How to Let Customers Save and Share Their WooCommerce Cart for Better User Interaction

Mobile Apps | By Jeff Harrison | 29-04-2026

Customer using WooCommerce save cart and share cart feature on online shopping website

As time goes by, it is clear that online shopping has become the forefront of every individual's buying experience, and along with that, cart abandonment has become more and more common. Online store owners who face cart abandonment quickly resort to solutions involving recovery emails, exit intent popups, or even discount offers. And sure, you might think that those are valid approaches to take; however, these are what you call “reactive actions”.

They kick in after the customer has already left. What does not get talked about nearly as much is giving customers a reason to stay connected to their cart before they even think about abandoning it, and that is exactly what a save and share cart feature does.

When a customer can save their cart and come back to it later without losing anything, the pressure of the session disappears entirely. They are not rushing to checkout before something gets lost or reset. The cart becomes something more than just a temporary holding space in scenarios where your customer wants to share their cart with someone else, whether it is a friend, a family member, or even themselves across various devices.

It becomes a shareable list, a wishlist, a recommendation, and that changes how customers interact with your store in a way that quietly benefits you without requiring any aggressive marketing tactics.

The Clear Cart WooCommerce plugin by FmeAddons includes both of these features alongside its WooCommerce clear cart and session management tools, and this blog covers exactly how to configure them and why they are worth setting up properly.

Why Save and Share Cart Features Are Worth Adding to Your Store

Before getting into the setup, it is worth understanding the actual value these features bring because they do more than just add convenience for the customer. When a customer saves their cart, they are essentially bookmarking an intent to purchase. They are not gone, they are just not ready yet, and having a saved cart waiting for them in their account dashboard is a much stronger pull back to your store than a generic reminder email.

The share cart functionality takes this a step further. A customer who shares their cart is essentially doing a form of word of mouth marketing for your store without you asking them to. They are sending a direct link to a curated selection of your products to someone in their network, someone who may not have visited your store before. That kind of organic reach is genuinely valuable, and it costs you nothing beyond the time it takes to enable the feature.

There is also a practical use case for the WooCommerce empty cart feature working alongside the save cart functionality. A customer who wants to start fresh but does not want to lose what they already had can save their current cart first, clear it, and then build a new one. That combination of features gives customers a level of cart control that most WooCommerce stores simply do not offer by default.

Real World Scenarios: Why These Features Matter

It helps to think about these features in the context of actual shopping behaviour rather than just what they do on paper, because the value becomes a lot clearer when you picture how real customers interact with a cart.

Take someone shopping for a birthday gift who has spent time adding a carefully selected mix of products to their cart but is not ready to purchase just yet because they are waiting on a friend's confirmation of the delivery address. Without a save cart option, that customer either has to leave the tab open and hope nothing changes, or lose everything and start over when they come back. With a saved cart waiting in their account, they come back when they are ready, restore everything in one click, and complete the purchase without any friction.

Or consider a customer building a corporate gift order, something with multiple items across different categories, who wants their manager to review the selection before approving the spend. A shareable cart link means they can put the whole thing together, hit share, send the link directly over email or WhatsApp, and the manager sees exactly what is in the cart without having to visit the store and recreate it themselves. That is the kind of convenience that makes a business buyer want to come back to your store specifically because the experience actually accommodated how they work.

Another easy-to-underestimate angle involves social sharing, where customers who are genuinely excited about a product selection will go ahead and share it with others. You can identify such customers as seasonal shoppers during holidays or events. Every shared cart can be considered as a personalized product recommendation landing directly in someone elses inbox or feed. As a result, you have free advertisement where people arrive at your store with a pre-built cart just waiting to be purchased.

Then there is the social sharing angle, which is easy to underestimate. Customers who are genuinely excited about a product selection they have put together are often happy to share it, especially around seasonal shopping periods like holidays or events. Every shared cart link is essentially a personalised product recommendation landing directly in someone else's inbox or feed, and that person arrives at your store with a pre-built cart already waiting rather than starting from scratch.

Getting the Plugin Installed

If you do not have the Clear Cart and Sessions plugin installed yet, here is how to get it up and running:

Purchase the plugin from WooCommerce.com, then download and save the .zip file
Once you are in your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins > Add New and click “Upload Plugin”
Upload the .zip file and then the installation will begin. Wait for it to complete.
Click Activate once it is done
Navigate to WooCommerce > Settings and click the Clear Cart and Session tab where all the plugin settings live

Once you are in the settings tab, scroll down to the Save & Share Cart section which is where everything we are covering in this blog is configured.

