With a plethora of online shopping platforms available, customers’ purchase journey is no longer linear. Instead, they pick their preferred route – social media, online stores, or mobile devices – and expect a seamless shopping experience across all channels. As a result, businesses find it challenging to deliver incredible omnichannel experiences considering the ever-evolving customer needs and a myriad of online shopping options. Implementing shared carts is an ideal way to fulfill these demands of a non-linear customer purchase journey.

Cart Sharing enables buyers to shop across one or multiple mediums and share their shopping cart/basket with others. All they need to do is to browse and locate what they want on the online store, add items in their cart, and share it with their friends, family, or peers by one click. It helps customers begin anywhere and end anywhere using laptops, mobile devices, or even in-store. It also eliminates the need to move shopping products from the cart to the wish list and backward. Customers prefer to buy from retailers with cart sharing functionality, which also helps reduce cart abandonments and increase conversions. With the upsurge of mobile shopping, a shared cart assists businesses in capturing customers who begin their buying journey from mobiles but eventually make either in-store or online purchases.

Cart Sharing makes shopping easy for everyone. It ensures products are procured without errors, saves time, and reduces hassles. It also enforces security and privacy, which is often risked when sharing banking or payment details over the phone, email, or other modes.

The Salesforce Cart Sharing Cartridge is a custom cartridge that helps businesses implement a shared cart functionality on online shopping platforms, allowing users to share their carts with others. It is designed for Salesforce Commerce Cloud API Version 21.9 (Compatibility Mode: 21.2) with controllers for an extended functionality and tested for SFRA 6.0.0.

The Salesforce Cart Sharing Cartridge allows users to share carts with others through emails. When recipients press the “Continue” button in the email, they are redirected to the storefront, where they can checkout with existing items in cart or can add more items to the basket before placing an order. In addition, the cartridge offers cart sharing functionality when the customer adds at least one item to the shopping cart. The “Share Cart” button is visible for storefront users on the mini cart and cart page.

Let’s understand the use cases where shared carts prove to be helpful.

1. With the help of a shared cart, employees can add products to a cart and share it with an administrator, who further approves the order and completes the checkout process. For example, suppose teachers and educators need to order essential items to accentuate their classrooms and teaching methods for an effective learning setting. In that case, they can gather all the required items in their carts and send them to the supervisor or administrator, who can take the process further and order them.
2. Children and teenagers who don’t have access to online payment methods can share their shopping baskets with parents or guardians to purchase the items they need. This also helps parents review, edit or delete the purchased items before making payment, and track their spending limits. This way, businesses can cater to a broad section of customers who abandon carts due to payment obstacles.

Customers can add products to the cart and share them with their family and friends to complete the purchase. This results in increased conversions, sales, and revenue. Businesses can also include new products in the cart and send them to buyers. This boosts the conversion potential of loyal customers, thereby strengthening the customer base and engagement.

When customers share a cart with others to proceed with the checkout process, it increases the probability of product promotion. The customer may get intrigued by the product and could buy the same item for himself. Therefore, customers promote the products to others, which is rewarding for businesses.

Sharing carts on social media channels allows users to send and receive loaded carts, making the buying process easy and convenient.

There are times when customers add different products to the cart and postpone the buying decision to the following week or month. In such cases, customers can save the cart in their account and replicate it in a single click.

With the help of the Salesforce Cart Sharing cartridge, users can create multiple carts and share them with their families and friends using social media platforms.

Salesforce’s Shared Cart functionality helps to bridge the gap between cart abandonment and order completion, empowering customers with a seamless purchasing journey across all channels. Royal Cyber is a premium silver Salesforce Commerce Cloud partner with years of experience delivering personalized multi-channel experiences. Get in touch with us to know how we can implement Salesforce’s Cart Sharing Cartridge for you.