Setting up the Recharge Cart to convert one-time buyers to subscribers

The Recharge Cart gives you powerful upsell capabilities within the cart. These fully customizable features let you seamlessly convert one-time purchases to subscriptions with full upsell analytics and expandable options for future cross-sells and other features. You can also refer to the Cart drawer overlay Early Adopter Program for more information on additional upsell capabilities.

This guide highlights the Cart key features and provides set-up instructions.

Before you start

• Cart is in Early Adopter status. See the Early Adopter Program for more information on this program. Your store already has access to Cart, and you do not need to request enrollment into an Early Adopter Program.

How it works

The Recharge Cart delivers a fully managed shopping experience with built-in upsell capabilities. When a customer adds a product to their cart, the cart drawer automatically opens to display the current contents. If the added product is a one-time purchase with subscription-selling plans, a subscription upsell option appears in the drawer. If the customer converts to a subscription, the cart updates in real-time to reflect the change. Products already added as subscriptions do not display an upsell option.

Key features

Design a custom Cart that improves your conversion rates:

• Modern cart experience: Create a seamless, mobile-first experience with a responsive slide-out design.
• Customize the cart to fit your branding: Adjust colors and styles to make it seamlessly fit into your storefront.
• Instant subscription conversions: Let customers switch one-time purchases to subscriptions without leaving the cart.
• Cross-sell: Suggest products that complement the items in the cart, using either Shopify’s smart recommendations or manually selecting specific products you want to display.
• Free shipping progress bar: Display a progress bar that updates as customers add items, unlocking free shipping once they reach a specific threshold.

Use cases

Review the following use cases to understand how you can use the Cart feature to improve key metrics and optimize offers to drive more conversions:

Set-up instructions

Activate the Cart embed on your Shopify theme

You must enable the Cart app embed in your storefront before designing a custom Cart experience.

1. Click Cross-Sell & Upsell in the Recharge merchant portal and select Cart.
2. Select Configure app embed block and then click Configure app embed block to toggle the Cart embed on in your live theme automatically. This allows the theme to support an active Cart overlay strategy.
3. Click the Save button present on the top right corner of the Shopify theme editor page.

Set up and customize your Cart flow

Step 1 - Create the flow

1. Click Cart in the Cross-Sell & Upsell section to create your cart strategies.
2. Click Create a cart if this is your first time, or click Create new if you already have other strategies.
3. Click Manage settings to rename the flow and add a description.

Step 2 - Configure the nodes

Recharge offers a prebuilt template for your cart flow. Review each node in the flow to understand how it works, and make adjustments where possible.

Step 1 - Review the Trigger node

The flow starts with a Trigger node, which activates when a customer meets specific conditions. Recharge sets the Cart trigger condition as Cart is displayed. You cannot edit this condition.

Step 2 - Review the Cart node

Use the Cart node to customize cart details and offers.

1. Click the Cart node.

2. By default, Recharge selects Upsell line items to subscriptions under Cart widgets, allowing customers to upgrade one-time products to subscription products. You can enhance your cart with the Cross-sell or Free shipping progress bar features.

   

    

3. Click the Customize cart button to access the cart builder, where you can customize your cart’s header, body, and footer. You can set different content depending on whether the customer’s cart is empty or contains products.

   

   Review the following different customization options for carts with items and empty carts. See Available variables for Cart flows for more information about the variables you can use in the flow.

   Section	Cart with items	Empty cart
   Header	The header section appears at the top of the cart. You can customize: Header text Item count using {{items_count}} variable	The header section appears at the top of the cart. You can customize: Header text Item count using {{items_count}} variable
   Body	Customize these key elements in the body section: Subscription discounts Percent saving text using Saving {{discount}} variable (e.g., Save 20%) Upsell link text (appears below eligible items to enable one-time to subscription switching) Upsell in progress text Frequency selection text One-time option text Upsell display options	Customize these key elements in the body section: Text area: Use this to edit text in the body section Button text: Choose a text you want (for example: Continue shopping) Button action: You can choose between Close the cart and Redirect to a custom URL option.
   Footer	Use this section to personalize: Subtotal text (plural) using ({{items_count}} items) variable Subtotal text (singular) using ({{items_count}} item) variable Subscription saving prices Button text and styling	Use this section to add: Subscription banner, text, or promotional image
   Edit style	Use this section to personalize: Background color Font family Text color Button styles Padding and margins	Use this section to personalize: Background color Font family Text color Button styles Padding and margins

   Note: Click the preview link in your store to see how your cart looks with your plans and prices.
4. Click Apply to save your conditions.

Step 3 - Save and activate the flow

Once you have finalized configuring the Cart strategy, save and activate the flow:

1. Click Save in the top right corner to save the flow.
2. Click Activate when you are ready to go live with the flow.

Considerations

Consider the following when using Cart: