Customizing Checkout Pages

Cart Abandonment Was Killing Sales. Here’s how we cut it by 37% in 28 days. After 1 month of deep CRO testing across 3 brands, Here are 4 checkout tweaks I wish we did sooner: 1. Eliminate decision fatigue upfront Most abandoned carts start before checkout even begins. • Consolidate product variants • Pre-select popular choices • Remove surprise fees before final step 🧠 Clarity wins more than cleverness. 2. Shortened the checkout flow Every extra field = more friction. We cut it to 2 pages: Page 1: Shipping + email Page 2: Payment + order review → Result: 11% boost in completed checkouts 3. Added real-time shipping transparency Static “Shipping calculated at checkout” killed trust. We integrated dynamic rates + estimated delivery dates. Conversions jumped, especially for first-time buyers. 4. Used urgency without being pushy No fake countdown timers. Just: “Orders ship by 2PM today” “Only 4 left at this price” (live inventory) → Result: +7% conversion lift The most underrated? ➡️ Dynamic shipping transparency. Trust = the missing lever most brands ignore. What’s working now: • Mobile-first design (80%+ of checkouts are mobile) • Post-purchase upsells, not pre-checkout clutter • 1-click checkout integrations like Shop Pay, or PayPal Save this post if you’re: • An ecommerce brand with 100+ monthly orders • A DTC founder struggling with abandoned carts • Scaling paid ads but leaking sales at checkout What’s your #1 checkout leak right now? 👇

Order "thank you page" content was easy to miss. Shopify just fixed this - customers will be much more likely to see your content. They now let you add an announcement bar. It shows an animated bar at the top of the page, with text, links, etc. of your choice. Why is this useful? The "Thank you" page was easy to quickly dismiss. Since the user already completed their main action (the purchase). So any content added to it would not be seen. But now: The announcement bar captures their attention. The location and animation help a lot. How to add it? It requires a Checkout UI app. Either custom, or one from the app store that supports it. When the extension is installed, you can add the bar via the Checkout editor. Use cases? - Promote a referral or loyalty program - Promote upsells - Collect social proof - Show a link to a survey - Promote subscriptions - Show shipping expectations Notes: 1. The bar can also be used on the customer account pages. 2. This feature is not limited to Shopify Plus - any store can spin up a custom extension app in minutes. #shopify #shopifyplus #ecommerce

I think checkout extensions might be the easiest way to improve your Shopify performance in a few clicks. Why? Because you’re adding functionality to the last step in your funnel, which customers only reach when they are showing the highest intent signals to purchase. I believe the checkout is second only to product page in importance for communicating your brand values, addressing objections, and introducing additional offers. Customers reaching checkout have already given you a (soft) yes, and there’s heaps of customer psychology studies that the checkout is where they are most likely to give you additional yes’s. We have 11 different checkout extension types in the Platter+ app (with more on the way). So far I think they fall into 5 categories: 1️⃣ Up-sells and cross sells - recommending products that compliment what’s in your cart boosts the shopping experience. If I’m buying an expensive piece of hardware, recommending an accessory or case just makes sense. As a consumer, you would rather make one larger purchase than go through the rigamarole of multiple. 2️⃣ Informational content - using text blocks, drop downs, and FAQs to give customers all the information they need at the point of sale improves confidence. You’re also getting ahead of the customer having to go elsewhere for that information. 3️⃣ Brand content - the checkout is transactional by nature (duh), but it doesn’t have to feel like a cold exchange of dough for product. Consider brand-focused checkout extensions as an opportunity to show how much you value a customer and their business, how it contributes to your brand’s purpose, etc. 4️⃣ Social proof - everyone knows how well social proof does on-site. The same principles apply in checkout. Incorporating testimonials, ratings, and reviews can help skeptical consumers get over the line. 5️⃣ Gamification - customers love to feel like they are getting a good deal. Using progress bars with tiered discounts is a great way to incentivize adding more products to your basket. All of these can help improve successful checkouts and order value. And the results are immediate. If you’re on Shopify Plus brand and interested in trying out checkout extensions for free, DM me. 

Between 2019-2021 I lost $206,000 on my eCommerce website because of 3 crucial mistakes. The main red flag was glaring, yet as someone inexperienced in eCommerce, I didn’t know what “normal” was…. A 28% checkout completion rate. I know… rough. Ultimately when I made the major fixes, this moved to 59%. More than doubled off three changes. So what were my blockers? 1) First, we had a large international audience, and for a janky website (not even on Shopify but a bespoke solution at the time), not having the ability to pay via Paypal or alternative means to a credit card was a huge blocker. We saw via Hotjar recordings folks scrolling, looking for alternatives to adding a CC, and then bouncing. We moved to Shopify and added additional ways to pay. 2) Next, our checkout form was too long. We saw tons of partial completes in Hotjar. When we changed to just the bare essential fields (email, name, address, country), conversions improved overnight. 3) Finally, folks don’t like to pay for shipping. We would charge $4 on a $20 game to ship. But when we charged $24 for that same game and made shipping free (in the US/CA), conversions immediately went up. A smaller but potentially impactful change was removing testimonial quotes on the checkout page. A lot of companies are losing huge sums on homepages, check-out pages, register pages, and pricing pages because they are missing obvious best practices in their industry. That is a major problem we are trying to fix at DoWhatWorks. We want to help brands start from a point of data. And this doesn’t mean just copying competitors' designs. That’s not the takeaway. What it does mean is if 95% of competitors include alternative ways to checkout besides just credit card as an eCommerce brand, that might be a good thing to look into. I am excited to see online testing go through the same revolution that paid advertising did around 2018-19 when big data really started to help guide advertisers and we saw less and less manual targeting (and rough guessing), and more having the algorithms optimize for folks. The future is coming and it’s going to be an amazing thing for brands on the cutting edge of using data to drive better decision-making

Ever wonder why most shoppers never finish checking out? Nearly 70% of carts get left behind. Feels personal, right?   The truth: shoppers bail because what they see doesn’t 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 made for them. Static pages and generic product blocks just aren’t cutting it.   𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 fixes this.💡   When your store adapts in real time, → Shoppers spot products that fit their vibe → Banners shout out sales and bundles that matter to them → Every touchpoint feels personal, not random   We've seen it firsthand. Conversion rates double. Bounce rates drop. Customers actually come back.   𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘀: ✅ Show recently viewed products upfront ✅ Personalize offers based on browsing history ✅ Use urgency—like “selling fast”—only for 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑡 items   People want to feel seen, not sold to. It's not about tricking them into buying. Make every visit feel like it was designed 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚, and your abandoned cart problem shrinks.   Are you personalizing content for your visitors yet, or still rolling with the same template for everyone?   https://lnkd.in/g-GPkvCW   #eCommerce #ConversionRate #Personalization #CRO

The checkout page is the last step before a finished purchase. The way it’s structured can make or break a sale. Research shows that multiple columns interrupt a shopper’s momentum. Keeping everything in a single vertical flow prevents unnecessary reorientation. 1-column checkout is the most user-friendly layout. It keeps shoppers moving top to bottom without distractions: ✅ Best for conversions ✅ It’s mobile-friendly ✅ Reduces cognitive load Two columns mean less scrolling and a more compact layout: ✅ Good for desktop ❌ Bad for mobile, if not optimized ❌ Can confuse users 3 columns are a lot of information at once: ✅ Works for complex orders ❌ Impossible to format for small screens ❌ Too many choices = abandoned carts For 90% of ecommerce brands? 1-column is the way to go. Simple. Clean. High-converting. #ecommerce #checkout #webshop