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I think it's likely that a few years down the road: purchasing something online will be more like clicking a "like" or "follow" button, and less akin to a shopp

I think it's likely that a few years down the road: purchasing something online will be more like clicking a "like" or "follow" button, and less akin to a shopping cart. There are some sites experimenting with this kind of idea already. But those changes are likely to gain traction in parallel with e-wallets. Once users are used to having an ephemeral payment device attached to their online identities, it will be simple to hook into those payment devices without needing users to create a separate account on your site, add their payment info, or add items to a shopping cart. Little by little, we'll get there.

Alupis 12y ago
Unless you're buying single items, it's not very practical to not have a shopping cart. Sometimes you need to add things to the cart, several things, then review them before the final checkout. Also, from a merchant standpoint, I'd rather have a single order with multiple line items instead of multiple orders of single line items for the same person. Sure, we can try to guess the user's intention and attempt to concatenate orders together to save both the customer and ourselves on shipping as well as warehouse labor, but this becomes a significant burden (of which would get passed to the customer in the form of increased costs). Add items to cart --> review cart for proper quantities and everything you want --> checkout. It's a pretty natural flow as it is.