What is cart pressure?
Cart pressure is the live concentration of purchase intent on a product, measured by how many shoppers are currently holding it in their carts. It is demand caught at the moment just before purchase — the build-up of intent around a product right now.
How is cart pressure measured?
From active carts: the count of shoppers with the product in their basket at this moment, and how that count is moving. A product with many active carts, especially a rising number, is under high cart pressure; one sitting in nobody’s basket has none. It is a present-tense signal, not a historical one.
Why is cart pressure useful?
Because it is one of the earliest honest indicators that a product is about to sell. Add-to-cart sits a step before purchase, so a concentration of carts often precedes a run of orders — useful both for messaging, reflecting real current interest back to shoppers, and for operations, spotting a product that may need stock attention before it sells through.
How is cart pressure different from a cart surge?
Cart pressure is the level — how much intent is concentrated on a product right now. A cart surge is the event — the moment that level rises sharply. Pressure is the standing state; the surge is the spike in it. A product can carry steady high cart pressure without ever triggering a surge, and a surge is what fires when pressure jumps.
See cart pressure in the platform
The demand intelligence layer tracks live cart concentration on every product, as it builds.