A ThriveCart Review – Is This Shopping Cart Platform Worth Your Investment?

Carl Taylor | July 15, 2019

Your website needs a great shopping cart to ensure you maximise your conversion rate. Here, we look at ThriveCart and find out what it has to offer.

The quality of your website’s shopping cart is of the utmost importance.

Whenever somebody buys from your site, they’re placing their trust in you. They’re handing over very personal information, including financial details. Anything that damages that trust can lead to the customer deciding not to make a purchase.

A poor shopping cart is one of the first potential offenders in this situation. If your cart doesn’t look the part, it’s going to put people off. Most buyers have general expectations for what a cart should look like. Yours has to match or exceed those expectations to encourage conversions.

Don’t believe us?

On average, only 30% of the people who open a shopping cart end up making a purchase. The other 70% get put off for whatever reason.

That’s why it’s so important that you have a great cart. Unfortunately, many websites don’t have cart building functionality as standard in their content management systems.

However, there are many plugins and platforms that claim to offer amazing cart functionality.

ThriveCart is one of them. This article takes a closer look at what it has to offer so you can decide if it’s a good fit for your website.

What is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a SaaS platform that provides you with an array of cart creation tools for your website.

With ThriveCart, you get access to plenty of data that tells you just how effective your cart is. You can use it to create a host of offer types. Plus, it integrates with a variety of CRMs and payment gateways.

So far, it all sounds great.

It has thousands of users already thanks to these claims of being able to supercharge your sales strategy.

But does it deliver on all of the promises that it makes? Let’s examine some of the platform’s key features so you know what you’re getting if you install it.

Feature #1 – Access to Proven Templates

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when designing your shopping cart. In fact, relying on tried and tested techniques is usually the better option.

That’s something that ThriveCart excels at. The platform provides you with a wide range of templates, each of which they’ve tested extensively. You can select a template, edit it as needed, and have it live on your site in a matter of moments.

That ease of use is one of the key features here. It only takes a few clicks to load up a template and make adjustments to it. You then get to preview it and make it live in a couple more clicks.

That means you don’t need any coding experience to make the most of this feature.

Compatibility is also a key concern for many people. A plugin that only creates carts suitable for desktop users isn’t acceptable today. At least not when about a quarter of all online transactions take place on mobile devices.

Thankfully, ThriveCart accounts for this with their templates too. Each one’s designed to work on desktops and mobile devices. This responsive design also means that you don’t have to worry about juggling two different templates.

The only downside is that there isn’t a huge selection of templates at this point in time. However, the team behind the plugin work constantly to create new templates. As a result, ThriveCart’s only going to get better in this regard.

Automation Agency can help you to choose a theme and install it onto your website. Send a task to the Concierge service to find out more.

Feature #2 – Membership Site Functionality

Not everyone who sells online sells a physical product. In fact, many coaches sell memberships that provide their clients with access to exclusive content.

For example, you may have a membership site with several tiers of access.

This usually means that you have some sort of sales funnel in place for cross and upselling. After all, you want people to upgrade from basic to advanced memberships.

This is an area where ThriveCart excels. It’s very easy to build carts that integrate directly into your membership site funnels.

This is due to the range of offer types that you can create using the platform. For example, you may have different pages for opt-ins, trial memberships, and upgrades. With ThriveCart, you can easily create a shopping cart for each of those types of conversion. Plus, you can integrate the platform with your CRM so you can easily manage your different funnels.

You can also build cross-sells and upsells directly into the carts that you create.

There are a couple of caveats to this feature though. ThriveCart is a standalone platform. As a result, you may need a separate plugin to allow you to deliver the membership content to a buyer.

That’s something that Automation Agency can help you with too. With us, you can create as many carts as you need for your funnel. Plus, we can help you to integrate other required plugins that bring it all together.

Just send a task to our Concierge service.

Feature #3 – A Wide Range of Integrations

ThriveCart integrates with a wide range of CRM, email services, and payment platforms. This makes it really easy to create shopping carts that align with your current systems.

A small sample of these integrations include:

  • Stripe
  • PayPal
  • ActiveCampaign
  • InfusionSoft
  • Ontraport
  • iPhone
  • Android

This makes ThriveCart one of the most versatile cart creators available. As mentioned above, many may want to integrate the plugin to the CRM. The platform makes this easy and allows you to collect data that can inform your marketing decisions.

Feature #4 – Simple Split Testing

Everybody knows how important it is to split test landing pages and emails. Something as simple as a change of image or colour can have a huge impact on a user’s actions.

However, many stop short at split testing their shopping carts. Perhaps they see it as just another form and assume it doesn’t need optimising.

That’s not the case. It’s actually crucial that you split test your carts if you want to get above that average 30% conversion rate mentioned earlier.

The good news is that ThriveCart makes this really simple. You’re not going to have to create a bunch of different carts and campaigns to conduct split testing. Instead, you can easily create two carts for the same website and test them against each other.

ThriveCart delivers plenty of data to help you make a decision. You’ll see information including conversion rates, average spend, and much more.

And when you’re ready to settle on a cart design, it’s easy to make your choice and install it.

ThriveCart has all of this functionality built into the platform. That means you need no other plugins to conduct your split tests.

Feature #5 – Affiliate Management

An affiliate marketing strategy can help you to boost sales. However, you also have to manage your affiliates.

The typical strategy involves sending a small payment for each client that converts after clicking on an affiliate link.

You can build your affiliate strategy directly into ThriveCart. It offers a detailed dashboard that allows you to manage affiliates, payments, and rules related to your strategy.

It’s important to note that ThriveCart does not replace good invoicing software in this respect. Nor does it intend to.

However, it does allow you to make payments to affiliates, with the option of scheduling automated payments if needed. It also provides key data related to the campaign, which allows you to see the success rate of each affiliate.

The dashboard splits this information across five tabs and it’s all very clear and easy to access. You can even create tiers that allow you to create larger rewards for more successful affiliates.

Should You Install ThriveCart

If you have a membership site, ThriveCart is the perfect platform for you. It integrates into your funnel better than most. And the array of features and data it provides mean that it’s sure to help you to boost conversions.

That’s not to say it isn’t a good choice if you’re selling physical products. ThriveCart may have a fairly small selection of templates. However, each gets proven results and you can conduct easy split testing to optimise your cart.

Automation Agency can help you to install the plugin and make use of the features that best serve you. Just send a task to our Concierge Service to get started.

But what if you’re not a member of the service? Check in with our Right Fit Chatbot to find out if we can help you.

About the author 

Carl Taylor

Carl Taylor is the Founder & CEO of Automation Agency. For the past 10 years Carl has been building businesses and marketing them online through the use of Sales Funnels, Email Marketing Automation, Landing Pages, and Wordpress Websites. Carl is also a #1 author and highly sought after speaker and consultant whose work has impacted thousands of businesses across various industries worldwide.

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