The typical ecommerce site is designed to let shoppers find items, add them to the shopping cart, and proceed through checkout. And easy linear process will help you guide your customer through purchase funnel.  Ecommerce research with actual users buying on websites displays many shoppers use the cart as a holding area, to collect items they’re considering, but aren’t yet convinced they want or need to buy.   Basically cart - it's a  spot where users consider items and make final decisions. So the shopping cart needs to do more than collect information about items of interest. The cart also needs to assist shoppers in making final decisions and proceeding to purchase. And you can find below 4 ways of doing so:

1. Provide access to a full shopping cart

Providing a page in the checkout flow that is dedicated to displaying the full cart helps users make their purchase decisions. They can use the cart to review their selections, check details, compare items, and even finesse totals to meet budgets or qualify for discounts

Some sites only allow users to view the shopping cart in a minicart view that appears as an overlay or as part of the checkout process, but not as a dedicated page. For many users, that approach is fine.

Providing a page for the shopping cart, as is done on Chicos.com, gives the users a chance to focus on the cart before starting the checkout process.

2. List product details and a clear product image.

Because shoppers are making final purchase decisions in the cart, it is essential that the cart clearly summarizes the items in it. In the cart, include product images that are large enough to show some details, allowing the shopper to differentiate an item from other similar items that he may be considering.

The product image is essential. The image helps users who are using the cart to comparison shop. Images also assist users who aren’t comparing items, by reminding them what is in the cart and acting as a quick visual summary.

The image needs to reflect the users’ selections. Showing the item in the wrong color or with the wrong options, even if the correct color or options are listed in accompanying text, causes users to doubt the selection is correct.

3. Link cart items to full product details

When shoppers need additional information to make a purchase decision, they want to return to the product page in order to read more information or review product details. As such, it is important that sites provide users with quick access from the cart to the product detail page. Linking both the product name and image help users quickly and easily access additional product information. Using a different color or text presentation for links, such as the blue text in the example from the Gap shown above, helps users know that they can easily navigate to product information if needed.

From the shopping cart on the Gap’s site, users could click either the product name or the product image to return to the product detail page.

4. Let users easily remove items.

While it may seem contrary to the goal of selling more on an ecommerce site, it is essential that a shopper can quickly and easily remove items from the cart. For shoppers using the cart as a holding area, there may be several items in the cart that will ultimately not be purchased. A noticeable, quick, and easy way to remove items works to indicate that users can easily edit the cart and also allows them to do so when needed.

A clear link, such as Remove Item, works well for users. Such links clearly indicate what users can do. Delete is slightly less clear for users because it reflects more of a technical view of shopping. They can typically understand it, but shoppers don’t think about deleting items — programmers think about deleting items. Remove is a more familiar term from a user perspective.

Some people also want to set the quantity to zero and update the cart. Many sites prevent users from doing this, either by using a drop-down for quantity that does not include the number zero or by returning an error if the user attempts to make the change. Allow shoppers to remove items by changing the quantity to zero.