WooCommerce Side Cart plugins can be a brilliant addition to your store. They help improve customer experience and enrich their engagement. A side cart plugin offers exciting and intuitive features to keep the customers engaged.
One of the challenges faced by online store owners is to retain customer attention. Our life has too many interruptions and we are easily distracted nowadays. So, every store owner must take all possible steps to improve customers’ shopping experience.
WooCommerce Side Cart plugins can play a big role in improving customer experience. WooCommerce offers all the necessary options to open and manage an online store. But, by default, the side cart feature is not available.
There are lots of extensions available for WooCommerce to extend and customize its features. Some extensions allow tweaking existing features to behave in a certain way.
On the other hand, some extensions introduce new features to make WooCommerce more efficient. Being free and open source WooCommerce offers absolute freedom and flexibility in feature customization.
The default behavior of WooCommerce is to set a separate cart and checkout page. Customers can check the added items on the cart page and proceed to checkout from there.
You can alter this default behavior of WooCommerce by using a side cart plugin. Give your customers an interactive cart section on every page of your site (shop/archive and product details pages!).
In this post, we will introduce you to the best WooCommerce Side Cart plugins and other available options that you can start using for free. We will share important feature highlights of them so you can easily understand the differences between them.
Before we jump into the plugins, let’s first get to know a little more about side carts. You need to know what features to expect and how side carts will help improve your store.
WooCommerce Side Cart – Definition, Features, and Benefits
When you have an interactive cart section on every page of your WooCommerce store, you have WooCommerce Side Cart. The side cart can have differences in position and appearance but it will allow customers to interact with their carted items without leaving the current page.
People associate many names with a side cart plugin. Some of the most common names that you will be frequently exposed to are floating cart, mini Ajax cart, Ajax cart, floating cart icon, and mini cart. Despite the different names, there are similarities in their features.
Features to Expect from a WooCommerce Side Cart Plugin
Firstly, a side cart plugin must introduce an interactive cart section on every page of your store. You should be able to trigger the side cart both by Ajax and non-Ajax Add to Cart clicks. Secondly, it must offer sufficient options to customize the look and feel of the side cart. Moreover, customers should be able to remove items and increase or decrease the quantity of carted items.
The prices of the products, the subtotal, and the total price must be available on the cart. You should be able to control the position of the side cart and the floating cart icon. Additionally, the plugin should offer compatibility with popular themes and plugins.
Those are some of the most common and required features of the Side Cart plugins. Some plugins may come with advanced features to further enhance the side cart and give you more control. Additionally, you can get direct checkout ability from the side cart.
Now that you are aware of the expected features of a WooCommerce Side Cart plugin. Let’s take a quick look at how it will benefit your store.
Benefits a store owner will enjoy from a Floating Cart / Side Cart plugin
- Side cart plugins save time and boost the positive store surfing experience
- Your store will appear more attractive and professional to the customers
- The ratio for cart abandonment should decrease thus increasing your sales
- It brings an opportunity for you to make your store modern and engaging
- Most importantly, you will have a competitive advantage over competitors
We hope that now you are confident enough to describe a side cart or floating cart plugin to your friend. On top of that you should be able to give them hints on the expected features and the potential benefits.
Top WooCommerce Side Cart plugins
Side Cart WooCommerce (Ajax)
WPC Fly Cart for WooCommerce
Fast Cart for WooCommerce
Floating Cart and Menu Cart for WooCommerce
XT Floating Cart for WooCommerce
CartPops – High Converting Add To Cart Popup For WooCommerce
Caddy – Smart Side Cart for WooCommerce
Mini Ajax Cart for WooCommerce
Instantio – WooCommerce Quick Checkout | Instant Checkout, Side Cart & Popup
Finest Floating Cart for WooCommerce
Floating Cart Product For WooCommerce
Side Cart WooCommerce (Ajax)
This is one of the best WooCommerce Side Cart plugins available for you. Lots of active installation and regular updates make this a go-to option for store owners.
It wants you to say goodbye to the traditional WooCommerce cart page. Side Cart WooCommerce is fully compatible with Ajax. As a result, your customers will be able to enjoy the exciting new features.
Your customers will be able to add and remove items to the cart without reloading the page.
Side Cart WooCommerce offers complete customization of appearance and control options for store owners. Plugin options are distributed under multiple tabs so you can easily follow them.
