For years, Shopify has helped merchants of all sizes deliver the most reliable, highest-conversion checkout experience. For example, Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout, enables a four times faster checkout experience and an 11% higher conversion rate than other providers. The only problem: customizing checkout to meet merchant needs could be a slow and complicated process. But that's over now.
As a Shopify partner, our developers already have access to the new Shopify Checkout Extensibility, which allows us to build public and custom apps to creatively customize Shopify Checkout and Shop Pay for Plus merchants.
In this post, we'd like to introduce you to this new Shopify checkout extensibility so you can get an idea of how it can help you customize and optimize your checkout to get a big step ahead of your competition.
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What is the Shopify-Checkout-Extensibility?
After a customer adds products to your cart, they use Shopify Checkout to enter their customer, shipping, and payment information before placing the order.
Checkout is one of the most important points in the customer journey for a successful purchase. That's why Shopify developed the new Checkout Extensibility to give merchants a way to optimize and customize the checkout to their liking.
With Shopify Checkout Extensibility, Shopify partners, like us at Latori, can create apps for Shopify Plus merchants to add more functionality to the checkout that doesn't exist natively. In turn, merchants can then install these apps in their Shopify admin area to add unique elements like product offers, custom fields or banners, and more to their checkout. This creates a consistent experience for shoppers no matter where they checkout.
Reading tip: Learn how to use Shopify's new content management system and what new features are available here.
The previous method of customizing the checkout
In the past, functional and aesthetic checkout customizations for merchants were done directly in the checkout code by editing the checkout.liquid file. This was a direct intervention in the code, which was only possible for technically skilled users and also entailed risks - such as the store's ability to be updated. Sometimes, customization also required more time and longer deployment times. With Shopify Checkout Extensibility, this changes fundamentally. More about this in the next chapter.
Note: Please note that you are responsible for your Shopify checkout when you customize it. This also applies to updates from Shopify, for example, which you will need to implement and check manually after modifying your checkout. However, you always have the option to re-install the default checkout.liquid to return to the original Shopify checkout.
What are the benefits of Checkout Extensibility?
With the new Shopify Checkout Extensibility, it is no longer necessary to change the code to customize the checkout. Instead, it's easy to install third-party apps that allow you to customize your checkout in a variety of ways. Checkout Extensibility is designed to make apps secure, fast, upgradeable, and work seamlessly with Shop Pay.
This opens up many new possibilities for you as a merchant. Now let's take a look at what benefits the Shopify Checkout Extension has in store for you in detail:
1. Present your brand
In virtually every Shopify store, the look and feel of the checkout is more or less identical. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that it's not as perfectly aligned with your branding as the rest of your store. This switch from store to checkout can cause some dissonance with your customers and make it a little harder to build trust.
So this is where said Shopify checkout extensions come into play, allowing merchants to create a consistent checkout experience and customize the flow as they see fit. Here are just a few of the ways you can customize your checkout:
Change the look of your checkout in the branding section of the Checkout Editor, including logos, custom colors, and fonts.
Make advanced branding customizations to your checkout using the Checkout Branding API.
Create a consistent experience between your guest checkout and Shop Pay (any customizations you make will be applied to both).
Apps that extend Checkout automatically adopt your Checkout branding.
2. Edit the logic of your checkout flow via Shopify functions
In the past, if you wanted to make changes to the logic of your checkout, you had to do at least a little programming to do so, and yet the scope was still quite limited. Now, you can make changes in a number of ways that significantly increase checkout flexibility.
Shopify functions allow merchants to extend, replace, and modify Shopify's standard checkout logic. Elements like discount offers and shipping logic can be edited to fit specific offers. A use case for functions like these are tiered discount systems (e.g. "$10 off when you spend $50"; "$20 off when you spend $100", etc.).
You can also customize the billing logic of your store. So you can change when and how customers have to pay for orders. For example, you could introduce "buy now, pay later" or installment payment plans. You can also change the general flow and layout of your checkout pages. Whether you want to insert a page somewhere or introduce an upselling offer in the middle of the checkout process, you can do it all with Shopify Functions.
3. Collect detailed customer data
Behavioral data is worth its weight in gold for e-commerce merchants. The more you know about how your audience responds to different store features and products, the easier it is to design experiences that drive the most sales. With Shopify checkout extensions, collecting customer data at checkout will be easier than ever.
You'll be able to track various events like cart abandonments or conversions, and you can link third-party apps directly to this data. This could be useful for tailoring upselling offers to products that are least likely to experience cart abandonment, without compromising the security of customer data.
4. Optimize performance
Save time by securely managing pixels from a single location.
Reduce cart abandonment with actionable insights and analytics.
Grow your customer base by understanding customer behavior.
Achieve the highest possible return on ad spend (ROAS) while keeping your customers' privacy in mind.
Now that we know the benefits of Checkout Extensibility, let's review what tools can help you make adjustments in Checkout to achieve your potential goals.
Reading tip: When is it worth switching to Shopify Plus? We answer this question in this article.
Customization options with Shopify checkout extensibility
| What to use | Adjustment type | Use case examples |
|---|---|---|
| Checkout UI Extensions (For Shopify Plus merchants only) | Add custom UI or custom content to checkout. | Capture additional input from customers. Display a product offer before customers checkout. |
| Branding API (For Shopify Plus merchants only) | Change the design of the checkout. | Change colors in checkout to match your corporate design. Add rounded corners to the design of checkout form fields. |
| Shopify Functions (For all Shopify merchants) | Customize the backend business logic. | Create a new type of discount that will be offered in the shopping cart and at checkout. |
| Extension of the checkout after purchase (For all Shopify merchants) | Create a website that will be displayed after the purchase is completed. | After a customer places the order, but before he arrives at the order confirmation page, you can: show him a product offer. capture additional information. |
| Web Pixel Extension (For all Shopify merchants) | Track buyer behavior. | Collect buyer behavior data to measure marketing campaign performance and optimize your online store's sales funnel. |
Reading tip: What is brand building, why is it so important and how can you also successfully build your own brand? We reveal to you here.
Conclusion
If you've been looking for a customization option for your checkout for a while, or the previously mentioned examples have inspired you, now all doors are open with Shopify Checkout Extensions. This way, your customers can connect with your brand identity at every step of the customer journey. And that's not all: with the help of pixels, you can collect behavioral customer data for marketing, advertising, and analytics in the future.
Checkout Extensibility has only been around since October 2022, and since then our developers have been constantly educating themselves to be able to offer you their own checkout extensions in the future. Feel free to contact us and together we will find a solution to customize the checkout to your brand's needs!
Frequently asked questions about Shopify checkout extensibility
How can I customize my Shopify checkout?
To create a custom Shopify checkout, one way is to change the code directly. On the other hand, with the new Shopify Checkout Extensibility, you can now customize your checkout through various third-party apps.
What is Shopify checkout extensibility?
Shopify Checkout Extensibility allows you to customize your checkout in a variety of ways using third-party apps. You can change the way customers pay, the order in which your checkout pages are displayed, or even the discount logic of your store.
Who can use the Shopify checkout extensibility?
Unfortunately, Shopify checkout customization is a feature that is only available to Shopify Plus merchants.