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Setting up Smart Cart

Build a custom cart drawer that replaces your Shopify cart

Smart Cart is a fully customizable cart drawer that replaces your store's native Shopify cart. It renders on your storefront before checkout, and you build it from widgets - product recommendations, a free-shipping progress bar, add-ons like order protection, and more.
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Not the same as: Cart Control (edits the cart inside checkout) or the Checkout Upsell extension (shows inside checkout). Smart Cart is a storefront cart drawer, pre-checkout.
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Availability - how to get Smart Cart

Smart Cart isn't self-serve:

  • Your store must be on an active paid PDQ billing plan.

  • It can only be enabled by the PDQ team- there's no merchant toggle to turn it on.

👉 Contact your CSM or support@prettydamnquick.com to have it enabled. Once on, it appears under Engage → Smart Cart.
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One-time Shopify setup

  1. Enable the PDQ app embed in your Shopify theme.

  2. Set your cart type to "page" in theme settings.
    PDQ deploys the embed to your store; clicking the cart icon then opens your Smart Cart.

Create and build your Smart Cart

Go to Engage → Smart Cart and click + New Smart Cart. Each Smart Cart has two tabs:

Order & Management -where you build the drawer:

  1. General - set an Internal Name (required) and optional Internal Description (for your reference; customers don't see these).

  2. The drawer has three zones - Header, Body, Footer. Click + Add on a zone to add widgets.

  3. Reorder widgets by dragging the handle (⠿); toggle each widget on/off; edit (pencil) to configure it; delete (trash) to remove it.

Widgets you can add

  • Top Bar - a header strip.

  • Announcement Bar - a messaging banner (can add more than one).

  • Goals Progress Bar - cart-value goals with a progress bar (e.g. "Spend $5.99 more, get Free Shipping!"), optional countdown and product/coupon offer.

  • Cart Items - the list of items in the cart.

  • Upsell Items - product recommendations based on cart contents.

  • Digital Upsell - digital add-ons (protection, warranty, etc.).

  • Order Protection - a shipping-protection add-on (see Article 3).

  • Discount Codes - a coupon entry field.

  • Cart Subtotal - the subtotal display.

  • Checkout Area - the checkout button (single-instance).

Preview and publish

Use the Preview panel (and Preview in Shopify) to check the drawer, then set the status from Disabled to Live to publish. You can keep multiple Smart Carts and publish one.
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Related: Smart Cart global settings · Adding a standalone Smart Cart widget · How do I A/B test two checkouts?


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