What is a cart permalink?
A cart permalink takes your customers directly to the first page of the checkout screen with items pre-loaded into their cart.
Have you ever wanted to link directly to the Shopify checkout screen with a specific cart already loaded with items? Have you ever wanted to put a "Buy it now" button in blogs and newsletters? Have you ever wanted to provide an easy reorder link to customers? Cart permalinks are the answer.
This is what a cart permalink looks like:
http://your-store.myshopify.com/cart/70881412:1,70881382:1
Where 70881412 is the product variant's unique ID and 1 is the quantity.
So the format of the url is:
http://yourstore.com/cart/#{variant_id}:#{quantity}(,...)
Appending cart and checkout parameters
You can pre-fill any of the checkout fields, simply by appending checkout query parameters in the cart permalink URL. When appending checkout query parameters, use the following URL format:
/cart/{variant_id}:{quantity}?checkout[email]=somebody@store.com&checkout[shipping_address][city]=thisismyhometown
where [email] represents any of the possible checkout fields in the form, and [shipping_address][city] shows how you can use nesting to populate child fields.
List of supported checkout parameters
You can pre-fill any of the following query parameters:
| Checkout parameter | Description |
checkout[email] |
Email of the customer making the checkout. |
checkout[shipping_address][first_name] |
Address [first_name]. |
checkout[shipping_address][last_name] |
Address [last_name]. |
checkout[shipping_address][address1] |
Address [address1]. |
checkout[shipping_address][address2] |
Address [address2]. |
checkout[shipping_address][city] |
Address [city]. |
checkout[shipping_address][zip] |
Address [zip]. |
Applying a discount
You can directly apply a discount to a cart permalink.
The following format applies the discount:
/cart/{variant_id}:{quantity}?discount=test
where test is the string value of a discount code.
Note: Notes, cart attributes, and tracking parameters can be added as query parameters as usual. If customer accounts are enabled on your website, and the user is not logged in, they will see the login page before reaching the checkout.
Adding a "Buy this" link to a blog post
- From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Blog Posts.
- On the Blog posts page, either add a new blog post or click on an existing blog post.
- In the Rich Text Editor, under the "Content" header, click the HTML button:
- Add your link. It should look something like this:
<p><a href="http://your-store.com/cart/70881412:1">Buy this item</a></p>
- Save your changes and test it out in your store.
Adding a "Reorder" link
You can add a "reorder" link right in your theme's customers/order.liquid template for each line item in the order.
- From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
- Find the theme you want to edit, and then click Actions > Edit code.
- Under the Templates folder, locate and click on
customers/order.liquidto open it in the online code editor. Don't see the template? Create one by clicking the Add a new template link. - In the online code editor, paste the following piece of code where you would like your link to appear:
<a href="/cart/{{ line_item.variant_id }}:{{ line_item.quantity }}">Reorder this</a> - Click Save to confirm your changes.
Conversion tracking
Wish to add some tracking info to the URL, which will then show up on the order details page in your admin, when orders come in?
Use a cart note:
/cart/70881412:1,70881382:1?note=came-from-newsletter-2013-02-14
Or use a cart attribute (you can have several of those):
/cart/70881412:1,70881382:1?attributes[where-from]=came-from-newsletter-2013-02-14&attributes[some-other-key]=some-value
The cart note and cart attributes are shown on the order details page under Order Note.
Or use the 'ref' parameter:
/cart/70881412:1,70881382:1?ref=came-from-newsletter-2013-02-14
The ref value is shown as a referral code in the Conversion summary section on the order details page. Click View conversion details and then click View full sessions to view the session details page:
Sales attribution
To attribute an order to a sales channel or app, you can add an additional parameter to the permalink. You can view sales attributions in the Sales by Channel report, which shows the name of the channel or app that the customer used to place their order. Sales attributions also appear on the sidebar in your Shopify Home. You can specify a storefront access token in the cart permalink as shown in the following example:
/cart/70881412:1,70881382:1?access_token=#{access_token}
Can I let the customer edit quantities?
You can't. Quantities cannot be edited when the customer follows a cart permalink.
Finding a variant ID
Click here to learn how to find a variant ID from within your Shopify admin.
I've noticed there's a problem collecting referrer and landing page data with the order when Permalinks are used, does anyone have a workaround?
If you look at the XML or JSON for an order where the person went the "normal" route (adds to cart, then checks out), it looks like this:
As you can see, this order came from a Facebook post. They landed directly on the product page, added to cart, and checked out. This is all correct.
But if the user clicks a permalink (instead of adding to cart) the order XML looks like this:
The original referrer is dropped and replaced with the landing page, and the landing page is replaced with the permalink URL. This seems to be because of the redirect after the permalink. Our permalink is to /cart/variantid:qty then the user gets redirected to /checkout/etc...
If this is in any way confusing because I blocked out the domain and product, here's the rundown:
- User on Facebook visits domain.com/products/myproduct.
- User adds to cart and checks out.
- Order XML shows referring-site as facebook, and landing-site as domain.com/products/myproduct. This is all correct.
But when a Permalink is used, this happens:
- User on Facebook visits domain.com/products/myproduct.
- User clicks permalink to /cart/variantid:qty and checks out
- Order XML shows referring-site as domain.com/products/myproduct and landing-site as /cart/variantid:qty
Basically when you use a permalink, at the point where the permalink redirects the user from /cart/variantid:qty to /checkout, for some reason Shopify is dropping the referring-site and landing site values, then re-establishing them as if it were a brand new session -- thus making the referring-site domain.com/products/myproduct and the landing-site /cart/variantid:qty
It's happening consistently on every single permalink in our store, for every product. If the user checks out with a permalink, original referring-site and landing-site are lost, and replaced with the page they clicked the permalink from. I'm not sure what to do about it, because a lot of our landing pages use permalinks and it's really starting to affect the reporting.
Has anybody noticed that when you use a checkout page permalink the "cart" link at the top is still active? When clicked it just goes to a blank cart. I feel like this is a checkout bug right?
