selling features. Once you‘ve installed and activated the pro plugin, head to FunnelKit > Cart and locate the Upsells and Cross-Sells section.
Here you‘ll see a list of all your store‘s products. Click on a specific product, then use the Add Upsell and Add Cross-Sell buttons to select which other items you want to display whenever that product is added to the cart.
For instance, let‘s say you sell wireless keyboards. You might set a popular keyboard as an upsell for your entry-level model, and an extended warranty or mouse pad as a cross-sell. Whenever a shopper adds the entry keyboard to their cart, they‘ll see prompts to consider leveling up their purchase or adding a complementary item.
You can set upsells and cross-sells for as many products as you like. To save time, you can also specify a default related product to show whenever a shopper adds an item that doesn‘t have a custom upsell/cross-sell defined.
In the Display dropdown, you can choose from different visual layouts for how your related product suggestions will appear. Some designs include the product image, others show just the name or price. Experiment to see what style gets the most engagements.
Finally, remember to customize the heading that appears above the upsell/cross-sell section. Something like "You may also like…" or "Frequently bought together" can compel shoppers to browse the recommendations.
Pro Tip: Experiment with promoting products at different price points. You may find upselling to a slightly higher-tier item yields better results than a dramatically more expensive one. Always monitor your conversion rates and revenue per customer to optimize your suggestions over time.
Offering Incentives with Dynamic Cart Rewards
Another highly effective way to boost order sizes is by setting up automated rewards and incentives that appear in the sliding cart. For example, you might offer:
- A 10% discount code for orders over $100
- Free express shipping on orders over $200
- A free gift or product sample for orders over $300
To create these rewards in FunnelKit Cart Pro, head to the Rewards tab. Click Create New Reward to set up a new incentive.
Choose what type of reward it will be (coupon code, free shipping, or free product), and enter the Minimum Amount the customer must spend to earn it. If you select Coupon Code, you‘ll also need to specify which coupon will be automatically applied.
Under the Message section, customize the text that will appear in the cart notifying shoppers about the reward. Use the {{remaining_amount}} tag to dynamically display how much more the customer needs to spend to qualify.
You can set up multiple tiered rewards (e.g. bigger discounts for higher order sizes). As the shopper adds more items to their cart, FunnelKit will automatically update to show their progress toward each reward tier and incentivize larger purchases.
Once your rewards are configured, customers will see prompts in the sliding cart showcasing the available offers and encouraging them to add more to their order. This is a powerful tactic for gamifying the shopping experience and motivating customers to spend more in a single session.
To change the message that appears when a customer unlocks all available rewards, edit the When All Rewards Unlocked heading. This is a great place to thank shoppers for their purchase and perhaps tease an exclusive incentive for next time.
Pro Tip: Make sure your rewards are valuable enough to motivate shoppers to increase their order size, but not so generous that they eat into your profit margins. You may want to exclude certain products or categories from rewards eligibility to protect your bottom line.
Optimizing Your Sliding Cart for Mobile Conversions
With mobile commerce on the rise, it‘s crucial that your sliding cart provides an exceptional user experience for smartphone and tablet users. Fortunately, FunnelKit Cart is fully mobile responsive out of the box – but there are a few tweaks you can make to optimize it further.
Under the Styling settings, you‘ll see options to adjust the cart preview width for desktop and mobile separately. Use this to ensure your cart contents display in a single, scrollable column on smaller screens without any horizontal clipping.
You‘ll also want to keep your cart contents concise on mobile to avoid overwhelming users. Condense any long product names, use short and snappy upsell/cross-sell headings, and make sure your buttons have clear, action-oriented labels.
It‘s a good idea to test your sliding cart on a few different popular devices to ensure text and images render crisply and that touch interactions feel smooth and intuitive.
Maximizing Conversions with Sliding Cart Insights
As with any new feature, it‘s important to measure the impact your sliding cart has on your store‘s key metrics, such as conversion rate, average order value, and total revenue.
FunnelKit Cart integrates with WooCommerce‘s analytics, so you can easily see how many carts are being abandoned, which products are most frequently added or removed, and more. Use these insights to continually fine-tune your cart contents, upsell suggestions, and reward thresholds.
For even richer data, you can connect FunnelKit to a dedicated analytics suite like Google Analytics (GA4). With proper eCommerce event tracking in place, you‘ll be able to analyze how users are interacting with your sliding cart funnel and which points in the journey have the most drop-off.
Some key actions to track include:
- Cart icon clicks
- Upsell/cross-sell impressions and clicks
- Reward impressions and unlocks
- Coupon code applications
- Successful check outs
Once you have a baseline of data, start running A/B tests on different cart designs, product suggestions, and special offers. Observe which variants drive the most engagement and sales, then implement the winning versions.
Over time, you can build out a highly profitable sliding cart that maximizes revenue from every visitor. The key is to stay attentive to the data and always be optimizing based on shopper behaviors.
Conclusion
Adding a sliding side cart to your WooCommerce store is one of the most effective ways to enhance UX, reduce friction, and drive up your conversion rates and average order value. With the tactics outlined in this guide, you‘ll be well on your way to implementing a cart that delights customers and grows your bottom line.
Whether you opt for a simple setup using free tools like FunnelKit Cart, or invest in more advanced features via the pro version, the important thing is to get started and begin iterating. Over time, you can transform your sliding cart into a powerful, revenue-generating machine.
So what are you waiting for? Install FunnelKit Cart today and start optimizing your WooCommerce check out experience. Your customers (and your bank account) will thank you.