Advanced features like updating product quantity, showing shipping, and applying coupons are available in the premium version. Additionally, you can select and choose custom cart icons with the premium version of Side Cart WooCommerce.
WPC Fly Cart for WooCommerce
WPC is a renowned author for WooCommerce extensions. They have authored some valuable tools to add ease for WooCommerce store owners. WPC Fly Cart for WooCommerce is a leading WooCommerce Side Cart plugin authored by WPC.
The plugin has all the expected features required for a side cart plugin. To begin with, you can trigger the side cart both via Ajax and regular Add to Cart buttons. It also has lots of control and customization options.
The basic version of WPC Fly Cart for WooCommerce allows you to enable/disable an overlay effect. For styles of the side cart, you can set solid colors, thumbnail images, or image backgrounds.
You will love the customization options of the cart details. It allows you to individually customize the close button, total, subtotal, and product data.
The premium version of the plugin will allow access to more advanced side cart features.
Fast Cart for WooCommerce
Do you love straightforward yet feature-rich WooCommerce plugins? Then, Fast Cart for WooCommerce is for you. Even though it is a new plugin, its available feature list promotes a different story.
Fast Cart for WooCommerce is gradually securing a place among top WooCommerce Side Cart plugins. It promises a modern UI and tailored UX. As a result, plugin configuration is easier for store owners. Likewise, customers also get an exceptional store surfing experience.
For a seamless user experience, a clean and simplistic UI is always best.
The settings option for this side cart plugin is well thought out. Options are distributed into various sections. So, you can control elements individually—for example, the side cart, floating cart icon, and side cart items.
You can perfectly customize your Ajax side cart using Fast Cart for WooCommerce. Learn more about the available features of this side cart plugin.
Besides those advantages, this side cart plugin is actively maintained. As a result, you can get new features and bug fixes on time. Finally, it has decent documentation to help you get started easily.
Floating Cart and Menu Cart for WooCommerce
Here is another brilliant WooCommerce Side Cart plugin for your online shop. It comes with exciting design and control options to make side cart management effortless.
Floating Cart and Menu Cart for WooCommerce come with multiple integration options. You can integrate the side cart using a shortcode or PHP code. Additionally, you can add the side cart to the header menu using the premium version of the plugin.
The settings section is well organized under various sub-sections. As a result, managing and configuring the plugin options are very straightforward.
The basic version of the plugin falls shy of the features of the premium version. Most of the advanced side cart management options are reserved as premium.
The premium version gives you access to features like controlling the behavior of how the cart opens. You can also use a custom cart icon, and add a fly-to-cart animation with it.
XT Floating Cart for WooCommerce
XT Floating Cart for WooCommerce is another popular extension for adding a side cart feature to your store. This Ajax cart plugin will make your site more attractive to visitors.
The basic version of the plugin offers lots of features. Adding items to the cart and monitoring the cart is fast and effortless.
Customers will be able to update item quantities and remove an item from the side cart. The plugin is mobile responsive so it works perfectly on smaller devices.
It also has a premium version. In addition to the basic features, the premium version offers lots of advanced options. Live WooCommerce side cart preview customizer and fly-to-cart animation are some of the advanced options.
There are 10+ loading spinner animations available for the side cart. Moreover, you can control the side cart visibility for specific devices with the premium version.
CartPops – High Converting Add To Cart Popup For WooCommerce
You are not limited to a few options when it comes to WooCommerce Side Cart. CartPops is another outstanding choice to add a side cart feature to your store.
CartPops is an easy-to-follow and beautifully designed WooCommerce extension. It will bring ease and speed to your customer’s shopping and checkout experience.
One of the most important features of CartPops is its seamless integration. Despite the theme and design of your site, it will seamlessly integrate into your store.
You will love the beautiful design of the side cart. It does not compromise site speed to give the side cart an aesthetic look. Additionally, it has out-of-the-box support for multilingual sites powered by WPML.
The wide range of customization abilities makes CartPops a perfect fit for all brands. The premium version of the plugin allows choosing from different add-to-cart triggers. On top of that, you can display a progress bar for free shipping qualification.
Learn more about the advanced features of the premium version here.
Caddy – Smart Side Cart for WooCommerce
Caddy is another outstanding WooCommerce Side Cart plugin. Store performance is one of the top priorities for online store owners. Caddy comes with performance-optimized codes to ensure site performance.
This Ajax cart plugin will significantly improve the store surfing and shopping experience on your store. As a result, it can boost your store’s conversion and grow sales.
