Is Shopping Cart a good pratice (or not)?

I am designing a website (RWD) for a Telecom company and I was wondering whether you could provide with some rationales or papers for:

  • Having a shopping cart/basket (drop-down shopping cart icon like Amazon for example)?

  • What would be the benefits for the users? And from a technical point of view as well?

  • And for not having a shopping cart? - Product(s) could be shown before checking-out

  • What would be the best practice(s) for having or not having a shopping cart?

I could start the list by saying a shopping cart is needed if users are enabled to buy multiple products. It will allow the users to reduce their cognitive loads and don't store in memory products they bought.

Yes in that case I mean an overlay like Amazon - They use a dropdown. Then if you decide to see the product breakdowns, you have to click a 'view shopping basket' button and you will land to a separate page with all the product details ('Pre-Checkout' page).

My question is about finding rationale(s) for having (or not having) this shopping cart overlay feature in a website?

I am not against having an overlay shopping cart nor having nothing, however We could argue that if users buy only one product why would need a shopping cart? Shouldn't it be better to go to the checkout straight away?

The shopping makes sense in a supermarket, you would need something (shopping cart) to put the items you wish to buy later, you can't carry too much products on your own. This logic to me doesn't seem to make sense for a website (digital channel).

I was arguing about the fact of having an overlay shopping providing 2 rationales:

  • You need a shopping cart if users buy more than 1 product so that they can still browse the website and are not 'forced' to remember what they wish to buy (or update product details) - Shopping cart is a 'cognitive crutch'

  • You need shopping cart to create a single quote (query) for multiple products sent to the DB rather than creating quotes (queries) for each products you wish to buy - DB cost ; Data management issues etc..

I would like to find rationales or pros/cons for these approaches (overlay shopping cart or not?) If not, what would be the best approach? Separate page like 'Look at what is your current basket?' (pre-checkout)?

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