What Is Cart Value? Cart Total vs Order Value

Quick Definition

Cart value is the total price of everything a shopper has in their cart right now, before they check out. You'll also hear it called cart total or basket value. It's the item prices times quantities, minus any discount already applied. Shipping and tax usually come later, at checkout, so the final order can look different.

How to Work Out Cart Value

For one cart, multiply each item's price by its quantity and add up the lines. Then take off any discount that's already applied in the cart.

Cart value = sum of (price × quantity) − discounts applied in the cart

Want to follow carts across your whole store? Use the average. Average cart value = total value of all carts ÷ number of carts. Use the same dates for both.

Example: a yarn shop cart

Merino yarn: 3 × $12 = $36
Knitting needle set: 1 × $22 = $22

Cart value = $36 + $22 = $58.

The shop offers free shipping at $75, so this cart is $17 short. That $17 is the gap a free shipping bar would show. If the shopper checks out as is, they pay $58 + $7 shipping = $65, plus any tax.

Now zoom out. In one week, the shop had 320 carts holding $17,600 in total. Average cart value = $17,600 ÷ 320 = $55.

Cart Value vs Order Value

Cart value is what a shopper might spend. What they actually paid on one finished order is the order value. Even for the same shopper, the two can differ. They might remove an item, or type in a discount code at checkout. Shipping and tax get added too.

The averages don't match either. Say 72 of the yarn shop's 320 carts became orders, with an average order value (AOV) of $63. That's $8 above the $55 average cart value. Part of the reason is what gets counted. The cart average includes every cart, but AOV only counts carts that became orders. So don't read the gap as "bigger carts are more likely to buy." These two numbers alone can't tell you that.

Where Shopify Shows Cart Value

Shoppers see it as a running total on your cart page or in your cart drawer. The label depends on your theme. It may say "Subtotal" or "Estimated total," and lots of themes add a note that shipping gets worked out at checkout.

Your spend-based offers check this number too. Think of a free shipping bar, a "spend $100, get 10% off" tier, or a free gift over a set amount. Each one reads the cart value to see what the shopper has qualified for. Our app, Growth Suite, works this way for its cart drawer free shipping goals and its tiered spend-based campaigns. Where you put that line matters, and our guide to free shipping thresholds covers it.

In your Shopify admin, the Abandoned checkouts page lists checkouts people started but didn't finish. Carts that never got to checkout won't show up there. For those, you'll need cart tracking from your analytics setup or an app. Growth Suite tracks cart activity as part of its visitor tracking.

The Mistake: Counting Cart Value as Sales

It's tempting to add up the value of every open cart and treat it as money on the way. Most of it isn't. In our data from 958 Shopify stores, 58% of carts never started checkout. And 43% of the shoppers who did start didn't finish. All told, 76.04% of carts were abandoned. The full breakdown is in our Shopify cart abandonment statistics.

A cart with items in it tells you a shopper got past browsing, but not that they'll buy. Treat cart value as what shoppers picked. For what they actually paid, look at orders.

Want to grow the number instead of just tracking it? Our guide to raising cart value and AOV walks through ways to do it on Shopify.