Add to Cart

Add to cart is the event recorded when a user places an item in the shopping cart; a micro conversion and one of the middle steps of the purchase funnel.

Add to cart is the strongest purchase-intent signal before checkout, but it is not a purchase and must not be read like revenue. Its value is in a ratio rather than an absolute count: the gap between add-to-cart events and purchases is exactly where cart abandonment is measured. Two traps sit in reading it. First, adding to cart is often used to bookmark an item or check shipping cost rather than to signal serious intent, so a high number is not good news on its own. Second, if the event repeats on a page reload or by adding one item several times, the count inflates; so it must be clear whether the unit is the event, the session or the user.