Shopify's One-Page Checkout: Everything You Need to Know

Online business owners are always looking for ways to improve conversion rates and grow revenue. With every single sale coming to the checkout process before it’s completed, there’s no better place to start optimizing your sales process for more conversions than checkout.

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With Shopify’s upcoming one-page checkout feature, stores will have the option to try a new style of checkout that can help to improve conversion rates by minimizing abandoned carts and improving customer experiences.

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Here’s everything you need to know about one-page checkout for Shopify.

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What is a Shopify one-page checkout?

Your checkout pages require a lot of information from your customers. Traditionally, checkout processes include 3 or 4 steps where personal, shipping, and payment information are collected so that you can properly charge customers and ship products. Each step has its own page, so it takes some time to navigate through the screens to confirm and place the order.

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A one-page checkout in Shopify allows you to change the multi-page checkout, including eliminating additional clicks and loading time required to proceed through the 3-4 steps. 

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As the name suggests, one-page checkout means your checkout process will become a single page. It will still collect all of the information necessary to complete the purchase, but instead of multiple steps, everything will be visible on one page.

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Shopify one-page checkout vs. multi-step checkout

Your checkout process falls into one of two categories: one-page or multi-step.

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A one-page checkout for Shopify aims to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for your customers to buy their products. By using a single page, you eliminate navigating through multiple pages and pressing multiple buttons to complete the order because all of the information is directly available immediately. One-page checkouts are not usually the default in online stores, including Shopify, where you can’t currently make your own one-page checkout. However, Shopify’s express checkout options, like Shop Pay and PayPal, can provide a similar experience for your customers without a full conversion to one-page checkouts.

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Multi-step checkout processes are the default option for Shopify stores. There’s an initial page that collects customer information, a shipping step where you choose shipping methods, and the payment screen where your payment method is chosen. You’ll need to press “continue” 2 times before placing the order and wait for each screen to load, which may lead to abandoned carts in some cases.

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Why you should use a one-page checkout for Shopify

Speed is an essential element of every online store. Nobody likes to sit and wait while your website loads - and the same goes for your checkout process.

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The less time it takes to complete the checkout process, the higher the conversion rate. Excessive checkout times may be due to slow site speeds, multiple page loads, and unnecessary checkout fields. Fortunately, a one-page checkout for Shopify can help to address these long checkout times and improve your conversion rates.

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A primary difference between one-page and multi-step checkout is the number of clicks it takes to complete an order. Every additional click means that the process takes longer and requires more input from the customer - two ingredients for a poor customer experience. With a one-step checkout for Shopify, your customers will need to make fewer clicks before their order is complete, helping to improve conversion rates.

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Wait times are another significant difference between multi-step and one-step checkouts. Each step of your checkout process needs to load, so when you add additional steps, you’re increasing load times. If your site speed isn’t perfect, this can cost you precious seconds and reduce your chances of completing the sale. One-page checkouts only need to load the initial page, so customers can checkout without waiting longer.

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In addition to slow checkouts costing you conversions, the presentation of your checkout page can also impact whether a customer completes checkout. Up to 37% of customers say they’ve abandoned carts because they couldn’t clearly see the final cost with a multi-page checkout process. Shipping costs that are hidden on the 2nd or 3rd step and significantly impact the price may lead to customers feeling deceived and abandoning their cart. With a Shopify one-page checkout, all of this information is available immediately on the single checkout page so that they know exactly what to expect to pay at all times.

How to tell if you have Shopify’s one-page checkout available

The new one-page checkout for Shopify is in early access, so it’s not available for everyone. However, certain Shopify Plus stores have received access to the feature - whether you know it or not.

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If you do have access, you’ll see a banner on your “checkout” section of settings that says you’re using a one-page checkout. If not, you’ll have to wait until it is rolled out to more stores.

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How to enable one-page checkout for Shopify

Once you’ve got the feature available to your store, setting up a one-page checkout is easy to do. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

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• From your admin dashboard, go to “settings”
• Select “checkout.”

• Find “checkout customization” and select “customize” on your live or draft checkout
• Press the gear icon to view checkout settings

• Scroll down to the bottom of the settings until you reach “checkout layout,” and click the arrow

• Select the one-page checkout option and watch your checkout transform in the live preview

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Now that you’ve enabled one-page checkout, you’ll see that all of the steps have been removed in favor of one scrolling checkout page with the order summary module stickied so that customers can keep an eye on their total, see discounts that are applied, and get a shipping estimate all in one place.

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Ways Shopify's One-Page Checkout Can Boost Your Conversion Rate

The goal of a Shopify one-page checkout is to be as streamlined as possible to help improve conversion rates that allow your store to generate more revenue for free, similar to upsell apps for Shopify.

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Here are three ways that a one-click checkout for Shopify can optimize your checkout process for more conversions, higher revenue, and greater customer satisfaction.

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Minimizes checkout times

It’s no secret that customers hate waiting around. If you’re grocery shopping, do you choose the line with three people or the empty line? Do you prefer tapping to pay instead of counting out cash or having to enter your debit PIN every time? If you have a choice, you’re going to pick the simpler checkout process every time – and your customers have that choice in your competitors.

