Quick Takeaways
  • The average Shopify store loses 70%+ of carts at checkout — most of that loss is preventable with specific fixes, not generic advice.
  • Shopify's native checkout has real limitations on lower plans; knowing what you can and can't change saves wasted effort.
  • Speed, trust signals, and payment friction are the three biggest conversion killers — in that order.
  • Small, targeted changes (one field removed, one trust badge added) regularly produce 10–20% conversion lifts.

Why Your Checkout Is Bleeding Revenue Right Now

The Baymard Institute puts average cart abandonment at 70.19%. For a store doing $50k/month in revenue, that means roughly $117k in potential revenue is walking out the door every single month. Not because people don't want your product — they added it to their cart. They left because something in your checkout experience told them to stop.

Here's what most checkout guides won't tell you: a lot of the standard advice ("add trust badges!", "offer free shipping!") is correct in principle but applied in the wrong order, at the wrong point in the funnel. This post gives you the specific Shopify checkout optimisations that actually move the needle, ranked by impact.

Shopify Checkout: What You Can Actually Control

Before fixing anything, you need to know what's actually editable. This trips up a lot of store owners. On Shopify Basic and Shopify Standard plans, your checkout customisation is limited to colors, logo, and a few font choices inside the theme editor. You cannot reorder fields, remove the phone number field natively, or add custom sections without a Shopify Plus subscription or a third-party app.

Shopify Plus gives you access to checkout.liquid — a file that lets you restructure the entire checkout page. If you're on a lower plan and hitting a customisation wall, that's not a bug, it's a plan limitation. Worth knowing before you spend three hours trying to edit something that's locked.

For non-Plus stores, apps like Checkout Blocks (officially supported by Shopify) can add upsells, custom content, and social proof to the checkout without touching code. They're not free, but for most stores doing over $30k/month, the ROI is there.

The 10 Checkout Optimisations That Actually Work

1. Kill the Account Creation Wall

Forcing account creation before purchase is one of the highest-friction mistakes in ecommerce. Shopify lets you set checkout to "Accounts are optional" inside Settings > Checkout. Do it. Guest checkout should always be the path of least resistance. You can capture email during the guest flow and run a post-purchase account creation prompt instead — which converts far better anyway.

2. Reduce Form Fields Ruthlessly

The default Shopify checkout asks for first name, last name, company, address line 1, address line 2, city, country, state, and zip. That's nine fields before someone even sees a payment screen. Hide the company field (it's irrelevant for most DTC brands) and collapse address line 2 behind a toggle. On Shopify Plus, you can use Liquid to remove or reorder fields. On standard plans, apps like Checkout Blocks handle this. Every field you remove reduces cognitive load. One client we worked with removed the company name field and the phone number from their fashion store checkout — cart-to-purchase conversion went up 14% in the following 30 days.

3. Add Shop Pay as a Priority Payment Option

Shop Pay consistently outperforms other accelerated checkouts on Shopify stores. Shopify's own data shows Shop Pay increases checkout conversion by up to 50% versus regular checkouts for returning customers. It pre-fills address and payment details, reducing the checkout to two taps on mobile. If you haven't enabled Shop Pay, go to Settings > Payments right now. It takes two minutes.

4. Show Total Cost Before the Final Step

Unexpected costs at checkout — shipping, taxes, fees — are the single biggest stated reason for cart abandonment according to Baymard. The fix isn't always offering free shipping (though that helps). It's showing total cost earlier. Use your cart drawer or cart page to display estimated shipping and tax before the customer even clicks "Checkout." On Shopify, you can enable shipping rate estimates directly on the cart page through your theme settings. Most themes have this toggle — it's just off by default.

5. Fix Your Mobile Checkout Experience

Over 60% of Shopify traffic is mobile. Yet most store owners only audit their checkout on desktop. Pull out your phone, go through your own checkout end-to-end, and time it. If it takes you more than 90 seconds to complete on mobile, your customers are dropping. Common mobile-specific problems: tap targets too small, keyboard covering the input field, payment options not loading in the right order, or the checkout CTA button sitting below the fold on smaller screens. These aren't design issues — they're revenue issues.

6. Place Trust Signals at the Decision Moment

Most stores slap trust badges in the footer or on the product page. That's fine, but the moment customers most need reassurance is right before they enter their card number. On Shopify Plus, add trust signals (SSL badge, money-back guarantee, security seals) directly above or below the payment fields using checkout.liquid. On standard plans, use Checkout Blocks or a custom banner image in your checkout branding settings. A short line of text like "256-bit SSL encryption. Your payment is 100% secure." at the payment step costs nothing and regularly lifts conversion by 5–8%.

