When you’re running an eCommerce business, you constantly consider the customer experience. How easy it is to use your site, connect with customer support, and place orders are crucial components in determining the likelihood of users coming back to shop with you again and again.
While ease, flow, and brand consistency are important across all aspects of your website, there’s one area where some online boutiques and shops fail to give the necessary attention to: the checkout experience.
Yes, you want consumers to get excited about the products available on your site and load up their virtual shopping carts with obscene amounts of goodies. But optimizing that post-shopping experience can make the difference between a completed checkout and an abandoned cart.
In fact, e-commerce shops across all industries experience an average cart abandonment rate of nearly 70%, according to a 2020 study. So if you find most of your site users are leaving products in e-commerce purgatory, it might be time to optimize your checkout experience.
And Shopify Plus can help you do just that. This innovative tool can improve your checkout experience and decrease your cart abandonment rates.
What Is Shopify Plus?
If you’re in the e-commerce biz, you’re likely aware of the Shopify platform. Over a million businesses use this all-in-one tool to launch and grow their shops and stores as it makes it easier than ever to create an online retail business. With Shopify, you can sell, ship and process payments from anywhere in the world.
Now, most people use the standard Shopify service for new and small businesses with no more than 1-2 retail stores. But as you grow and expand, you’ll find that you need to upgrade your platform to meet the demand of higher volume.
Enter Shopify Plus.
Shopify Plus is designed for larger businesses with high volume who need to replatform their e-commerce site.
What Makes Shopify Plus Different From Other Services
Usually the replatform transition is costly and time-consuming. Other platforms will charge up to six-figures for custom checkout pages and other necessary features and can take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to complete the transition.
Shopify Plus starts at $2,000 a month, and can get your business completely replatformed in just 3 to 4 months’ time. With that comes:
- AR, video and 3D media built in to product pages
- Localized shopping experiences for different currencies and languages
- Unlimited transactions
- Automation for processes like campaigns and discounts
- Customer and product data migration
- Up to 18% higher conversion rates
- The best Shopify SEO Optimization
- And more
You’re also assigned a dedicated account manager (who is referred to as your Launch Engineer), unlimited accounts for your team, more API integrations and access to other exclusive Shopify apps.
Needless to say, when it comes to transitioning your e-commerce store, Shopify Plus is the way to go.
How Shopify Plus Improves The Checkout Experience
When it comes to your overall checkout experience, moving to a Shopify Plus plan can vastly improve how your customers pay for your products.
For starters, the service will move you to a checkout that is 60% faster than standard Shopify checkout rates. With a higher demand and more orders going through, you know how valuable a fast checkout can be.
In addition, Shopify Plus also allows you to completely customize your checkout experience by offering advanced discounts as well as shipping rates. Not to mention again, you’ll have the ability to take on an unlimited amount of transactions.
Shopify Plus allows merchants to customize their checkout experience to fit their brand and meet their customers’ needs. Without ability, e-commerce stores would have to either DIY their checkout through apps or hire an agency or tech partner to optimize it for them. Both of which are either costly or not as effective. With Shopify Plus, you can make sure that your checkout experience is as optimized as it can be.
How To Use Shopify Plus To Improve Your Checkout
Now that you’ve got some backstory, it’s time to dive into all the different ways you can utilize Shopify Plus to improve your checkout experience. Let’s get started!
Shopify Scripts
Shopify Scripts are short pieces of code that let you personalize various customer experiences through your e-commerce site. You can utilize this tool to create a streamlined and customer-focused checkout experience that encourages shoppers to buy more and decreases the likelihood of them abandoning their cart.
Now this does require a little bit of backend coding knowledge, but Shopify has made it somewhat easy for even newbies to figure out. But with Scripts, you can customize the look and feel of your checkout page, such as:
- Customer fields
- Shipping methods
- Payment options
- Inventory alerts and issues
- Review order
- Order processing
- Order status
Scripts Editor
You can even personalize the checkout experience further with the Shopify Scripts Editor.
This tool allows you to implement promotions and discounts without requiring the user to enter in a discount code. This reduces the hassle and friction of checking out and can even increase your conversion rates. And because Scripts is integrated with the Shopify servers, you can rid yourself of any fear of tech issues and support mishaps during peak-demand times.
Scripts editor allows you to schedule your big sale-day ahead, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, so all of the promotions and discounts happen automatically. There are options for:
- Discounted percentages off a product
- Discounted ($) amount off a product
- Combined percentage and ($) amount off a product
- Bulk discounts
- BOGO (buy one, get one free)
- And a blank template for you to create your own unique promotional offer
Customize By Customer
One of the downsides of running a fully virtual store is the inability to develop a real relationship with your customer base. While you can’t make small talk over the cash register, you can customize your checkout page based on who the customer is.
There are several factors you can use to identify certain customers. For example, you can have your checkout automatically add BOGO discounts, free shipping or other promotions based on how much value is in the customer’s cart. You can also create specific messaging and offers to those who are categorized as VIP clients based on the amount they spend or regular clients based on how often they shop.
Adding a personalized touch as simple as a message that reads “we’re glad you’re back,” can build loyalty and encourage the user to keep shopping at your online store.
Total Checkout Customization
Basic Shopify stores are given an efficient and effective checkout process. However, Shopify Plus users are granted even more customization options so that they can match their checkout experience with their branding and store needs.
Today, consumers are more aware than ever about how a brand is presenting itself both online and in person. They want a high-quality user experience, and the checkout process must be included in that.
Optimize Your Overall User Experience- From Start To Checkout
So while there are a wide variety of options and ways to customize your e-commerce store, don’t neglect the final piece in the selling puzzle. With Shopify Plus’s level of functionality, the sky’s really the limit for the checkout experience.
About the Author
Sean Richards is the VP of Strategy & Partnerships for Vincit. Prior to Vincit, Richards provided business development, digital marketing strategy and partnership development at several reputable companies and marketing agencies in both California and Arizona. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Design Management from Arizona State University.