Configuring the Save Cart Feature

The save cart setup is split into a few parts, starting with enabling the feature itself and then moving into the button styling and popup configuration. Here is how to work through it:

Enabling Save Cart:

Activate: Check this checkbox first to enable the save and share cart feature overall. Nothing else in this section will work until this is turned on

Save Cart Button Settings:

Activate Save Cart Button: Enable the save cart button specifically so it appears on the cart page for customers

Save Cart Button Text: Set the label that appears on the button, something like "Save Cart for Later" or "Save My Cart" works well and communicates the purpose clearly

Save Cart Button Background Color: Choose the background color for the button

Save Cart Button Hover Background Color: Set the color the button background changes to on hover

Save Cart Button Text Color: Control the color of the text label on the button

Save Cart Button Hover Text Color: Define the text color specifically for the hover state

Save Cart Button Padding: Enter padding in the sequence top right bottom left, for example 10px 10px 10px 10px

Save Cart Button Border Radius: Set the corner rounding in the sequence top-left top-right bottom-right bottom-left

Save Cart Button Icon: Add an icon to the save cart button to make it immediately recognizable visually

Once a customer clicks the save cart button, a popup appears and the heading text and styling of that popup are configured in the Save & Share Popup Options section which we will get to shortly.

After you are done applying these settings, your customers can manage their save acts from within their account dashboards. They can either restore their saved cart or delete it, depending on what they want to proceed with. However, the restore functionality makes the feature genuinely useful because customers are allowed to come back days after, open their account, and pick off right where they left off without worrying on having to search everything again.

Configuring the Share Cart Feature

The clear cart WooCommerce share cart setup follows the same structure as the save cart configuration, with button styling first and then the sharing platform options. Here is the full breakdown:

Share Cart Button Settings:

Activate Share Cart Button: Enable this checkbox to make the share cart button visible on the cart page
Share Cart Button Text: Set the button label, something like "Share My Cart" or "Share This Cart" keeps it clear and direct

Share Cart Button Background Color: Choose the button background color

Share Cart Button Hover Background Color: Set the hover state background color

Share Cart Button Text Color: Control the label text color

Share Cart Button Hover Text Color: Set the hover state text color

Share Cart Button Padding: Enter padding in the sequence top right bottom left

Share Cart Button Border Radius: Set corner rounding in the sequence top-left top-right bottom-right bottom-left

Share Cart Button Icon: Add an icon to the share button for visual clarity

Share Popup Button Settings:

This is where you configure which platforms customers can share their cart to and what each platform's button looks like. Here is what you can set up with the WooCommerce clear cart:

Share Text: Enter the subject text that gets included when the cart is shared, this is the message that accompanies the cart link

Facebook Button Text: Set the label for the Facebook share button and enter your Facebook App ID which you will need to generate by creating an app in the Facebook Developer Console

Messenger Button Text: Add the label for the Messenger share button

Skype Button Text: Set the label for the Skype share option

WhatsApp Button Text: Add the label for the WhatsApp share button

LinkedIn Button Text: Set the label for the LinkedIn share option

Twitter Button Text: Add the label for the Twitter share button

Email Button Text: Set the label for sharing via email

Link Button Text: Add the label for the copy link option which lets customers grab a direct URL to their cart and share it however they want

Upload Icons for Share Buttons: Upload custom icons for each platform including Facebook, Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Email, and Link so the share popup looks polished and on-brand rather than using generic defaults

Customising the Save and Share Popups

Both the save and share interactions trigger a popup and you have full control over how those popups look. You can find the popup styling settings within the ‘Save and Share Popup Options’ section:

Save Cart Popup Heading Text: Enter the heading that appears at the top of the save cart popup

Share Cart Popup Heading Text: Set the heading for the share cart popup

Cart Popup Wrapper Background Color: Set the overall background color of the popup wrapper

Cart Popup Header Background Color: Choose the background color for the popup header area

Cart Popup Header Text Color: Control the color of the text in the popup header

Cart Popup Body Background Color: Set the background color for the body of the popup

Cart Popup Body Text Color: Define the text color inside the popup body

Cart Popup Border Radius: Simply set the corner rounding of the popup in the sequence top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left.

If we speak long term, it is quite worth it spending some time working on your popup styling because this is one of the most visible parts of the interaction from your customers perspective. Branding is everything and if you match the pop-up to the store’s colour scheme, it makes the feature feel like a natural part of your store.

Button Alignment and Final Touches

There is one last setting that sits in the Buttons General Settings section and it controls the alignment of both the save and share cart buttons on the cart page. You can set them to align left, center, or right depending on where they fit best within your clear cart WooCommerce page layout. It is a small detail but getting the alignment right makes the cart page look properly put together rather than having buttons sitting in awkward positions relative to the rest of the content.

Conclusion

Giving customers the ability to save and share their WooCommerce cart is one of those features that works quietly in the background but adds real value to how people interact with your store. Saved carts bring customers back on their own terms without any follow-up required from your side, and shared carts put your products in front of new audiences through genuine personal recommendations.

Paired with the clear cart WooCommerce and session management tools already in the plugin, you end up with a cart experience that is more flexible, more customer-friendly, and more useful for your store's growth than what you get out of the box with WooCommerce alone.

Last Updated in July 2026