Shopify Cart Drawer: Step-by-step setup [2025 Guide]

If you’ve ever added a product to your cart and seen a small panel slide out instead of a full cart page, you’ve used a cart drawer.

A Shopify cart drawer is a slide-out mini cart that lets shoppers review their items, see the total cost, and proceed to checkout, without leaving the page they’re on.

Merchants love it because it:

• Reduces cart abandonment by keeping users in flow

• Boosts average order value (AOV) with upsells and incentives

• Improves UX with faster, smoother checkout experiences

That’s why adding a cart drawer to your Shopify store can help improve your customer journey (and increase your conversion rate!). 

In this guide, we’ll walk through:

• How to set up a Shopify cart drawer

• How to customize it for conversions

• The best Shopify Cart Drawer apps

How to set up a Shopify cart drawer (step-by-step)

To learn how to set up your own custom Shopify Cart Drawer, here's a Cart Drawer tutorial:

Step 1: Connect Instant to your Shopify Theme

Install the Instant Section & Page Builder app, and follow the onboarding steps to get everything set up and connect your online store to Instant.

Step 2: Customize your cart design

Depending on your Shopify theme, you can build a very basic cart drawer in the theme editor and adjust basic settings (like colors, typography, and button style) to match your brand.

But with Instant, you can go much further. Instant’s visual canvas lets you customize every element:

• Layout and structure

• Animation style

• Colors, spacing, and border radius

• Header, footer, and CTA design

• Conversion elements

Everything is editable directly in the builder, with no code required.

Step 3: Add cart elements and functionality

With Instant’s Cart Drawer Feature, you can design advanced, on-brand cart drawers with built-in elements like:

• Product upsells and recommendations (boost AOV)

• Reward bars with dynamic thresholds (e.g. “Free shipping over $50”)

• Countdown timers to create urgency

• Add-ons like shipping protection

• Payment icons that pull dynamically from your Shopify store

Each element can be placed and styled visually, or you can start with a prebuilt template and adjust it to fit your brand.

Step 4: Test on mobile and desktop

Your cart drawer is a high-impact conversion surface, so it needs to look perfect everywhere. Preview your drawer on multiple devices and adjust padding, button size, and animations to ensure smooth interaction on mobile.

Step 5: Publish your cart

Once your cart design is ready in Instant, click Publish inside the builder, then select Set as main cart.

When you return to your Shopify storefront, your new cart drawer will automatically open when shoppers add a product or click the cart icon in your header.

Cart Drawer customization ideas

Here are a few high-performing ways to make your cart work harder:

• Upsells & Cross-sells: Suggest relevant products or collections.

• Cart Add-ons: Offer extras like gift wrapping or shipping protection.

• Free-Shipping Progress Bar: Encourage higher order values.

• Countdown Timers: Add urgency for limited-time promotions.

• Trust Badges & Payment Icons: Build shopper confidence.

• Empty-State CTA: Help customers navigate to other product categories when their cart is empty.

All of these features are built into Instant Cart Drawer; no extra apps needed.

Best Slide Cart Apps for Shopify Stores in 2025

If your Shopify theme doesn’t include a cart drawer, or you want more design flexibility, these apps can help:

If you want full control over your cart design and analytics in one place, Instant is the best all-in-one option. You can design, publish, and track performance directly inside the builder,  no plugins required.

Track your cart performance

Instant goes beyond design with Cart Analytics, a feature in Instant that shows how shoppers interact with your cart in real time.

Get insights into:

• Cart revenue and add-on revenue

• Conversion rate

• Average order value

• Funnel performance (cart opened → checkout reached → checkout completed)

See where customers drop off, make changes, and improve your conversion rate with every iteration.

Build your own custom Shopify Cart Drawer

In 2025, cart drawers are more than a UX upgrade; they’re a conversion driver.

A well-designed, data-backed cart can lift your AOV, reduce abandonment, and make checkout feel effortless.

If you want complete creative control (and analytics to match), try building your cart with Instant Page Builder, the easiest way to design and optimize your Shopify store, from homepage to cart.

👉 Start designing your custom Cart Drawer with Instant