design+code
Most Shopify stores are well-built technically and underperform commercially. The theme is clean, the product pages load fast, the photography is good. And still, the majority of people who add something to the cart never buy.
The problem is rarely the checkout page itself. It is a series of small friction points that accumulate before the customer ever reaches it, and a few missed opportunities once they do.
Here is what we actually change when we work on a store's conversion rate, based on work done with clients including Archiduchesse and Ile Bleue.
The default Shopify cart is a summary. It lists what the customer has selected, shows a total, and offers a button to proceed. That is all it does.
The problem is that by the time someone reaches the cart, they are in a buying mindset. That is the highest-intent moment in the entire journey, and most stores waste it by showing a static list.
For Archiduchesse, a French sock brand with a wide product range, we redesigned the cart around two principles. First, the cart should make the purchase feel good before it is completed: clear product imagery, the right color and size visible at a glance, no anxiety-inducing elements. Second, the cart should do quiet selling.
We added product recommendations directly in the cart drawer, not as a hard upsell but as a suggestion: "You might also like" pulling from complementary categories based on what is already in the cart. Socks pair with care products and accessories. The recommendation logic is simple, the placement is unobtrusive, and the average order value went up.
The cart is the last place a customer considers before committing. Treating it as a summary is leaving money on the table.
Shopify rolled out Checkout Extensibility to replace the old checkout.liquid system. For most merchants, this was a technical migration they were told they had to do. For us, it was an opportunity to rebuild the checkout experience from the ground up.
We worked on Archiduchesse's checkout upgrade in this context. The old checkout was functional but constrained: limited customization, no ability to add brand-specific elements, no space to add trust signals or urgency cues within the checkout flow itself.
The new system allows checkout extensions, custom UI blocks, and much deeper control over the checkout experience without forking the codebase. What we changed:
The visual identity is now consistent all the way through checkout. Typography, colors, and spacing match the rest of the site rather than defaulting to Shopify's generic interface. For a brand where the product and packaging are premium, a checkout that looks like it belongs to a different company was a credibility gap.
We added a delivery information block early in the flow, surfacing the information customers most want to see before entering their card details: shipping times, free shipping thresholds, and the return policy in one sentence. In our experience, the number one reason people abandon checkout is uncertainty, not price. Answering the questions they have in their head before they ask them keeps them moving forward.
Most CRO advice focuses on the cart and checkout. In practice, the product page is where many conversions are lost, for reasons that are surprisingly consistent across stores.
Size and variant selection that creates doubt. If a customer is not sure which size to pick, they leave. Not always because the size guide is missing, but because it is hard to find, formatted for print rather than screens, or not connected to the actual product dimensions. A size guide that answers "which size should I order" rather than just showing a chart converts better than one that does not.
Photography that does not sell the product in context. We see this constantly on well-designed stores: beautiful studio photography that shows the product cleanly but does not help the customer imagine owning it. For Ile Bleue, whose products are worn and used in specific contexts, adding lifestyle images showing the products in actual use alongside the studio shots made a measurable difference to add-to-cart rates. Customers want to see what they are buying in the world, not just in a lightbox.
Reviews placed where they cannot be seen. Social proof works, but only if it is positioned where purchase hesitation actually occurs. Most themes place reviews at the bottom of the product page, below the fold, below the description, below everything. We move them closer to the add-to-cart button, because that is where doubt lives.
When we look at a Shopify store for conversion issues, we are not running a heatmap for three weeks before doing anything. We look at a short list of high-impact areas that cover the majority of what we find in practice.
Cart abandonment rate by device: mobile cart abandonment is almost always higher, and the gap tells you where to prioritize.
Checkout completion rate by traffic source: customers coming from email convert at a very different rate than customers coming from paid social. If one is dramatically lower, the problem is usually trust, not friction.
Product page scroll depth: how far down do users read before they decide? If they are not reaching the add-to-cart button, the problem is above it.
Time in checkout by step: where in the checkout flow do people stop? Most exits happen at the address step or the payment step. Each has different causes and different fixes.
The goal is not to optimize everything. It is to identify the two or three changes that will move the needle most, implement them cleanly, and measure the result before moving on.
A store's conversion rate is not just a commercial metric. It is a signal of how well the buying experience matches the quality of the product.
If the product is excellent and the checkout feels generic, rushed, or confusing, the customer does not only fail to convert. They arrive at their first order with a lower expectation of what they are about to receive.
Getting the checkout right is not just about the percentage. It is about the customer starting their relationship with the brand on the right note.
We work on Shopify stores for brands that take their commercial performance as seriously as their design. If you want to talk about what could be improved on yours: bonjour@dellamattia.com.