15+ Ideas and Strategies to Improve Add-to-Cart Rate [2026]

Once visitors land on your store, your first goal is to have them add items to their cart.

Sounds easy, right? Well, there’s a lot that goes into this story. Before you get them to add items to their cart, you need to win their heart, mind, and trust.

And how do you do that? This blog post covers all such ideas and strategies on how to improve the add-to-cart rate of your Shopify store.

Let’s get started!

What is a Good Add-to-Cart Rate in eCommerce?

Globally, the average add-to-cart rate is 6.23%.

However, what’s considered a “good” add-to-cart rate depends on the industry you operate in. Here are some of the key insights from the report by Dynamic Yield by Mastercard (December 2025):

• The “Food & Beverages” industry has the highest add-to-cart rate (10.09%).

• Device-wise average add-to-cart rate:

• Desktop: 6.17%

• Mobile: 6.07%

• Tablet: 6.47%

• If you’re selling high-ticket items in industries like “Home & Furniture” or “Luxury & Jewelry”, the add-to-cart rate may tend to remain relatively lower.

Thus, if you’re a “Home & Furniture” brand and hitting 5% add-to-cart rate, it can be considered a “good” add-to-cart conversion rate. 

However, the same (5%) cannot be considered a good rate for the “Beauty & Personal Care” brand — because in that industry, the average add-to-cart rate is 8.48%.

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15+ Strategies to Improve Your Add-to-Cart Rate

Now, let’s go through the ideas and strategies to increase the add-to-cart rate of your Shopify store:

1. Enhance personalization throughout the store.

When a product appeals to the visitors on a personal level, it becomes irresistible. 

Nearly 90% of consumers say personalization influences their eCommerce experience. There are several strategies to enhance personalization on your Shopify store:

• Leverage historical and current customer data

• Conduct surveys with potential and existing customers

• Build a personalization engine for your Shopify store

• Implement a quiz funnel strategy to learn about your visitors

• Offer personalized product customizations

Talking of personalized customizations, even premium watch brands like Fossil aren’t missing out on this opportunity. Right before the “Add To Bag” button, it has the “Personalize” button, which lets you add text for custom engraving to the watch.

2. Nail your pricing and positioning strategies.

Some customers just want to compare prices with different stores before making a buying decision. You must be at the top of your pricing game to convert such visitors.

Now, this does not necessarily mean you need to lower your prices.

It’s about how you price your products and how you position your brand among competitors. When you nail the positioning, customers buy from your brand even if other brands are offering the same product at lower prices. 

Let’s take one more premium watch brand, for example. Bremont boasts about its “Proudly made in the UK” statement as its USP.

Learn more: Dropshipping Pricing Strategy: The A-Z Guide for Beginners

3. Design your store and landing pages for conversion.

While we’re focusing on the “Add to Cart” conversion event, we need to keep in mind that your whole Shopify store design or landing page design contributes to this conversion action.

So, let’s break this topic into two key points:

3.1 Overall design layout of your store, product, or landing page.

On your store, the “Add to Cart” button appears in several places — homepage, product pages, and even landing pages. So, you must think about the layout of all these pages and how elements are placed on them, especially the conversion-focused elements.

One thing you must get right is the above-the-fold section on your page. We’ll talk about some of the important elements in this section, later in this article.

But here’s where an important tool comes into the picture — a page builder app.

GemPages Landing Page Builder is one of the most loved Shopify page builder apps. With an excellent rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars from over 3,300 reviews, GemPages has been the go-to page builder app for thousands of merchants like you.

GemPages offers you a wide range of template designs for your Shopify product pages. These templates are professionally designed and optimized for conversions.

3.2 Design your add-to-cart button with a unique style.

Whether it’s your homepage, product, or landing page, you have to make the add-to-cart button stand apart. The design and copy of the button need due consideration and thinking.

So, we’re talking about two important aspects here: 

1. Button design: Use a distinctive color scheme for the button. One more design aspect to consider is the CTA buttons for “Add to Cart” + “Buy Now” buttons. If you want users to focus on the “Add to cart” button solely, you may want to remove the “Buy now” button altogether and offer only one CTA.

2. Button copy: Write a CTA copy that your customers understand easily. While it’s good to be creative, make sure it’s not confusing your site visitors.

