How Merchants Are Flexing Shopify Plus To Create Fully Customized Checkout Experiences

It's one of the most attractive features of Shopify Plus...

The ability to customize the checkout allows merchants to maintain brand integrity, offer customers a custom domain, and the peace of mind that comes with dedicated SSL certificates and responsive layouts.

The problem is you're likely leaving a lot of customization gusto on the table...

The access you have to the checkout.liquid asset affords you the ability to customize to a much greater degree than is probably top of mind for you. In fact, you can stretch Shopify Plus to create custom checkout experiences that are unique to your brand and customers.

To show you how much more is possible when it comes to customizing the checkout experience on Shopify Plus, we've persuaded some of the most successful merchants and sophisticated expert agency partners to share some of their most intelligent checkout customizations.

These customizations are not only turning heads but fueling accelerated ecommerce growth.

Let the following five checkout customizations, plus a handful of variations, serve as examples of what’s possible when you stretch Plus to its limits and inspiration to create a unique customer checkout experience designed to grow your business:

Customization #1: Autocomplete Shipping Address Based On Geolocation

Once a shopper has decided to become a customer...

Get out of her way and make checking out as quick and easy as possible.

Everyone knows this intuitively but few actually go above and beyond with regard to accelerating the speed at which the checkout process may be completed. However, Kopari Beauty, which sells coconut oil based beauty products, helps its customers breeze through the checkout process at lightning speed.

With the help of its agency partner, BVAccel, a digital design, development and marketing agency, Kopari speeds up the checkout process by autocompleting a customer's shipping address based on geolocation that can auto-populate shipping address fields:

Image via: Kopari

Even better, members of Kopari's rewards program who have provided the company a default address checkout, additional fields are automatically populated making the checkout process even faster:

Image via: Kopari

Get The Code: AutoComplete Checkout on Shopify Plus & Reduce Returns

Customization #2: Dynamic Checkout Pricing & Automatic Discounts

Selling to other businesses or to wholesalers presents unique checkout challenges...

In these instances, customers are often buying in bulk and want to instantly see what adjusting quantities does to pricing.

In the past, Merchology, a leading provider of corporate branded apparel and accessories, would have to manually add each product discount it wanted to offer. The hours it wasted manually adding discounts prevented it from focusing on improving the customer experience.

That's why it turned to Range, a digital marketing agency with a proprietary computing model that leverages data to generate ROI at a fraction of the price other agencies charge. Range used Shopify Scripts to automate the discount process, save Merchology time, and dramatically improve the user the experience.

Discounts are applied automatically and customers can see the discounts they've earned right there in their carts:

Image via: Merchology

Range is also using Scripts to allow Merchology to offer customers dynamic or live pricing. The custom code Range created with Scripts actually looks inside a customer’s cart, identifies when a customer has made a change (say they adjust an item’s size or order quantity), and automatically adjusts the checkout price in real-time:

Image via: Merchology

Separately, Peau Productions, which specializes in converting televisions into touch-screens and modifying small cameras like the GoPro Hero to customer requirements, wanted to speed up the checkout process and offer dynamic pricing when customers add things like warranties or expedited processing.

The company turned to Bold Commerce, a digital agency that helps merchants increase sales and is one of Shopify's top app and development partners, which used Shopify Scripts to automatically update the cart price when customers click a box. For instance, here's a product and the additional options offered (warranty and expedited processing):

Image via: Peau Productions

Let's say the customer wants to add the 3 year warranty and expedited two week processing. When the customer clicks each of those boxes, the checkout total is automatically updated:

Image via: Peau Productions

Bonus: 17 Shopify Scripts To Maximize Conversions

Separately, you might also consider using the dynamic pricing customization to upsell or cross-sell customers at the checkout the way Emazing Lights, which sells LED gloves people use to perform light shows does.

When a customer selects an upsell to add to cart-in this case batteries, replacement gloves, and extra premium diffusers- the cart total is automatically updated:

Image via: Emazing Lights

Customization #3: Integrating The Checkout With Ecommerce & Brick & Mortar Retail

The checkout can't ignore the overlap of your digital and physical footprints...

