Shopping cart presence: live or sub page?

What do users prefer?

[adfree]

Would you advice to have the shopping cart content always visible and updating live or do you pledge for a sub page shopping cart that needs an additional click?

What are your pro's and con's?

[adfree]

anyone?

[hfwd]

Maybe it's just me, but what do you mean by "live" and "sub" pages?

[adfree]

Live: live updating at the products page, always visible.
Sub page: just link to the shopping cart where you have to click and only then see the content of the shopping cart.

[Essex_boy]

Sub page = new term for me.

i have only used sub pages but I list the postage cost for the customer that way they have all of the info to hand.

With the larger sites it is a nice feature to be able to see whats in the cart and to be given a running total.

I cant say that either approach would bother me to the point of dropping a cart and going else where.

[hfwd]

That's new to me too... It doesn't matter too much, I think.

Most carts have code snippets that you can paste onto your html/php pages to show content of cart + total price, so putting it "live" is pretty simple.