Product recommendation is one of the exciting features of this site cart plugin. It recommends related products right on the side cart. Thus, it helps increase the number of products per order. Additionally, Caddy comes with a free shipping meter.
Love repeat customers? With the saved product list feature, you can bring repeat customers to your store. Caddy allows customers to save products to buy later. Thus, it creates a higher chance for those customers to get back to your store.
The premium version of the plugin offers advanced features like displaying custom notices and promoting custom coupon offers.
Mini Ajax Cart for WooCommerce
The next candidate for our WooCommerce Side Cart plugin is Mini Ajax Cart for WooCommerce. This can be a fantastic choice for your store too.
Like the leading side cart plugins, this one will also allow your customers to update quantity or remove a carted item.
Compared to other available options Mini Ajax Cart for WooCommerce is unique. It offers you to create multiple carts and control them individually. In addition to that you can show or hide the side cart for a specific device.
Mini Ajax Cart for WooCommerce offers lots of customization and control options. Each of your carts can have a unique design and elements. The organization of the settings options is very thoughtful too.
The premium version of this Ajax cart plugin offers built-in templates. You can import the pre-built templates with just a click. Additionally, it comes with custom animation to make the side cart more engaging.
Instantio – WooCommerce Quick Checkout | Instant Checkout, Side Cart & Popup Cart
Another excellent choice for the WooCommerce Side Cart plugin is Instantio. It also comes with all the essential and desired features for a side cart plugin. You can add an Ajax add-to-cart feature on every page of your site using this WooCommerce extension.
Instantio comes with thoughtful features and organized options. Among the exciting features, the add-to-cart fly animation deserves more attention. The add-to-cart fly animation makes carting an item more exciting in your store.
The admin panel of Instantio is also very well organized. It offers lots of Ajax-based features to keep customers engaged in your store. For example, customers will be able to increase or decrease product quantity from the side cart.
The premium version of Instantio has a higher focus on Checkout features. You can enjoy a single or multi-step checkout on every page of your store with it.
Finest Floating Cart for WooCommerce
Finest Floating Cart for WooCommerce is another floating cart plugin to bring a positive vibe to your store. It also has a collection of some of the best features essential for the WooCommerce Side Cart plugin.
To begin with, you will love the attractive and user-friendly design of this side cart plugin. It comes with a modern design to boost user experience in your store.
Many of your store visitors use their mobile devices to surf and purchase goods online. So, the side cart plugin must be mobile-friendly. This plugin is completely mobile responsive to work on any device.
This side-cart plugin offers easy customization options for the store owner. It can be a time saver both for the store owner and the customer.
It also offers a quick and easy translation option for all the strings. So, you can easily customize or translate the desired string using the plugin interface.
There is no premium version available for this floating cart plugin at this moment.
Floating Cart Product For WooCommerce
Every WooCommerce store owner loves an extension that is easy to set up and has rich functionalities. Floating Cart Product for WooCommerce falls into that category. It is a potential candidate to enable the Ajax-powered side cart in your store.
Floating Cart Product for WooCommerce has a decent list of features to handle your complete side cart needs.
This mobile-friendly floating cart plugin comes with specific options just for smaller devices. It allows the user to enable or disable specific side cart features for mobile devices.
Additionally, Floating Cart Product for WooCommerce also comes with lots of customization options. Furthermore, it has support for WPML. It’s a relief for store owners who are running a multilingual site.
With the premium version of the plugin, you can add a product slider on Desktop or mobile devices. Apart from that, there are lots of advanced features available in the premium version.
More options for WooCommerce Side Cart!
Additionally, there are more available plugins for side carts too. They don’t have a decent number of active installations yet. To keep you informed, we are also listing them here. Thus you can check their features.
| Plugin Name | Active Installations |
| Sidebar Cart for WooCommerce | 40+ |
| Super Fast Side Cart for WooCommerce | 20+ |
| Side cart plus for WooCommerce | 20+ |
A side cart or floating cart for WooCommerce is one of the must-have plugins. We have tried to give you a brief overview of the best/top available plugins here.
Side cart for WooCommerce significantly enhances the store surfing experience. It contributes to the growth of an online store too. We hope that you have found everything helpful.
Hopefully, you have found a perfect match for your store. If you know a great WooCommerce Side Cart plugin that is missing here, you can share it with us. Enjoy the new experience and the benefits!