Creating a Shopify custom checkout with Shopify Functions for a better customer experience

If your checkout page is underperforming, you’ll have to get creative to improve conversion rates and grow your revenue.

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There are a lot of elements that go into how well your checkout performs. The visuals, content, forms, functionality, and accessibility all contribute to the overall experience that customers have, which can lead to more cart abandonment than you can afford.

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If you’ve upgraded to Checkout Extensibility, you have access to Shopify Functions and checkout extensions that enable fast and simple customizations that help you build a unique shopping experience for your customers.

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Keep reading to learn the why, how, and what of custom checkout solutions with Shopify Functions.

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Why you should use Shopify Functions to customize your checkout page

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Shopify Functions are your way of interacting with the data that’s a part of your checkout process and page so that you can customize it for an improved user experience. 

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While this information was previously locked, the introduction of Checkout Extensibility created the framework for app-based interaction with critical checkout data that didn’t put the entire checkout in danger of a coding error.

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You can access customer information, cart contents, cart totals, and many other data points, using them to create unique checkout functionality with custom logic applied to the steps of checkout.

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Overall, the goal of Shopify Functions is to let you custom-tailor every part of the checkout process alongside Checkout Extensibility’s Shopify checkout extensions.

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How to use Shopify Functions

Shopify Functions are app-based tools that anyone can install in any shop. They interact with and manipulate Shopify-based information, so they’ll function regardless of your pricing, products, checkout process, or any other factor. 

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You can simply find what functionality you want and then install the app to access its features without writing a line of code. The interface will also apply directly within the Shopify settings for each feature, allowing you to easily integrate them into the various elements of your checkout process.

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7 checkout customizations made possible with Shopify Functions and checkout extensions

Shopify Functions apps and Checkout Extensibility’s checkout extensions work together seamlessly to let you create checkouts that look, feel, and perform to your specifications.

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Here are seven different ways you can put this functionality to work in your store to improve the checkout experience and lower abandoned carts.

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Custom discounts

Discounts have always been a major element of sales. Everyone likes to save some money, so offering discounts in your store is an effective strategy for increasing sales.

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However, the basic discount functionality provided by Shopify can be a bit lacking, limiting your creativity and sales strategies to flat discounts.

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With Shopify Functions, you’re able to offer a wider range of discount types to your customers. By accessing information like the contents of the cart, the number of items purchased, and the total of the purchase, you can incentivize customers to sell more by applying discounts to specific situations.

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For example, you could create a promotion that gives tiered discounts of $10 off of a $20 purchase, $120 off of a $50 purchase, and $30 off of a $100 purchase. Or, you could set a bulk discount for purchases including four or more products as part of a bundling offer. 

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Branding customization

“Look good, feel good” applies to your checkout as well.

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Branding helps to create a more personal and trustworthy experience with your customers. A bland, default Shopify checkout page would be a red flag for most people who are considering spending money on your store, so sprucing things up with some branding can be helpful for securing more sales.

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Using checkout extensions, you’re able to edit the look of most elements of your checkout page. Fonts, colors, styling, banners, and logos are all changeable so that you can maintain your branding from your site throughout checkout. The branding API also enables multiple checkout profiles so that you can test different designs to see what works best.

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Location-specific shipping and payment methods

If you’re a local business, you might have different shipping and payment option needs than an online business.

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Location-specific customizations for these two elements are a significant benefit of Shopify Functions because you are able to offer different options like local delivery or cash payment to only those within a specific area. This prevents you from having to cancel orders using these options for invalid purchases while retaining the convenience for local customers it applies to.

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Adding custom fields

Sometimes, you need a little bit more information to complete an order than Shopify’s default checkout fields offer.

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Whether you need to add gift instructions, notes from the customer, delivery instructions, or any other information for customers to provide at checkout, Shopify Functions lets you create custom fields for it.

You can also edit or remove fields as needed, such as physical address information for digital orders.

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Checkout validation

Checkout validation is your way of controlling who is able to complete checkout in your store to help limit security risks, avoid undeliverable orders, and ensure everyone gets a fair shot at buying your products. 

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You can accomplish this by accessing customer data and cart contents and checking them against your custom criteria to allow checkout to continue and orders to be placed. 

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Uses include limiting how much new customers can spend in a single order at your store, limiting certain locations from placing purchases, limiting the number of products someone can buy at once, and more.

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Use Checkout Extensions Plus to build a custom checkout with Shopify Functions

It’s crucial that you customize your Shopify checkout experience, but it can be difficult to figure out how to do it on your own.

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With Checkout Extensions Plus, you’ve got all of the tools you need in a single app that makes it easy to change the look, feel, and function of your site from one place. Customize checkout fields, add elements to your page, style any element, and access backend data to build a unique customer experience that improves conversion rates.

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Checkout Extensions Plus comes with a free 7-day trial, so give it a try today.

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