4. Conduct A/B tests on your template designs.

If you want to identify and fix the areas of improvement on your product and landing page templates, A/B testing is the way to go. Even when designing the CTA button, you may have questions like:

— Whether to write “Add to Cart” or “Add to Bag”?

— Use green or purple for the button color?

All these decisions could be made with a data-driven approach by A/B testing the templates. Also, you can A/B test a single CTA (“Add to Cart” button) vs two CTAs (“Add to Cart” + “Buy Now” buttons) to finalize your CTA design.

Review your heatmap data to analyze customer behavior and identify patterns. 

To conduct A/B tests on your Shopify store, you need a reliable A/B testing app. GemX is built specifically for Shopify merchants like you to perform advanced tests with the following features:

• Template Testing

• Multipage Testing

Learn more: How to A/B Test Product Page Template in Shopify

5. Use storytelling in your product copy.

Product copy plays a crucial role in persuading the site visitors to become your customers.

Write compelling product copy with storytelling elements that help customers understand your product's USP and value propositions. In simple words, tell your customers why they should buy from your brand by helping them visualize the benefits of your product.

Learn more: How to Create a Unique Selling Proposition & Value Proposition 

6. Display high-quality product media.

Your site visitors must be able to visualize your product clearly. If you don’t have clear images, it might create doubts in their mind.

Your product quality may be perceived based on how it appears in product images. Better yet, show your product in action with videos.

The “see it in action” section on Colourpop’s product pages is a fitting example of how it’s done.

Learn more: Shopify Product Images: A 10-minute Guide for Beginners

7. Showcase the social proof, above the fold.

Typically, product pages display customer reviews at the bottom of the page, and that’s fine, but you should also display the overall product rating and the number of reviews at the top.

And there are other ways to display social proof as well. For example, you could place the best customer testimonials next to the product title.

Here’s how Indestructible Shoes showcases the customer review right below the product title:

8. Handle all customer queries or objections proactively.

If you want your site visitors to take action, you must ensure they don’t have any doubts in their minds. And there are two main ways to solve this:

8.1 Create a detailed FAQs section.

With a detailed FAQs section, you can address all their doubts or queries so that they can add the item to their cart without hesitation. Review your customer support data to ensure every important question is addressed in this section.

Once again, GemPages can help you design an FAQs section. Simply drag and drop the pre-designed FAQs section in the visual editor and customize the content as needed.

8.2 Offer a live chat option on your website.

No matter how detailed your FAQs are, sometimes, customers just come up with unique queries based on their specific needs.

In such cases, those queries could be best handled by a live chat support.

If you’re using chatbots, make sure customers have the option to reach out to a human representative. Otherwise, it can turn out to be frustrating for your customers when the bot keeps circling back with the same answer.

9. Use FOMO tactics to evoke a sense of urgency.

Using elements like a countdown timer or stock counter near the “Add to Cart” button creates a sense of urgency. When used appropriately, these tactics can boost your add-to-cart conversion rate.

GemPages helps you place such conversion-focused elements with its drag-and-drop editor. 

10. Use the announcement bar effectively.

The announcement bar entices your site visitors to take action.

When designing your announcement bar, make sure to keep proper color contrast so that it’s easily noticed by your site visitors.

Here are some of the key conversion-focused elements you could add to the announcement bar:

• Free shipping offer

• 30-day return policy

• Customer rating and number of reviews

• Special discount offer

• Countdown timer for the flash sale

11. Display the necessary information for the conversion action.

Depending on the products you’re selling, there may be information that is a must-have before the customer takes the action.

Here are some examples:

• Clothing or footwear brands: Size chart, color variants, etc.

• Electronic gadgets: Specifications, e.g., RAM and storage for smartphones, display size for laptops, and so on.

• Food items: Ingredients

Don’t make customers search for that information; otherwise, you’re at risk of losing the sale.

Cupshe goes even beyond the regular size chart and offers a live chat option for size assistance. This is how you deliver the best-in-class customer experience.

12. Offer an installment payment or “Buy now, pay later” option around the CTA.

When customers see the installment payment option, it can spike the chances of them adding the product to the cart. When selling high-ticket products, this could be an even more effective strategy.

