What is Shopify’s new checkout extensibility and what can you do with it?

Shopify Checkout Extensibility is the all-new-singing-and-dancing shopify checkout which is replacing checkout.liquid for Shopify Plus stores from August 2024. Offering a whole load of updates and customisations, this is more than just an ‘essential update’ because it brings a heap of potential to enhance your store with improved conversions and revenue opportunities.

In this post, we are going to explore what checkout extensibility is, what customisations you will be able to do and when you need to upgrade by.

You can now use a whole suite of Shopify apps to customise the checkout. This makes customisation of promotions, discounts, loyalty programmes and gifting more achievable. Here are some examples of things you can do, many of which our clients have historically wanted but faced some limitations with:

• Free gifts with purchase (which has historically been a fiddly customisation)
• Bulk discounts & other discount combinations
• Post-purchase upsells
• Hide, re-order and rename shipping options (so that you can push the most appropriate delivery option for the customer and help to convert the checkout)
• Enhanced payment options & more secure cash-on-delivery options
• Upsells in the cart, and cross-sells based on items in the cart
• Loyalty points redemption directly in the checkout
• Capture gift messages and recipient details
• Display custom fields and content within checkout. Being able to display trust badges & warnings which help to convert savvy shoppers.
• Pre-orders

These customisations (now made possible via apps) could have a drastic impact on both conversion rates and average order value.

One of the advantages of a Shopify Plus store is being able to break out of the standard Shopify vibe and create a more customised, unique brand experience for your store. This level of customisation hasn’t been fully extended to the checkout experience until now. With checkout extensibility, your checkout branding can be matched to the style of your store.

• 2x faster checkout interactions / page transitions
• Expected 1% increase in conversions thanks to speed – that’s one way to make a marginal gain!

Previously you needed to add custom data layers to checkout.liquid or use third party apps for ecommerce event tracking. Checkout extensibility can track customer events from within the admin, or you could easily add new pixels using one of the Shopify apps.  This will drastically improve the reliability of the data, as well as add more granular data points and it will also be much easier to comply with Google Consent Mode V2.

Checkout Extensibility is run in a sandboxed environment, offering additional security compared to checkout.liquid.

Checkout Extensibility offers 4x faster checkout with Shop Pay – an easy way to reduce cart abandonment.

Previously, Shopify was locked down to a 3-page checkout process. With checkout extensibility, checkout can be reduced to just one page which can drastically reduce abandonment rates. Stores will be able to choose a 1-page or 3-page layout and apply the same customisations to both.

• Estimated delivery dates
• Shipping to pickup points
• One-page checkout – gets customers the shipping information faster
• Order tracking

It is being switched off in two stages:

• August 13th 2024 – Information, Shipping & Payment pages
• August 28th 2025 – Thank you & Order Status pages (including apps using script tags)

When you login to your Shopify store, you will be able to do a checkout.liquid customisation report from the dashboard area. Shopify will tell you what (if anything) is currently using checkout.liquid so you can work out what needs to be upgraded.

Click here for your customisation report.

Checkout.liquid was shut down from August 2024 for Shopify Plus stores, so upgrading is essential. The Information, Shipping & Payment pages needed to be upgraded by 13th August 2024, but you have until August 28th 2025 for the Thank you and Order Status pages.

Starting August 14th 2024, any shops still using Checkout.liquid for their Information, Shipping and Payment pages will see the following impact:

• No more shopify support for fixing checkout.liquid customisations – any customisations will be locked and uneditable.
• Ability to add, remove or edit payment providers will be removed
• Risk indicators for orders in the Shopify admin will be disabled for new orders
• Slower payouts – up to 5 days after a transaction

From January 2025, Shopify will begin auto-upgrading anyone who hasn’t upgraded with a 30 day notice period. At this point your checkout.liquid customisations will be lost and only basic branding will remain until you upgrade to checkout extensibility.

You will need to consider any third party integrations you have with your checkout such as international payment gateways, shipping or affiliate partners. The partners will need to be compatible with checkout extensibility so enough time should be allowed for any complex scenarios.

Please get in touch with us to begin upgrading your Shopify checkout today.