Skip to content
GetProfit
Log in

← All terms

Add-to-cart rate

Add-to-cart rate is the share of sessions in which a shopper puts a product in the cart, or the share of a product's viewers who add it.

How it works

Adding to the cart is the step between viewing a product and the checkout. Compared with the steps that follow, the rate shows where shoppers drop off. There is no single benchmark: it depends on the counting method, the category, the price and the traffic source.

Few carts point to the product page, the price or the people the ads bring. Many carts without orders, which the cart abandonment rate measures, point to the steps after the cart. Our guide to cart abandonment shows how to find the exact step before fixing it.

Formula

Sessions with a cart addition ÷ all sessions × 100%

Ways to calculate

  • By session. Shopify’s Conversion rate breakdown report (Behavior reports) divides sessions with cart additions by all sessions.
  • By product. The GA4 metric Cart-to-view rate (API dimensions and metrics) divides users who added a product to the cart by users who viewed that product.

GA4’s Add to carts is a count, not a rate. Each time a shopper adds to the cart counts once, so one shopper adding three products one at a time makes three.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop gets 8,000 sessions from its ads in a month. In 1,000 of them, a shopper adds a product: add-to-cart rate = 1,000 ÷ 8,000 = 12.5%. Its 300 orders come from those sessions, so 300 ÷ 1,000 = 30% of carts end in an order. A dinner set viewed by 900 users and added by 90 has a cart-to-view rate of 90 ÷ 900 = 10%.

Not to be confused with

  • Micro-conversion — one add to cart tracked as an action, for example a conversion action in Google Ads. Add-to-cart rate is a share.
  • Conversion rate — orders as a share of clicks. Add-to-cart rate stops one step earlier.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “The dinner set’s 10% is below the shop’s 12.5%, so its page loses shoppers.” Right: the shop’s rate counts every session, including those that never opened a product page. The set’s rate counts only users who viewed the set. Compare it with other products’ cart-to-view rate.

Sources

  • Behavior reports — Shopify Help Center: sessions with cart additions; each step’s rate is its sessions divided by all sessions. Checked 2 October 2026.
  • API dimensions and metrics — Google Analytics Data API: Cart-to-view rate, Add to carts. Checked 2 October 2026.