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Shopify’s one-page checkout shortens checkout times in three major ways:

• Fewer clicks: As a business, your goal is to ask as little as possible of the customer when it comes to checkout. If they have to click through multiple pages, that adds time and effort – two things customers hate to spend when trying to buy something. Fortunately, there’s only one click required with a one-page checkout: the button to complete the order.
• No loading screens: The average online consumer attention span is 8 seconds. If your loading screens are cutting into that time at all, you’re hurting your chances of conversion. One-click checkouts only require the initial loading time for your page. Once it’s loaded, there’s no more waiting – customers can complete their order immediately without additional loading screens.
• Complete information visibility: It’s helpful for customers to know exactly what is required to complete checkout from the start so that they can quickly navigate through the process. With a one-page checkout, customers don’t have to wait to see what’s waiting on the next checkout step. All the information is readily available and can be entered simply without waiting around or guessing.

A faster checkout process is one of the best things you can do for your conversion rates, but it's not everything.

Improves checkout visibility

Transparency is an underrated element of checkout pages. Your customers want to know exactly what to expect when it comes to the financial side of their purchase. Surprises are never a good thing when they cost them money, which is why multi-step checkouts can be a cause of as many as 17% of abandoned carts when they’re not straightforward with shipping information or final costs.

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Using a one-page checkout for Shopify ensures that all of the important information is presented from the start. As a result, customers may be more likely to complete their orders and less likely to feel that their time was wasted due to hidden information.

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Optimizes mobile experiences

Mobile purchases accounted for 42% of e-commerce sales in 2022. Shopify checkouts are optimized for mobile by default, but one-page checkouts take it a step further. They combine all of the steps into a single page so that your customers can simply scroll through the process instead of tapping between screens, making it much easier to complete checkout more quickly.

How to go about creating an effective one-page checkout

While Shopify one-page checkout processes can be an incredibly effective strategy for your store, they need to be done correctly to ensure you achieve the best results.

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Here are 5 strategies you should implement on your one-page checkout for Shopify.

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Minimize clutter

While having all of the checkout elements on your one-page checkout is a positive for speeding up the process and improving conversions, it also makes it easy to overwhelm customers. There’s a lot of information that you need to collect and present, so if it’s not organized effectively, you risk pushing customers away.

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To help minimize clutter on your Shopify one-page checkout process, consider your form fields and page elements carefully. Depending on your type of business, you may not need all of the information that Shopify asks for as part of their default checkout page. As a result, you’re able to cut down on the number of fields you include and de-clutter the user experience. For example, if you’re selling digital goods you can remove the shipping address and shipping methods from the page so that everything else is more visible and the page is less overwhelming as a whole.

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Highlight important elements

Similar to the risk of a cluttered page, one-page checkouts in Shopify can make it easy for your most important elements to get lost, slowing down the checkout process and potentially reducing your conversion rates.

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When implementing a one-page checkout in Shopify, it’s essential to use styling to highlight the important elements of your checkout page that can’t be missed. The checkout or order buttons are the most important, but order details, payment options, and upsell or cross-sell offers are other elements you will want to help stand out by using accent colors or organizing them clearly.

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Instill urgency

Are you using conversion rate optimization strategies in your checkout process? If not, you’re missing out on an effective sales tool that complements one-page checkout exceptionally well.

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The primary benefit of using a one-page checkout in Shopify is that it speeds up the checkout process, preventing customers from having too much downtime to change their mind about a purchase. You can further improve the effectiveness of your page by instilling urgency through time-sensitive and exclusive language and elements that encourage customers to move as quickly as possible through the checkout process.

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Countdown timers or “low stock” notifications are a few simple ways to prevent second-guessing and get customers to commit to a purchase now so that you don’t have to recover their cart later.

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Optimize page speed

Nobody likes waiting around to complete their purchase and move on with their day. If your checkout is slow, you risk customers leaving and finding someone else to buy from.

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A one-page checkout for Shopify helps to prevent customers from navigating through pages, but it can also make your single page slower due to the number of elements on it. To combat this, consider adding apps to help optimize your site and checkout page to keep load times low so that the benefits of a one-page checkout can be fully in effect.

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Add upsells and cross-sells

With all the effort you’re going through to create a one-page checkout in Shopify, you’ll also want to increase the positive effects by growing your average order values.

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Upsells and cross-sells are simple, effective, and low-risk ways of making each conversion a little bit more valuable. With custom-tailored offers from the right upsell app for Shopify, you’ll be able to take advantage of improved conversion rates for increased revenue without interfering with your other conversion rate optimization efforts.

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Use UpsellPlus to upgrade your multi-step or one-step checkout in Shopify

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No matter what type of checkout process you use, UpsellPlus can help upgrade it for improved revenue and increased average order values.

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UpsellPlus makes it easy to create, implement, and test cross-sells and upsells for Shopify. An offer builder lets you use custom logic to display offers when they make sense based on customers’ purchases. Add offers to the cart, checkout, and post-purchase pages in multiple locations so that you can optimize your conversion rates on either one-page checkout or multi-step checkout.

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Start your free 7-day trial of UpsellPlus today.

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