Here’s an example where Red Dress offers the Afterpay payment option on its product page:

13. Design a sticky add-to-cart button.

Product pages typically have a lot of information to offer — and visitors could easily get distracted. Especially if you have supplementary product content below the fold, the “Add to Cart” button goes out of sight once the visitors scroll down.

Having a sticky add-to-cart button makes it almost impossible to ignore. For example, let’s take a look at this product page on Morphe’s website:

14. Display trust badges.

Trust badges are one of the key conversion-focused elements on your product page. It builds a sense of trustworthiness in your site visitors.

Here are some examples of trust badges: 

For example, here’s how King Kylie’s product page displays trust badges related to product ingredients.

And if you’re wondering how you could add such elements to your product pages, we’ve got you covered. GemPages lets you add “Trust Guarantee” sections and customize them as needed.

15. Optimize your website design with a mobile-first approach.

Does your website provide the same experience for visitors when accessed on mobile devices? Because if you haven’t optimized the website for mobile, your smartphone users are less likely to convert.

Make sure the CTA (Add to Cart) button is properly sized for mobile view and is easily accessible. Aim to place it in the “thumb zone”, at the center, so that users can easily click on it with their thumb.

Also, key design elements like trust badges should be stacked nicely for mobile view. For example, here’s how Thinx displays trust badges and product information with a responsive mobile design:

16. Offer a gifting option.

Shoppers aren’t always buying for themselves. They might want to gift it to someone — especially if you’re selling certain types of products such as jewelry, clothing & accessories, handcrafted items, etc.

But when shopping online, this could be a bit of a challenge if you don’t offer the feature to send items as a gift. Here’s an excellent example from Lack of Color, as the brand provides a checkbox to add personalized wrapping and a gift note, right below the “Add to Bag” button.

Final Thoughts on Boosting Your Add-to-Cart Rate

Getting visitors to your website is one task—getting them to add items to their cart is another.

But even after successfully completing those tasks, you’ve still got a job to be done, i.e., having them successfully complete the checkout. You also need to ensure that too many visitors don’t abandon their carts.

So, if you haven’t already, install GemPages Landing Page Builder and GemX: CRO & A/B Testing. Both of these apps are built to boost the CRO and scale your business.

To learn more about other eCommerce marketing strategies, tools, and best practices — check out more resources on the GemPages Blog. Also, join the GemPages Facebook community to network and learn from like-minded entrepreneurs and experts.

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FAQs About Strategies to Increase Add-to-Cart Rate

What is the add-to-cart rate in Shopify?

The add-to-cart rate is the percentage of site visitors — from total site visitors — who add an item to their cart. In other words, it’s a conversion rate specifically for the add-to-cart event.

What is a good add-to-cart rate in eCommerce?

The worldwide average add-to-cart rate is 6.23%. However, what's considered a good add-to-cart rate depends on the industry.

Here are the industry-wise averages that you may consider to set your benchmark:
Multi-Brand Retail: 8.23%
Consumer Goods: 5.42%
Food & Beverage: 10.09%
Pet Care & Veterinary Services: 2.96%
Home & Furniture: 3.97%
Fashion, Accessories, and Apparel: 6.33%
Beauty & Personal Care: 8.48%
Luxury & Jewelry: 2.27%

How to increase Shopify's add-to-cart rate?

Here’s a summary of key strategies to increase the add-to-cart rate of your Shopify store:
Enhance personalization throughout the store.
Nail your pricing and positioning strategies.
Design conversion-optimized store and landing pages.
Conduct A/B tests.
Use storytelling in your product copy.
Display high-quality product media (images & videos).
Showcase the social proof.
Proactively handle customer queries or objections.
Use FOMO tactics to evoke a sense of urgency.
Display flexible and convenient payment options.

What are the best apps to enhance Shopify product page conversion?

Here are the Shopify apps you must try:
1. GemPages Landing Page Builder — to design conversion-optimized product pages.
2. GemX: CRO & A/B Testing — to test and optimize your product page templates.
3. Rebuy Personalization Engine — to set up personalized product recommendations.

How to A/B test Shopify add-to-cart CTA?

You can A/B test your add-to-cart CTA using a Shopify app — GemX: CRO & A/B Testing. The app lets you easily A/B test any element on your Shopify store page or landing page template.

Topics: 

Conversion Rate Optimization