How to manually create an "Added to Cart" event for Shopify

You will learn

Learn how to manually create an Added to Cart event for Shopify to track when a customer adds an item to their cart, which you can use to trigger an abandoned cart flow. 

Added to Cart differs from Klaviyo’s Checkout Started event. Checkout Started triggers after a customer adds item(s) to their cart, enters their email during the checkout process, and continues to checkout. This happens further down the funnel, whereas Added to Cart triggers as soon as a customer adds an item to their cart. 

Before you begin

• Read our article Getting started with Shopify for step-by-step instructions on integrating before continuing with this article.
• Make sure you already have Klaviyo onsite tracking enabled (including Viewed Product tracking) in order for the Added to Cart event to function properly.
• Please note that the Added to Cart event only tracks users previously cookied by Klaviyo.

Create the “Added to Cart” event

There are 3 steps to creating the Added to Cart event: 

1. Choose where to place the code snippet
2. Add the snippet to your store
3. Test the code snippet

Where should I paste the snippet?

Make sure to paste the snippet in both your default product page, and in any other product pages you may have.

If your store has custom liquid blocks, you should use one for the snippet 

1. In Shopify, navigate to Online Store > Themes.
2. Find your theme and click Customize.
3. At the top of the page, click the Home page dropdown.
4. Select Products > Default product to be brought to your default product page.
5. Click Add section in the left sidebar and then select Custom Liquid.
6. Paste the provided snippet in the box.
7. Click Save in the upper right.
8. In the left sidebar, your new Custom Liquid block for Added to Cart should automatically appear below the other sections on the page.
   • If your Added to Cart block needs to be moved, hover over the block and click the 6 dots to drag it below your other sections
     
     

If your store does not have custom liquid blocks, you should place the snippet in your theme.liquid file

1. In Shopify, navigate to Online Store > Themes.
2. Find your theme and click Customize.
3. Click the three dots at the top and select Edit code.
4. Open the theme.liquid file.
5. Paste the provided snippet after all other code, before the closing </body> tag.
   
6. Above the snippet, add the following opening tag: {% if product %}
   
7. Directly after the snippet, add the following closing tag: {% endif %}
8. Your file should look like this:
   
9. Click Save.

Add the snippet to your site

The following Added to Cart snippet should work for most Shopify stores.

Add the snippet below to your Shopify store in the location you determined above.

<script>
  window.addEventListener('load', function() {
  var _learnq = window._learnq || [];
  function addedToCart() {
   fetch(`${window.location.origin}/cart.js`)
   .then(res => res.clone().json().then(data => {
    var cart = {
      total_price: data.total_price/100,
      $value: data.total_price/100,
      total_discount: data.total_discount,
      original_total_price: data.original_total_price/100,
      items: data.items
    }
    if (item !== 'undefined') {
      cart = Object.assign(cart, item)
    }
    if (klAjax) {
       _learnq.push(['track', 'Added to Cart', cart]);
       klAjax = false;
      }
   }))
  };
  (function (ns, fetch) {
    ns.fetch = function() {
      const response = fetch.apply(this, arguments);
      response.then(res => {
        if (`${window.location.origin}/cart/add.js`
          .includes(res.url) && res.url !== '') {
              addedToCart()
        }
      });
      return response
     }
  }(window, window.fetch));
  var klAjax = true;
  var atcButtons = document.querySelectorAll("form[action*='/cart/add'] button[type='submit']");
  for (var i = 0; i < atcButtons.length; i++) { 
    atcButtons[i].addEventListener("click", function() {
      if (klAjax) {
        _learnq.push(['track', 'Added to Cart', item]);
        klAjax = false;
      }
    })
  }
  });
</script>

When you're done, test the event using the directions in the next section.

Test your "Added to Cart" event

It's important to note that Klaviyo only tracks "known browsers," or those who've been cookied (via clicking through an email, filling out a form, etc). For this reason, Added to Cart events may not start showing up in your account as quickly as you expect. To learn more about more about who Klaviyo tracks, head to our article about onsite tracking. 

In order to test your Added to Cart event, you'll need to manually cookie your email address. Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your website.
2. On your homepage, add the following to the end of the URL, replacing testing.email@gmail.com with your email address:
   ?utm_email=testing.email@gmail.com
   
   
3. Reload the page.
4. Navigate to a product page on your site and click your Add to Cart button.
5. Search in Klaviyo for your email address.
   

You should see that a Klaviyo profile has been created for you (if one didn't exist already) and that this Added to Cart event has been tracked on your activity feed.

Having trouble tracking Added to Cart with the given snippet?

If you are having trouble tracking Added to Cart with the given snippet, you can try the 2 additional snippets below, which we'll refer to as Snippet 2 and Snippet 3. Before testing a new snippet, make sure to first remove the one that didn't work.

