It’s no secret that the checkout for any eCommerce site is an important piece of a high conversion rate. Knowing this, many merchants may wonder why Shopify made any modifications to their checkout at all, as it was completely functional. As any eCommerce expert will tell you, if it ain’t broke, it can still be improved. Enter Shopify checkout extensibility.

Why Shopify Made the Change

Shopify has made this change because they listened to what their merchants need. While the original Shopify checkout was completely functional, many merchants disliked how rigid it was and how that meant they did not have a lot of freedom to truly make it their own. Listening to this, Shopify came up with a solution that allows all in-checkout pages (information, shipping, and payment pages of checkout), to be modified and soon will be extended to post checkout pages (thank you and order status pages).

How This Change Impacts Current Merchants

Checkout extensibility allows Shopify developers to make their own creative, upgrade safe customizations. Checkout extensibility has removed the need for checkout.liquid, causing checkout.liquid to be deprecated. After August 13, 2024, checkout.liquid will no longer work for in-checkout pages, so any merchants still using it will have to switch to checkout extensibility before that date.

What Benefits Will Merchants See

One of the massive benefits of checkout extensibility is security. Using UI APIs makes checkout extensibility more secure than checkout.liquid. Another benefit merchants will see is easier modifications. When using checkout.liquid, merchants would have to request access to their checkout.liquid file to make edits directly to the code, which required working with developers who could build and install customizations. With checkout extensibility, those modifications can now be made with apps. In fact, developers have the ability for the first time ever to deploy checkout customizations through a custom app or public app on the Shopify App Store.

Cool Ways To Utilize

Having checkout extensibility allows many cool new features for merchants. The three new checkout UI extension APIs for merchants are discount code and gift card API, session token API, and querying the storefront API.

Discount Code and Gift Card API

Using the discount code and gift card API, checkout can support reading and writing of new discount code and gift cards directly in the checkout. What does this mean?

This means that the customer will be able to apply and redeem their codes and gift cards right in checkout, and receive confirmation that the discount has been applied.

Session Token API

The checkout UI extensibility can be used to make network calls by requesting appropriate permissions. Previously, there has been no way to verify the authenticity of these network calls. Enter session token API. Using the session token API, Shopify provides a signed token that can then be verified on an app server. What does this mean for merchants?

This means that a lot of apps will now have the benefit of having additional fraud protection. One big app category that merchants will see this benefit with? Loyalty apps. Loyalty apps are leveraged by a lot of merchants to increase conversions and retain customers. Using the session token API means that the loyalty reward program will only allow users that have a signed token verifying their identity to access their reward points.

Querying the Storefront API

With checkout extensibility, merchants can now use the storefront API to power the logic of the checkout UI extension. Why is this exciting?

This is exciting because merchants will be able to easily pull all relevant results for things such as product tags and collections, recommended products, or currency conversions. Since Shopify manages the access tokens, merchants only need to supply the query. The best part? This API is available to all app types, including non-sales channel public apps.

Want Shopify Plus?

Interested in Shopify? Want to take advantage of checkout extensibility? Reach out to Fyresite to see what we can do for you.