Shopping Cart: What It Is and Common Types

A Shopping Cart is a core component of any e-commerce experience. At its simplest, it is the place where a shopper places products they intend to buy while browsing an online store. A shopping cart collects product selections, quantities, pricing, and often stores user preferences that carry through to checkout. For beginners, thinking of the shopping cart as the digital equivalent of the physical cart you push through a supermarket helps make sense of its role: it holds items until the shopper is ready to pay.

Under the hood, a shopping cart is usually a combination of client-side interfaces and server-side storage. The interface shows items, images, prices, and controls to update quantities or remove items. The server-side component maintains the cart data, calculates totals, applies discounts, and prepares the order for checkout. How that data is stored and managed determines the type of shopping cart experience a customer sees.

Common types of shopping carts include

• Session-based carts: These carts live in the shopper's browser session. They are convenient for quick visits because they require no account, but they are temporary. If the session expires or the browser is closed, the cart may be lost.
• Persistent carts: Persistent carts are saved for returning customers. When a shopper signs in, the server restores their cart from a database. This is useful for multi-session shopping and increases the chance of conversion by keeping selections across visits.
• Guest carts: Guest carts let shoppers complete purchases without creating an account. They combine session-based convenience with the option to convert into a persistent cart by collecting an email during checkout.
• Hybrid carts: Many modern stores use hybrids that allow guest users to start a session-based cart and later convert it to a persistent cart when they sign in or enter an email address.
• Hosted carts: These are provided by platforms where the cart logic runs on the hosting provider's servers, for example in SaaS platforms. They are easy to set up and integrate with the platform's payment and security systems.
• Self-hosted carts: Here, the store owner hosts the cart and its data. Self-hosting provides more control and customization but requires maintenance, security, and compliance work.
• Single-vendor vs multi-vendor carts: Single-vendor carts belong to one merchant. Multi-vendor or marketplace carts aggregate items from multiple sellers and must coordinate shipping, taxes, and order routing across vendors.
• Mobile-optimized carts: With many shoppers on phones, mobile-optimized carts are designed for small screens with simplified interactions, quick summary views, and large touch targets.

Key components every shopping cart should have include:

• Item summary: Product name, image, price, and SKU.
• Quantity controls: Easy ways to add, remove, or change quantities.
• Price calculation: Subtotals, discounts, taxes, and shipping estimates updated in real time.
• Checkout call to action: Clear button to proceed to checkout.
• Persistence and recovery: Mechanisms to save the cart or recover it by email link or account sign-in.
• Security and privacy: HTTPS, secure handling of payment identifiers, and privacy notices.

Real-world examples make the differences clear.

Amazon combines persistent carts with saved-for-later lists and strong cross-device continuity: items added on a phone appear on desktop. A small Shopify store may use a hosted cart included in its theme that relies on the platform for payment and checkout. A complex marketplace like Etsy must track seller-specific shipping and handle multiple payouts, so its cart logic is more involved.

Beginners should focus on the shopper experience when evaluating shopping carts. Important questions include:

• Can a customer save their cart and return later?
• Does the cart show taxes and shipping early, or surprise the customer at checkout?
• Does the cart work well on mobile devices?
• How does the cart integrate with payment gateways and inventory systems?

In short, a shopping cart is more than a list of products: it is a bridge between browsing and buying. The right type of cart depends on business needs, technical resources, and customer expectations. For newcomers, start simple: choose a cart that offers guest checkout, clear pricing, and persistence options, then iterate toward more advanced behaviors like cross-device sync or marketplace support as your business grows.