What Is Add to Cart (ATC)? Button, Event, Signal

Add to Cart: the Button, the Tap and the Event

You'll hear "add to cart" used for three things: the button, the shopper's tap on it, and the event your tracking tools log.

Each tool names that event its own way. Google Analytics 4 calls it add_to_cart, the Meta pixel uses AddToCart, and Shopify's customer events log it as product_added_to_cart.

It's not the same as the add to cart rate. That one turns these taps into a share of visits or product views.

What Happens After the Tap on Shopify

What the shopper sees next depends on your theme. On some themes a cart drawer slides open. Others show a small pop-up confirming the item, or just load the cart page. Shopify Analytics counts sessions with cart additions as one step of your conversion rate.

Most product views never get this far. Across 958 Shopify stores in our data, 6.72% of product views ended in an add to cart. Of visits that reached the cart, 42% started checkout. Treat those as averages, not targets. Curious what gets a shopper to tap? Read how product pages earn the add to cart.

Reading Adds Next to Orders

An add is a sign of interest, not a decision. It's free and easy to undo. So don't read it alone: put it next to orders, one product at a time.

Example: two candles, one month

Both get 800 product page views. The numbers are made up.

Cedar candle: 64 adds (8%) and 10 orders
Fig candle: 20 adds (2.5%) and 9 orders

Cedar wins the tap, but only about 1 in 6 of those adds turned into an order. So the weak spot is probably further along. Check shipping, the total and checkout first. Fig is the other way around: few taps, yet almost half of them buy. For that one, start with the product page.

Growth Suite, our app, watches cart activity too. It's one of the signals the app waits for before it decides whether to show a visitor an offer.