What is an add-to-cart button?

The add-to-cart button is a feature of ecommerce stores that allows customers to choose items to purchase without actually completing the payment. For online stores, it lives on individual product pages, functioning as the digital equivalent of a shopping cart in a brick and mortar store.

The option to add to cart is usually mentioned right below each product. The concept is similar to buying things at a retail store. When you buy groceries, for example, you don’t take the items you want to buy one by one to the cashier counter. Instead, you take a trolley and fill it up with everything that you’re buying, and then push the whole trolley with all your selected items in it in front of the counter. This makes it easier for you to pay for all the things that you want to buy in one shot. It also helps you check the items off your shopping list as you put them into the trolley one by one and make your shopping experience more organized.