Cart Items

Used for:

•  Message Content
•  Building an Audience

Cart Items Overview

Cart items consist of data about the items that were placed in a cart from a visitor on your website. They are stored with each contact in the contacts collection along with contact attributes and list membership. Cart items are normally passed using the JavaScript listeners cartitem method on your website, but they can also be passed using the cartitems API call. Regardless of the method used, you are able to pass certain info about the cart item such as productID, sku, category, image urls, etc.

Cart times can be used to build audiences as well as personalize message content. For example, you could create an audience of contacts with items in their cart from the shirt category where the total value is greater than $40. Then you could use Smarty to display items from the cart in a message.

Example audience rule using cart items:

Example message content displaying cart items:

Learn about creating an abandon cart automated message.

How Cart Items Are Stored

Cart item data is stored as a JSON object in the contact record. Below is an example of a contact record containing the cart item object. We have highlighted the cart item object for easier visualization.

[{
	"channels": {
		"email": {
			"address": "fredgarvin@example.com",
			"subscribeStatus": "subscribed",
			"unsubscribedAt": ""
		}
	},
	"gender": "Male",
	"last-name": "Fred",
	"first-name": "Garvin",
	"cart": {
		"cartitems": [{
			"productID": "About Last Night",
			"sku": "26616383623",
			"category": "shirts",
			"name": "Back Off Polo",
			"qty": 2,
			"description": "Robert Graham - Back Off Polo Your style goes around and around! Classic styling Clean lines Brand mark logo on center 50% 50% mix Washable Imported. Measurements: Length: 10 Product measurements were taken using size MD. Please note that measurements may vary by size.",
			"itemPrice": 98,
			"url": "https://cordialthreads.myshopify.com/?exitintent",
			"images": [
				"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1070/1848/products/3705707-p-MULTIVIEW.jpg?v=1470290687"
			],
			"amount": 98
		}],
		"totalAmount": 98,
		"lm": "2018-03-28T18:13:06+0000"
	},
	"_id": "58d2fc99ac0c8117814d4e78",
	"lastModified": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000",
	"createdAt": "2017-03-22T22:37:13+0000"
}]

The above example shows the contact record containing the cartitems object. Note how the cart item contains the required fields of productID, sku, category and name, along with the optional fields of description, price, url and images. Amount totals are calculated automatically.

Learn more about the cart item schema and parameters in the API documentation.

How Cart Items Are Created

Cart item data is created by either JavaScript listeners on a website or via an API call.

• Learn more about the cartitem JavaScript method.
• Learn more about the cart API call.

How to View Cart Items

Cart item data is viewable in the API or by rendering cart items in a message using Smarty.

To view cart item data in the API, use the GET /contacts or GET /contacts/{primary_key} API calls.

To render cart item data in a message you could use Smarty and the JSON pretty print function.

The following Smarty will render cart items (in JSON format) within a message (if the contact being previewed has items in their cart):

<pre>
{$JSON_PRETTY_PRINT = 128}
{json_encode($contact.cart.cartitems, $JSON_PRETTY_PRINT)}
</pre>

How Cart Items Are Used in Message Content

With Smarty, you can render cart items in a message using the foreach statement. This is useful in an abandon cart campaign when you want to show contacts the items is currently in their cart.

Learn about creating an abandon cart automated message.

In the next article learn about events.