Shopping Cart in digital shopping environment has the same purpose like the physical shopping cart that you use in supermarket. A shopping cart in both the environments is used to arrange the to be purchased items in one location and then taking it to the checkout counter.
While the purpose is same, but the way of presentation in both the environments is quite different from one another. In physical shopping carts, you keep the things not that arranged as you might see in a digital shopping cart. Let’s take an example of the OpenCart platform where shopping carts are used to show a review of the whole cart to the customers. OpenCart possesses a well-defined default shopping cart, but there are certain things which make it lag behind the new standards of shopping cart extensions.
I am indicating to the Ajax based shopping carts or so-called Ajax cart extensions. With the growing competition in the eCommerce market, a default shopping cart extension might not provide you the best user experience. Let’s take a look at these lags and know how can you eliminate them using an OpenCart Ajax Cart extension.
1. Coupon and vouchers remain in disadvantage in default shopping carts-
The default shopping cart cannot provide the users with an option to add coupons and vouchers. Instead, they provide the options to add coupons and vouchers on either the product pages or the checkout page.
For a proper competitive conversion optimization, the facility to add coupons and vouchers on the shopping cart pages would be an upper hand for the site. Users visit the shopping cart pages to review their cart and know the total value of their purchase. There are certain chances that customers might find the purchase is out of their budget. To convert such customers you might offer the customers to apply a discount coupon and see the reduced cart cost.
The above activity can also be done in the default environment where the checkout page would be used to apply the coupons, but no one can say that the customer would even reach to the checkout page for sure.
What can you do?
So it’s wise to utilize your cart itself, allowing customers to apply coupons from the very beginning. OpenCart Ajax cart can help you in this regard as these Ajax based shopping carts allow the shopper to apply and redeem the coupons from the cart window itself. Thus helping you secure some serious advantages against your rivals using the default shopping cart.
![opencart-ajax-cart | KnowBand](https://www.knowband.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/OpenCart-Ajax-cart.png)
The Ajax cart can also be used to show the applicable coupon codes in the cart pop up itself to make it easier for customers to redeem them instantly.
2. Updating a product quantity is a time taking process in default shopping carts-
Whenever you want to remove a product from the cart, or add a new product to the cart, or update the quantity of a product in the cart, you have to face a page reload. The page gets reloaded for any minor to major update in the cart.
The frequent page reloading not only becomes heavy on your server but also frustrate the shoppers. It is one of the major reasons for why users abandon a shopping website. No shopper desires to wait for the pages to get reload that frequently. The user experience is completely degraded in these situations. For somehow if they complete a purchase, they do not seem to encouraged to shop with you again. At least your site won’t be the first preference because of its downgraded user experience.
What can you do?
The Ajax-based shopping carts like the OpenCart Ajax cart extension, allow the shoppers to update the products in the cart without reloading the page. In fact, the OpenCart Ajax Cart is not a page at all. The whole cart is presented as an Ajax based popup which shows a complete cart information with many other additional features for better user experience.
- You can remove a product from the cart without page reload
- You can add a product to the cart without a page reload
- You can add a coupon to the cart without a page reload
- You can update the quantity of a product without a page reload.
![ajax-based-shopping-carts | KnowBand](https://www.knowband.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Ajax-based-shopping-carts.png)
Finally,
There are certain benefits of the Ajax based shopping carts extensions which are missed in the generic shopping carts. It’s a time when 2017 has come and brought a new level of competition in the eCommerce market. In order to survive yet another year with your eCommerce business, it is wise to adopt the extensions like OpenCart Ajax cart. It will surely add some more to the list of your competitive advantages against your rival eCommerce sites.
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