If you have one foot in the digital world and one in the physical world, your checkout should reflect that and offer customers appropriate checkout options. Roses Only, which sells roses online and from a retail location in New York, offers local customers special checkout options not available to customers outside the New York City area.

For instance, customers in New York City can have orders shipped by typing in a local address:

Image via: Roses Only

Notice that when a zip code outside the NYC delivery option is typed in, the checkout customization automatically refuses the delivery order:

Image via: Roses Only

Separately, customers checking out online also have the option of picking up their order in-store. Not only does Roses Only provide the retail location's address, but it allows customers to enter the date they'd like to pick up their order:

Image via: Roses Only

Bonus: 7 Shopify Shipping Scripts To Maximize Conversions

Customization #4: Custom Font Type & Breadcrumb Navigation

Worrying about the little things can make the checkout a breeze for customers and significantly lift your conversion rates...

One of this little things, according to BVAccel, a digital design, development and marketing agency, is font. Font faces that match throughout the site- and especially on the checkout page- can prevent customers from feeling like they are leaving the merchant's site to complete their purchase.

The idea is to customize font type and color across the site to make the transition from the merchant's site to the checkout page seamless with regard to the merchant’s brand. BVAccell customized the MVMT Watches checkout page so it's identical to the rest of the site:

Image via: MVMT Watches

Besides font consistency, BVAccel also focuses on aligning the breadcrumb checkout navigation, or the list of pages that indicate to customers which step of the checkout process they're in, with the merchant site's design.

In the case of Red Bull, the well known and pioneering energy drink maker, the company desired a smaller breadcrumb navigation that doesn't stand out or distract customers at any point in the checkout funnel. So BVAccel created custom breadcrumbs unique to the Red Bull brand:

Image via: Red Bull

According to BVAccel's lead Developer, Cory Cummings:

"Good design can be seen but, it's great design that can be felt. Although customized fonts and breadcrumbs on a check-out page seem simple -- it's the implication of "great design" -- it converts customers, and strengthens the user's experience and your long-term relationship with them."

Customization #5: Customize The Checkout With Urgency

People tend to fear losing something of value much more than they enjoy gaining something in value.

You can use this bit of psychology to customize the checkout and lift conversion rates by integrating urgency with the checkout. For example, American AF, which sells collections of humorous and patriotic clothing, laces the checkout process with urgency by adding a countdown clock:

Image via: AAF

The company, which was founded by an Iraq war veteran and routinely runs out of popular merchandise, uses the countdown clock to reserve orders for customers for a finite period of time before allowing the merchandise to be purchased by others.

Similarly, you can also use discounts to add urgency to the checkout process to convert new customers. For instance, when a first time shopper of Perfect Locks, which sells virgin Indian hair extensions, weaves, and wigs, adds an item to their cart, the customer is presented with a discount that's good for only a few minutes:

Image via: Perfect Locks

Strategically inserting urgency in the checkout process can trigger the fear of losing out on a discount or an entire order and can act as a potent checkout customization tool that lifts conversions.

Learn: How To Add An Exit Popup On Shopify Plus Checkout

Is Your Checkout Next?

The ability to customize the checkout is an asset available to every Shopify Plus merchant...

But that's actually a potential threat to your future.

As more high volume merchants choose Shopify Plus as their enterprise-level ecommerce solution, a custom checkout is likely to become an asset customers will increasingly come to expect rather than revere.

Therefore, it'll be the ultra-custom checkouts that stand out:

• Autocomplete shipping addresses with geolocation
• Dynamic checkout pricing and automatic discounts
• Integrating the checkout with ecommerce and brick & mortar retail
• Custom breadcrumb navigation and font types
• Integrating urgency into the checkout process

Customizing the process must only be done with purpose. Improving the customer's experience and your conversion rate are the only objectives. Remember to split test your customizations to be sure they're actually accomplishing your goals.

Whatever it is you want to do, know that Plus can be flexed and stretched to meet your checkout needs.