 | Episode Cheat Sheet |
EP664
21 SEP 2026
62 MIN LISTEN
Sylvie Wilson
Co-founder, Unicorn Cart
| Brought to you by |   |
THE TL;DR
Unicorn Cart swaps the standard Shopify cart for a slide-out drawer. It now runs on 400+ stores across Australia, NZ, the UK, Europe and the US.
Sylvie and her husband James built it for their own fashion brand's Black Friday gift with purchase in 2023. They sold the brand to run it full time.
The cart is the last page a shopper sees before paying. It's also the page most stores set up once and never revisit.
Every number in this episode came from an A/B test. Sylvie's advice is to run your own.
| Watch the Full Episode |
| From Bushy |
The cart is the bridge between selecting and transacting, and most of us are scared to mess with it. You don't want to get in the way of the checkout. For a podcast with the cart at the core of our brand, we'd never done a deep dive on it, so I asked Unicorn Cart's co-founder Sylvie Wilson to help us give it the attention it deserves. It's jam-packed, so here's the cheat sheet.
CHEERS, BUSHY
P.S. Sylvie has given ATC listeners 15% off the Unicorn Plus plan for life (bundles, A/B testing and advanced analytics). Use code ATCPlus15 at unicornboost.app.
| 01 Skip To The Good Bits |
Tap any time code anywhere in this cheat sheet and the episode opens on YouTube at that exact moment.
| Cart drawer or cart page, and why it matters | 5:20 |
| The Black Friday gift that started Unicorn Cart | 6:36 |
| Setting up one cart for both AOV and conversion | 16:08 |
| What makes a gift people actually want | 22:35 |
| Free shipping thresholds and the profit check | 28:31 |
| Targeting the cart by spend and by market | 34:57 |
| Cart UX: checkout buttons, product detail and cross-sells | 38:40 |
| Abandonment, discounts and free-ship Fridays | 44:46 |
“So the cart is like very valuable real estate. It is the billboard that people are neglecting.”
SYLVIE WILSON | Unicorn Cart
| 02 The Big Lesson |
THE GOLDEN RULES OF THE CART
Around 70% of carts are abandoned (Baymard's meta-average is 70.22%), so the cart is where most of your paid-for intent disappears. Sylvie sees what works across 400+ of them. Three rules kept coming up.
RULE 01 21:54
Put the offer where the decision gets made
It's easy to launch a new offer on the homepage, the landing page and the PDP, then forget the cart. On mobile, the slide cart takes over the screen at the exact moment someone decides to buy so that's where the offer should be biggest.
Get your offer front and centre, big and bold so that people know that is available so that they decide to buy.
RULE 02 24:45
Once they've decided, stop asking them to decide
A free gift with ten options turns a final decision into mental gymnastics right before checkout. Give one gift. Two or three at most. Don't make them think!
It's the thing I'm getting for free. I need to make sure it's the one I really want. What do I want? You don't want to have that moment.
RULE 03 27:08
Test the threshold, don't guess it
Thresholds don't always follow logic. A beauty brand tested its free gift at $99 against its usual $120, and the $99 cart came back with a 64% higher AOV because the target felt reachable.
When you find that sweet spot, it might change again.
Then check the winner against your margin, not just the metric that moved. Sylvie's test for any threshold is very logical - it might get you more sales but did it make you any more money? Judge cart tests on revenue per visit and profit. Then, put the next test in the calendar before you celebrate this one. Don't neglect the cart!
23.7%
Higher cart conversion when a gift with purchase was live across a year of Unicorn Cart data.
| 03 Guess The Winner |
Sylvie brought her own A/B test data to this one. And this test surprised me.
A tea brand tested free shipping at $140 against $160. Which made more money per visit?
| 04 Steal These Tactics |
1
Tie any countdown to a real end date like day six of a seven-day sale, and cap gifts by quantity instead of running a 15-minute clock. Australia's unfair trading laws name misleading countdown timers from 1 July 2027. 20:38
2
Make the free gift a travel-size version of your bestseller. Something people already want that's light enough to keep your postage band. 23:03
3
Swap "You may also like" for "Complete the set" and give cross-sell buttons a different style to checkout so it's clear what's already in the cart. 43:43
4
Offer returns protection on the checkout button: a maternity brand charging $4 for cover instead of $12 customer-paid returns lifted cart conversion 8%. 51:09
5
Show each market the shipping offer it actually gets, so NZ shoppers never see "free shipping unlocked" on an Australia-only deal. 52:07
| 05 The Five-Minute Cart Audit |
Grab your phone, add something to your own cart and check:
Does the checkout button stay on screen as you scroll?
Could a stranger explain your offer from a glance?
Are cross-sells clearly separate from what's already in the cart?
Can you see the size and colour you picked?
Are there two express checkout buttons or fewer?
Does a Kiwi or US shopper see the shipping offer they actually get?
Fail two and you know what's on this week's to-do list.
| 06 The Stack |
Sylvie and James's slide-out Shopify cart. Every offer is scoped to a single cart, so brands can target by market, customer or spend and A/B test it.
Shopify's free app for setting complementary products by hand. It's what most Unicorn brands use to feed cart cross-sells.
Returns platform behind the Checkout+ button, where shoppers add returns protection for a small fee. The maternity brand test ran on it.
Shopify's express checkout, which it always loads first. Sylvie's brands cap express buttons in the cart at two.
| 07 If This One Landed |
EP535
Free Returns Are Dying. Delivery Is Getting Cheaper. Shippit's 2025 Data with Rob Hango-Zada
A $20 move on a free shipping threshold can push conversion and basket size in opposite directions. Rob Hango-Zada brings the data on where Australian thresholds sit now and why free returns have all but gone.
EP358
Unlocking Conversion Rate Optimization with Conversion Kings
If the answer to every cart question is "test it", this is how to build the habit. Matthew Pezzimenti on why experienced CRO people stop predicting results and start splitting new and returning customers.
EP392
Profitable Nudges: A Guide to Behavioural Economics with Sonia Friedrich
Decision fatigue at the cart is a behaviour problem before it's a design one. Sonia Friedrich runs friction audits and explains the $300 million button.
| Pass It On |
Episode Cheat Sheets are built to be forwarded. If someone in your world hasn't touched their cart since launch, send them this one. If a colleague sent you this, subscribe for future Cheat Sheets here.
| Continue the Conversation |
Would you drop your free gift threshold below your AOV to test it, or does that feel like handing away margin? Jump into the ATC Community to compare notes.
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