7. Use a Progress Indicator

Shopify's default checkout shows a three-step progress bar (Information > Shipping > Payment). Don't hide it. Some themes and checkout customisations suppress it, thinking it looks cleaner. It doesn't — it just makes customers feel lost. Progress indicators reduce anxiety by letting people know they're almost done. If you're on Shopify Plus and have restructured the checkout flow, make sure your custom progress indicator reflects the actual number of steps remaining.

8. Offer Buy Now, Pay Later

Shopify Payments includes Klarna, Afterpay, and Shop Pay Installments depending on your region. Enabling BNPL options can meaningfully increase average order value, particularly for products over $100. The key is surfacing the option early — not just at checkout, but on the product page itself with a "or 4 payments of $X with Afterpay" message. Shopify has native support for this messaging through installment badges in the theme editor.

9. Optimise Checkout Page Load Speed

Shopify hosts checkout on its own CDN, so you have limited control over server-side speed. But third-party checkout apps that load heavy scripts can slow the payment step significantly. Audit any app injecting code into your checkout — in Shopify admin, go to Apps > any app with checkout permissions. If a trust badge app is adding a 400ms render-blocking script to your payment page, that's directly costing you sales. Our Shopify speed optimisation audits routinely find checkout-specific bloat that standard Core Web Vitals reports miss.

10. Set Up Abandoned Checkout Emails (and Actually Customise Them)

Shopify sends abandoned checkout emails automatically, but the default template is boring and generic. Open rates for abandoned cart emails average around 45% — that's a warm audience actively reading your message. Customise your abandoned checkout email with the specific product the customer left behind, a photo, a short urgency message, and a direct link back to their exact checkout. Better yet, build a three-email sequence: one at 1 hour, one at 24 hours, one at 72 hours. If you want a professional sequence built out, our email marketing team handles this regularly for Shopify stores.

Real Example: Fashion Store, 22% Conversion Lift in 6 Weeks

A US-based DTC fashion brand came to us with a checkout conversion rate of 58% (cart-to-purchase). They were on Shopify Plus, spending heavily on Meta ads, and could not understand why the traffic wasn't converting. We ran a full Shopify CRO audit and found four specific issues: the phone number field was mandatory, there was no Shop Pay option visible on mobile (it was buried below three other payment methods), the checkout was loading a legacy review app script adding 600ms to the payment step, and their abandoned checkout email was the Shopify default with no product image.

We fixed all four in one sprint. Six weeks later, checkout conversion sat at 70.8% — a 22% relative improvement. Their monthly revenue went up by roughly $34k with zero increase in ad spend. That's what targeted checkout work looks like.

Checkout Optimisation Checklist

  • Set accounts to "optional" in Settings > Checkout
  • Enable Shop Pay in Settings > Payments
  • Hide the Company Name and Address Line 2 fields (use app or Checkout Liquid)
  • Enable shipping rate estimate on the cart page (theme settings)
  • Test your full checkout on mobile, on a real device, and time it
  • Add a trust signal line directly above the payment input fields
  • Audit apps with checkout permissions for script load time
  • Enable at least one BNPL option (Afterpay, Klarna, or Shop Pay Installments)
  • Customise your abandoned checkout email with product image and urgency copy
  • Build a 3-email abandoned cart sequence (1hr, 24hr, 72hr)

FAQ

Can I customise the Shopify checkout without Shopify Plus?

Yes, but with significant limitations. Without Plus, you can edit colors, fonts, and logo through the theme editor. You can also use officially supported apps like Checkout Blocks to add content sections, trust badges, and upsells. What you can't do on a standard plan is reorder or remove core form fields, restructure the checkout flow, or access checkout.liquid. If deep checkout customisation is critical to your conversion strategy, Shopify Plus at $2,500/month becomes financially justified for stores doing above roughly $800k/year.

What's the biggest reason customers abandon checkout on Shopify stores?

Unexpected costs — specifically shipping fees that appear only at the final step. Baymard's research consistently ranks this as the number one reason. The fix is showing estimated shipping earlier, ideally on the cart page before checkout begins. Free shipping thresholds also help, but only if they're clearly messaged throughout the shopping journey, not just in your footer.

How do I know which checkout changes are actually improving conversion?

You need a baseline first. In Shopify Analytics, go to Reports > Conversion and check your checkout abandonment rate by step — Shopify shows where in the three-step flow customers are dropping. Make one change at a time, wait at least two weeks for statistical relevance (longer if you're lower volume), then compare. Don't run five changes simultaneously and try to attribute lift. You won't know what worked, and you'll make the wrong call on what to keep.

Checkout optimisation isn't a one-time project — it's an ongoing discipline. The stores consistently outperforming their competitors on conversion aren't the ones with the prettiest design; they're the ones obsessively removing friction at the exact moment a customer is ready to pay. If you want a fresh set of expert eyes on your checkout flow, our team at Shopify Pro Services runs full CRO audits specifically built around Shopify's platform — and we tell you exactly what to fix and in what order.