It’s not something you pay much attention to when you are shopping online, but “Add to Cart” buttons come in many different shapes, sizes, colors, and variations. Each company would like to tell you their version of the “Add to Cart” button is the best, but here we will take a look and see what the majority of sites we checked out use.

This information is meant to help inform as well as guide you should you be designing any sort of shopping cart system.

I decided to classify these sets of buttons into the ways they differentiate from one another. Keep in mind that just because the “majority” of sites use a certain button format or wording does not necessarily make it the correct way to do things. Ultimately doing your own user testing is really the only way to know for sure what will convert the best for your situation.

It should be noted that these buttons were designed and are copyrighted by other companies. These buttons are not to be used in other designs. They are not “free” buttons.

All Buttons

Here are all of the buttons used for this study.

Icons Used (60%)

These buttons had some sort of icon on the button.

Text Variation (28%)

These buttons had varied text from the usual “Add to cart”. The large majority of the variations were “Add to Bag” (assuming the play on having a physical shopping bag).

Shopping Cart Icon (26%)

These buttons add an actual shopping cart icon on the button. These same icons happened to also be larger buttons.

Final Observations

• There did not seem to really be any sort of consistent use of color across the board. Almost every single button was designed to fit with the color scheme of the site it was used on.
• One majority finding of this study was the use of an icon on the button. The use of the icon seems to help draw attention to the button and possibly help conversion rates.
• The size of these buttons seems, for the most part are medium to large. In my own browsing I found the smaller buttons both less appealing and just plain harder to find.
• When possible, try not to vary from the classic “Add to Cart” text. 72% of all the buttons tested use the text “Add to Cart”. The majority of online shoppers will be looking for this sort of text, so use it to instill confidence and to make the process less thought intensive.