Determine which backup snippet to try

Does your store use a button ID to define the Add to Cart button? If the answer is yes, ‌try Snippet 2. If your Add to Cart button is instead defined by class notation, you should use Snippet 3. Here's how to find out if your store uses a button ID or class notation:

1. 1. Open up one of your site’s product pages. 
   2. Right-click the "Add to Cart" button, and select Inspect.
   3. The console will open, showing the source code of your "Add to Cart" button in the console’s Elements tab.
   4. In the Elements tab, your code may look something like this:
      
   5. Notice that this "Add to Cart" button does not have a button ID (which would include something like id = "button_ID_name"); instead, it is referenced by a class notation (class= "btn product-form_cart-submit btn–secondary-accent").

Snippet 2

If your Add to Cart button is defined by a button ID, add the snippet below to your Shopify store in the location you determined in the "Where should I place the snippet?" section, along with any needed tags.

<script type="text/javascript">
var _learnq = _learnq || [];
	document.getElementById("AddToCart").addEventListener('click',function (){
 		_learnq.push(['track', 'Added to Cart', item]);
	});
</script>

This snippet will likely need to be modified, because the Add to Cart variable in the snippet needs to match the button ID used on your site.

The Add to Cart variable, whose default name is AddToCart, is highlighted within the snippet below:

Checking the ID of the button requires the same steps as checking for the presence of a button ID on your site: 

1. Open up one of your site’s product pages.
2. Right-click your "Add to Cart" button and select Inspect.
3. The console will open, showing the source code of your "Add to Cart" button. The following image shows the ID of the "Add to Cart" button highlighted in the console.
   
   The ID of the button on the page shown here (addToCart-product-template) is different from the variable in the default snippet (AddToCart). 
4. If they don’t match, modify the snippet to match the ID of your button. Our example’s modified snippet looks like this:
   

Snippet 3

If your Add to Cart button is defined by class notation, add the snippet below to your Shopify store in the location that you determined in the "Where should I place the snippet?" section, along with any needed tags.

<script type="text/javascript">
var _learnq = _learnq || [];
  var classname = document.getElementsByClassName("add-to-cart");
var addToCart = function() {
_learnq.push(['track', 'Added to Cart', item]);
}; for (var i = 0; i < classname.length; i++) {
classname[i].addEventListener('click', addToCart, false);
}
</script>

This snippet will likely need to be modified, because the Add to Cart variable in the snippet needs to match the class used on your site.

1. Open up one of your site’s product pages.
2. Right-click your "Add to Cart" button and select Inspect.
3. The console will open, showing the source code of your "Add to Cart" button. The following image shows the class of the "Add to Cart" button highlighted in the console.
   
4. Compare your button code in between the quotations, highlighted in the above example, with the contents in between the parentheses after getElementsByClassName in the code snippet above. For example, the class listed in the screenshot is btn product-form_cart-submit btn--secondary-accent and the variable listed in the snippet is add-to-cart.
5. If they don’t match, modify the snippet to match the class of your button. Our example’s modified snippet looks like this:
   

If you are encountering problems tracking Added to Cart after trying these different options, it could be due to an issue with identifying the Added to Cart button. In this case, please contact Klaviyo support.

Next step: Enable the abandoned “Added to Cart” flow

The default Klaviyo abandoned cart flow is triggered by the Checkout Started event, whereas the Added to Cart abandoned cart flow targets more casual shoppers who have yet to start checkout.

To enable this flow, we recommend using the pre-built flow available in Klaviyo's flow library:

1. Navigate to Klaviyo’s flow library.
2. Click into the "Prevent lost sales" goal section.
3. Select an Added to Cart Trigger, Abandoned Cart Reminder flow. There are two options: email only, or email and SMS.
   
4. If you created the Added to Cart event, this flow will be ready to go with all the recommended filters and dynamic email content ready to power personalized cart followup messaging.

Are you using Amazon Buy with Prime?

If you're using Buy with Prime to power payment and fulfillment for any of the products on your store, you should:

• Integrate Buy with Prime with Klaviyo to bring Buy with Prime data into your Klaviyo account.
• For your abandoned "Added to Cart" flow, add the following flow filters to exclude customers who started checkouts or made purchases via Buy with Prime from receiving incorrect messaging:
  
  • Started Checkout (Buy with Prime) zero times since starting this flow AND
  • Placed Order (Buy with Prime) zero times since starting this flow.

Outcome 

You have now created and tested a Shopify Added to Cart event, and enabled an abandoned Added to Cart flow. 

Additional resources

• Getting started with the abandoned cart flow
• Shopify data reference
• Troubleshooting your Shopify integration