Shopify claims that it has “the world’s best-converting checkout”. To prove its point, the e-commerce giant collaborated with one of the leading global management consulting companies. Providing them with all their data, the e-commerce platform asked them to research the checkouts of all major e-commerce platforms across the world. After months of independent research, the study concluded that the overall conversion rate of Shopify surpasses its rivals by up to 36 percent and by an average of 15 percent.
Emphasising the benefits of Shopify’s accelerated checkout offering, Shop Pay, the research said that it increased conversion by up to 50 percent as compared to guest checkout. Shop Pay outperformed other accelerated checkout by approximately 10 percent. Even the presence of Shop Pay is enough to lift the lower funnel conversion by 5 percent, said the study.
Brands that provide personalized experiences to their customers, including a supporting checkout they know and trust, are able to remove some of the friction within the buying journey to ensure higher conversion. Shop Pay is an ideal solution for these retailers and a proven way to increase conversion.
Travis Hess, EVP of DTC, The Stable
Shopify has been working on its checkout for around two decades. Following are the four primary benefits of Shopify Checkout:
- Massive identity network of Shopify
- Unmatched scale
- Consumer trust
- Velocity of innovation
Identity network
Shopify focuses on its massive identity network as it is the future of commerce. Lately, brands are realising the importance of conversion benefits and hence, they are working to remove checkout friction. Minimising multiple steps during the checkout process increases the conversion rate. Shop Pay is better than any other wallet as it offers one-click checkout. Shopify claims that “over 100 million high-intent, high-value buyers are pre-opted” with Shop Pay.
When a potential customer with an account on Shop Pay visits a website, Shopify identifies them with a single click. It even has the power to identify the majority of customers if they have recently used Shop Pay and that too without any kind of user action. This helps Shop Pay to initiate smooth one-click checkout by pre-filling customer details. Hence faster checkout than a guest checkout.
Our customers’ experience is the most important thing to us. They need to trust our checkout as much as they trust our products–and recognize the path to purchase as easily as they recognize our brand.
Kyla Robinson, Vice President, Digital Product, Spanx
Travis Hess, EVP of DTC at The Stable, Part of Accenture Song said, “Brands that provide personalized experiences to their customers, including a supporting checkout they know and trust, are able to remove some of the friction within the buying journey to ensure higher conversion. Shop Pay is an ideal solution for these retailers and a proven way to increase conversion.”
Besides the wide identity network of Shop Pay, its extensibility and ease of use converts buyers by up to 50 percent more as compared to guest checkout. This data confirms that recognition holds an important place in e-commerce. One can see value exchange and identity being deeply connected in the future of e-commerce. In Shopify’s identity wallet, Shop Cash, Shop Pay Installments, loyalty offerings and other innovative financial service are all working together to make the checkout process seamless for consumers.
Unmatched Scale
Shopify uses its unmatched scale as an asset to boost the checkout process. Shopify claims to power 10 percent of e-commerce in the United States while supporting 561 million unique online shoppers in the year 2022. Shopify uses this unique data to offer smooth checkout. Shopify incorporates smaller changes such as optimizations in button display and field order, besides bigger changes like its latest announcement of one-page checkout.
Shopify Checkout also has the potential to manage big annual sales events with throughputs that would slow down other e-commerce platforms. For example, 2022’s holiday sales event raked in $7.5 billion in total sales and Shopify Checkout processed $3.5 million in sales every single minute. Shopify Checkout performs not only during the big e-commerce events that matter but also during smaller moments.
Consumer Trust
Shopify claims “hundreds of millions of consumers use Shopify Checkout every year”. It has emerged to be a highly recognizable and trusted checkout. Shopify Checkout not only offers a quick and seamless experience but also a wide range of options that delight customers. Customers can avail of gift cards, discounts, on-time delivery promises, tax and duty calculation, local pickup and even post-purchase offers. As several sophisticated features work together in harmony, hence consumers get to enjoy a smooth checkout experience. Shopify Checkout makes this entire complex process possible through a single click while supporting the unique requirements of each business.
Kyla Robinson, Vice President, of Digital Product, at Spanx said, “Our customers’ experience is the most important thing to us. They need to trust our checkout as much as they trust our products–and recognize the path to purchase as easily as they recognize our brand.”
Innovation
“At Shopify, we have more engineers working just on making checkout high-converting and performant, than some other companies have working on their entire commerce solution,” writes Shopify in one of its blogs. Shopify Checkout offers enough room to merchants so that they can innovate. It makes all the important checkout components available to the merchants while enabling them to make customisation according to their business needs.
Merchants can “mix and match solutions like bespoke code written in custom apps and no-code, easily configurable apps for your Shopify store to lower your total cost of ownership, increase speed to market, and pivot to shifting buyer demands quickly. This is the power of Checkout Extensibility.” writes Shopify in its blog.
For the unversed, Checkout Extensibility is compatible with Shop Pay. Merchants can even customize the appearance of Shop Pay and include additional functionality either via building bespoke apps for customizations or click-and-configure apps.
The Checkout.liquid Deprecation
Shopify announced the replacement of checkout.liquid with checkout extensibility on February 13, 2023. Checkout.liquid customization won’t be available for Shipping, Payment and Information from August 13, 2024. Shops that are using checkout.liquid currently for their in-checkout pages will require to upgrade customizations to checkout extensibility before August 13.
E-commerce stores that fail to upgrade their checkouts will automatically be upgraded to un-customized and out-of-the-box Shopify Checkout. However, Shopify Plus merchants can continue leveraging checkout.liquid to customize post-checkout pages that include Thank You and Order Status Page. Shopify will eventually allow customizations on post-checkout pages with checkout extensibility as well.
Checkout extensibility is “an easier way to customize Shopify Checkout in a way that’s app-based, upgrade-safe, higher-converting, and integrated with Shop Pay,” states Shopify.
