Checkout

The checkout is the final purchase flow of an online store: every step from cart handover through address entry and payment selection to the order confirmation.

The checkout is the most conversion-critical part of your store. Every bit of friction costs revenue directly: unnecessary required fields, surprise shipping costs, missing payment methods or slow load times drive abandonment moments before the sale. Checkout abandonment is distinct from cart abandonment because customers are already one step deeper in the buying flow.

Shopify relies on a standardized, highly optimized checkout that is battle-tested across millions of orders worldwide. That is a deliberate design decision: less customization, maximum stability and conversion. With Checkout Extensibility you can still add your own functionality, such as upsells, custom fields or validations, without destabilizing the core of the checkout.

Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout, stores payment and address data on the customer side and shortens the purchase to a few clicks. For merchants it is one of the strongest conversion levers available, because returning buyers skip the entire form-filling process.

CRO optimisation

Frequently asked questions about Checkout

Can you customize the Shopify checkout?

Yes, via Checkout Extensibility: apps and custom extensions can add fields, upsells and logic. Deep layout changes are deliberately limited, and some advanced customizations require Shopify Plus.

Why do customers abandon the checkout?

The most common reasons are unexpected shipping costs, forced account creation, missing payment methods, long forms and technical issues on mobile devices.

Related terms

Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is the share of store visitors who complete a desired action. In e-commerce that is usually a purchase.
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Cart Abandonment
Cart abandonment occurs when a customer adds products to the cart but does not complete the purchase. According to the Baymard Institute, the abandonment rate averages around 70 percent across industries.
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Shopify Payments
Shopify Payments is Shopify's built-in payment service. It processes credit cards, Apple Pay, Klarna and other payment methods directly in the store, without an external payment provider.
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Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is Shopify's enterprise plan for larger merchants, with extended capabilities such as B2B, checkout customization, more automation and higher API limits.
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