Welcome to Caddy. This guide takes about 5 minutes and gets you from installed to customized, then points you at the one feature that starts lifting your order value.
Here’s the first thing to know: Caddy is already running.
Caddy is live
The moment you activated the plugin, Caddy took over your cart. It replaced WooCommerce’s default mini-cart with its own side cart drawer. You don’t flip a switch or paste a shortcode. It’s already working.
Want to see it? Go to your store, open any product, and add it to the cart. The Caddy drawer slides in from the right with your item, quantity controls, and the checkout button. That’s your new cart.
A floating cart button also appears in the bottom-right corner of your store. Shoppers tap it to open the cart from any page.
If the drawer doesn’t appear, check two things. Caddy needs WooCommerce 7.0 or newer, WordPress 6.5 or newer, and PHP 7.4 or newer. And if another cart drawer plugin is active, deactivate it, because two cart drawers will conflict. Still stuck? Work through Troubleshooting Caddy and the list of known plugin and theme compatibility issues.
New to Caddy? Installing Caddy and Activating your license cover the basics in more detail.
Make it yours
Right now Caddy uses its default look. A few minutes and it matches your brand.
Most of the visual controls live in the WordPress Customizer. Open Appearance > Customize and find the Caddy section. Here’s what’s worth setting on day one:
- Colors. Match the cart background, buttons, and text to your brand. This is the change customers notice most.
- Cart icon. Pick the floating cart icon that fits your store.
- Window width. Set how wide the drawer opens. Narrow for a simple store, wider if you show recommendations.
Changes preview live, so you see each one before you save. For the full set of options, see Customizing colors and styles and How to change the cart icon. Want to hand-tune the details? Drop your own rules in with custom CSS.
One more, in a different spot. To set where the floating cart button sits, go to Caddy > Settings, open the Display Behavior section, and choose your bubble position. Prefer to place the cart yourself instead? You can hide the floating icon and add a cart link to your menu, or drop the Caddy Cart block anywhere on your site.
Let Caddy recommend the next product
Caddy can show related products right inside the cart, so shoppers add one more thing before they check out. You have three ways to feed those recommendations:
- Set them per product under the Linked Products tab on any product edit screen.
- Use your existing WooCommerce cross-sells or upsells.
- Let Caddy fall back to your best sellers automatically.
The controls live under Caddy > Settings > Product Recommendations. For the full walkthrough, see Configuring product recommendations.
Turn on the one feature that pays for itself
This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that matters most.
The Rewards Meter (a Pro feature) shows shoppers a progress bar toward a reward, then nudges them to add more to reach it. Set it to your free shipping threshold and watch smaller carts climb to clear the bar.
Go to Caddy > Settings and scroll to the Rewards Meter section. Set your first threshold to your free shipping number, write the progress message, and save. Start with one tier. You can stack up to three later: free shipping, a free gift, and a cart discount. For the full walkthrough, see Setting up the multi-tier rewards meter.
On the free version of Caddy, this is a single-threshold free shipping bar instead. See How to configure the free shipping meter.
If you set up one thing this week, make it this.
Go deeper
You’re set. Caddy’s live, it’s on brand, and it’s nudging order value up. When you’re ready for more, here’s what’s worth your time:
- Cart workflows respond to what a shopper does, popping offers, recommendations, or coupons inside the cart automatically.
- The analytics dashboard (under Caddy > Dashboard) shows what your cart is actually doing, so you stop guessing. You can also track individual customer carts.
- Add an announcement bar to the top of the cart, or feature one-click coupon offers inside it.
- Turn on save for later so shoppers keep items for next time, and if you sell subscriptions, offer in-cart subscription upgrades.
Building something custom? Caddy has a REST API, PHP filters, and cart screen action hooks for developers.
When you need a hand
Stuck on something? Browse the rest of the Caddy docs, or reply to any email from us. A real person reads it.
That’s it. Go add a product and watch your new cart slide in.