How to customize the checkout page in Shopify

by

Chris Rausch

|

April 19, 2023

Shopify’s checkout is well-designed, optimized, and effective - but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you want to provide the best customer checkout experience, you need a Shopify custom checkout.

Looking to grow revenue, increase average order values, and optimize your conversions? Keep reading to learn how to customize the checkout page in Shopify.

How to create a Shopify custom checkout

Shopify custom checkout customizations

When you’re ready to design your Shopify custom checkout, you have a few options to consider. The right choice will depend on your needs and your Shopify plan, but you’re likely to use a combination of these strategies to achieve the best results.

Theme editor

All Shopify stores use a theme that sets the structure and outline of your online store. The theme will change layouts, fonts, colors, elements you can use, and much more to be uniform and consistent throughout the site for the easiest use. This includes the checkout page.

By accessing your settings, going to checkout, and choosing to customize checkout, you’ll gain access to a variety of basic elements and styling that you can edit for your checkout. Things like logos, banners, colors, fonts, and button styling are all customizable with a limited interface that can allow you to make Shopify’s checkout a bit more branded.

But, the theme editor alone is not sufficient for more customizations - especially if you’re trying to optimize for conversions or increase your AOV.

Checkout Extensibility and Checkout.liquid

For Shopify Plus merchants, checkout.liquid and Checkout Extensibility provide the ability to make more in-depth changes to your site. They’re both frameworks for how your checkout page and process will look, with checkout.liquid being the older resource that is soon to be deprecated.

Checkout.liquid allows you to edit the code of your theme’s checkout page by going to your theme and choosing to edit the code. Here you can add elements, change styling, and much more - but you need to have coding experience to make sure you don’t break anything. So, it’s usually reserved for businesses with a developer who can work within the theme files to achieve your desired results.

Checkout Extensibility is the newer version of checkout that makes it easy to customize elements and the design of your checkout page using apps. Through native features and checkout extensions, you can easily implement just about any visual or functional change to your site that you need to. This could be something as simple as easily changing styling that the theme editor can’t access or being able to add a powerful Shopify upsell at checkout to increase AOV and revenue.

Apps

Apps are the simplest way to customize your store as a whole, including the checkout process. They’re built by developers to edit a wide range of aspects of your checkout page which can include adding, removing, styling, or totally overhauling the page to fit your needs. The only limitation that apps have is that you need to find the app that does what you need, which isn’t always available.

To add apps, all you have to do is navigate to the Shopify app store and add them to your store. They’ll have a user interface to help you use them so that you can make changes yourself without the need for coding experience, making them accessible for all store owners.

3 crucial elements of a Shopify custom checkout page

crucial elements of shopify custom checkout

Ready to make your Shopify custom checkout page the best it can be? Here are 3 crucial elements to add:

Shopify upsell at checkout app

Do you want to generate more revenue by increasing AOV on your site? Then an upsell at checkout on Shopify is for you.

Upsells and cross-sells are simple but effective ways to increase profits by getting customers to spend more money in your store. They usually consist of a discounted upgrade or additional complementary product that makes sense with the primary item they’re purchasing - or any other way to increase the value of the sale.

Upselling and cross-selling can be used at various points of the checkout process, including the cart page, checkout, and post-purchase pages. The right Shopify upsell app will also make it easy for you to create your own offers, use data to generate recommendations for offers to make, and allow you to place the offer at prime locations so that you can achieve the best results.

Important information

If you want a successful checkout process, you need to do everything you can to avoid customers leaving the checkout page. Once they leave, it’s much harder to close the sale.

As part of your Shopify custom checkout additions, be sure to include important information that’s easily accessible so that customers don’t go looking for it. Return policies, guarantees, shipping information, and FAQs are all elements to consider adding to your checkout page.

Social proof elements

recommendation from a friend social proof

In the world of e-commerce, trust is everything. If your customer doesn’t trust your checkout process, they aren’t going to be comfortable entering their information. You also want them to be as confident as possible that your product is the answer to their problem so that you can convert the sale.

To instill confidence and demonstrate trustworthiness, add forms of social proof to your site so that potential buyers can be reassured. Positive reviews, testimonials, feedback, and any other recommendations that you can use should be added so that buyers have no reason to change their mind. 

UpsellPlus: Shopify upsell at checkout

Your checkout page is a crucial element of your online business. You need to move leads through the checkout process to secure the sale, so if you’re not inspiring action with your page, you need a Shopify custom checkout.

By including essential information and reassurances on your checkout page, you’ll convert more leads. But, your custom checkout doesn’t just need to convert sales - it should also help you generate them.

UpsellPlus is the best Shopify upsell app for your store that can help you make the most of your checkout conversion optimization. It will help you to build effective Shopify upsells and cross-sells so that you can increase your average order value and maximize profitability. UpsellPlus can also be easily branded to fit your store so that you ensure cohesion and uniformity that instills confidence in your customers.

Get started with a free trial today.

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