Using your custom checkout is a must if you are on Shopify Plus. We see tons of Shopify Plus clients who don’t do this because they are “too busy” to implement it. If you want to make more money and not do tons of more work, this is an easy win for your ecommerce business.

Don’t ignore the biggest opportunity sitting right in front of your store. Shopify Plus comes with tons of benefits from wholesale back-end, multiple stores for different countries and even support from the Shopify team themselves. The biggest reason to be on Shopify Plus, in my opinion, is being able to customize your checkout and the experience each and every customer sees.

From paid ads to SEO and even referral traffic, each person that adds to cart and starts to initiate checkout will see your checkout experience. This makes your checkout process the biggest bottleneck for your store.

You can work on your homepage, collection pages and even your product description pages (PDPs) but anyone who buys from you, sees your checkout page. Not every person who purchases will see your homepage or every collection page, but they will experience your checkout. This single fact makes your checkout experience special.

The key is to prioritize and realize the value of increased revenue that is unlocked when you own each touch point in your business. Regardless of whether you are building a new Shopify theme, porting over your store from Magento or WooCommerce or just redoing your checkout to convert more of your existing traffic, all these moments make a difference.

Here are 5 conversion rate optimization (CRO) wins that will help you level up your checkout game and make more revenue and conversions.

1. Google Analytics + Funnels

Before you hire a dev, talk with your team, or touch a single line of code, you need to find out where customers are dropping off on your site. Building out a basic funnel, even using Google Sheets and Google Analytics, will help you understand what the areas of improvement are. You know your checkout will be a major bottleneck, but if people aren’t making it past your product description pages (PDPs), does it matter?

Your checkout, like any page on your website, is not working in isolation, so it’s a good time to understand what other areas of your site could use some work. Once you have this data, start to figure out why people are leaving and how to stop the leaky bucket.

2. Site Speed

Slow sites are the death of the internet. Even a 1 second bump in site speed can boost your conversion rate and revenue. Any work that is done on your checkout needs to take speed into account, as you don’t want a slow checkout to stop someone from buying.

Some things to think about are not having apps you don’t need or use anymore. Curating your tech stack is something all ecommerce businesses should do regularly. Even apps you uninstall can leave behind code in your store, which could slow things down.

One thing we do with new clients is audit their tech stack and ad accounts. We get rid of anything that is not providing value and helping them make more money. Many apps get left in the app graveyard that is your store.

3. Site Font & Typography

If people can not read it, they can not buy it. This sounds like a simple concept but you would be shocked by how many people don’t test their site out. You and your team reading the site is not the same as your customer’s experience. Read up on A Five-Minute Guide to Better Typography and then use the Golden Ratio Typography (GRT) calculator to make sure your font is on point.

4. Social Proof

Having social proof on your homepage or PDPs is standard. Taking that experience to your checkout page is next level. This can be missed by a lot of ecommerce managers or consultants or even the dev you are working with.

Checkout is when people start to question their purchase and decide to abandon their shopping cart, so don’t give that customer the opportunity to second guess their purchase. We work with a number of kids brands who target parents. Parents listen to other parents, much like people listen to other people. Having customer reviews featured in your checkout makes people feel confident in their purchase.

5. Branding

Yes, with Shopify Plus you can brand your checkout. There is the option to add your logo, which is fairly standard, but you can also add a custom masthead on the checkout page. Make sure you add that masthead. It’s a way to show off your brand and what you stand for. You can also use it to show off products or enforce the branding from your homepage slider.

Just keep in mind that carousels /sliders have been proved to lower conversions rates. Limit how much you use the one on your site in general. No one is going to wait around to see what is on each slider. Also don’t use a huge image/video files as that will slow down your checkout page. Make sure media is the smallest file size possible while maintaining quality.

Conclusion

Those are the big five areas that will take your checkout page from basic to fabulous. Some of these points extend beyond just your checkout, but its absolutely key to make sure your checkout stands out and holds up. A final point: make sure you know your numbers across the site for conversion rate, average order value (AOV) and cost per acquisition (CPA). This way when you launch the new site, you can monitor these numbers over time. No site is perfect on launch and there is always room to tweak your checkout, so be kind and improve over time.

Thanks for checking in. We really appreciate that support!