The folks over at Vancouver’s Elastic Path (who employ Canuck uber-fan Dave) have compiled a big page of 111 shopping cart icons from ecommerce sites:
“Buy Now†may be a stronger call to action than “Add to Cartâ€Â, but may subtly suggest the user is finished shopping or is making a commitment to purchase without time to review the order. The beauty of “Add to Cart†is that it is non-committal and assumes the user is still looking around.
As I observed on the associated Digg page, it’s interesting that so many of the buttons refer to shopping carts, and so few refer to baskets. After all, I’d imagine most online transactions are for one to three items that would fit in a basket. Plus, of course, people who shop with baskets are cool urbanites, while shopping carts suggest suburban normality. I know why they went with ‘shopping cart’–it’s a more common metaphor–but it’s still noteworthy.
Two other notes: I pity the poor bastard who laid that page out. And for the uninitiated, this post’s title refers to a venerable meme.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I’m always leery of the Buy Now button as it feels so final, that even though I know better, I won’t have a chance to shop more or back out.
I suspect that part of the motivation behind ‘cart’ over ‘basket’ is due to precious pixel space. Cool collection, though – thanks for posting it.
If you found the “add to cart” buttons collection interesting, you will definitely find the “Checkout Buttons” useful also. You can see the list on the Checkout Buttons page, as long with some interesting statistics about the checkout buttons.
Cheers,
Traian