How to Improve Shopping Experiences with Rebuy's Checkout Optimization Suite

Updated November 2023

• The checkout experience begins early. It initiates when customers interact with their shopping cart, as their actions in the cart influence their entire purchasing journey, including the post-purchase stage.
• Optimizing the checkout process matters. Crafting a seamless and enjoyable shopping journey, addressing objections, and offering incentives can significantly impact conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
• Introducing Rebuy's Checkout Optimization Suite. Rebuy's Checkout Optimization Suite, comprising Smart Cart™, Checkout Extensions, and Post-Purchase Offers, is a holistic solution for Shopify Plus merchants looking to enhance the checkout experience, drive sales, build trust, and inspire customer loyalty.

Question: When does the checkout experience begin? (Hint: It’s not the checkout page.)

For many Shopify Plus merchants, the checkout page is sacred ground. It's where customers make the final decision to purchase and is often the last opportunity to capture revenue.

As an ecommerce operator, you get to design a checkout experience that guides your customers through a frictionless buying process and inspires repeat purchases.

But what if we told you that the “checkout experience” starts before the checkout page? 

Below, you’ll learn why the checkout experience includes more than just your checkout page. 

Then, you’ll learn why it’s so important to craft an ideal customer journey with an optimized checkout experience in mind. 

Finally, you’ll meet a powerful suite of revenue-boosting tools to help you create an optimized checkout experience that drives sales, builds trust, and inspires customers to come back again and again.

Table of Contents

• The Checkout Experience
• Where Does the Checkout Experience Begin?
• Part of the Ideal Customer Journey
• Introducing the Checkout Optimization Suite
• From Cart Flyout to Quick Checkout
• Build Loyalty with Post-Purchase Offers
• Personalize the Order Status and Thank You Page with Content Blocks
• Rebuy's Checkout Optimization Suite: The Ultimate Checkout Strategy

Setting the Stage: The Crucial Checkout Experience

In the world of modern commerce, where customers have countless options at their fingertips, optimizing your checkout process is paramount. 

Doing so creates a seamless and enjoyable shopping experience that guides customers through the buying process, reduces cart abandonment, and motivates them to return. 

But historically, when we think of the “checkout experience,” we often imagine the checkout page—the single web page where a customer enters payment details and completes their order. 

Undoubtedly, the checkout page is a critical part of any online shop. But the checkout experience actually begins before a customer ever sees it. 

Consider the following reasons for abandoning checkout:

Keep reading to learn how to address many of these reason preemptively. And positively influence checkout behavior (and conversions) before your customer ever sees the checkout page. 

So Where Does the Checkout Experience Actually Begin? 

The shopping cart.

It’s not hard to imagine. When your customer engages with the cart, they’re already dreaming about checking out and receiving their merchandise.

Think about it this way: what happens in the cart does not stay in the cart!

Because the checkout experience carries over onto the checkout page, the post-purchase offer, and finally, through to the order status / thank you page. And so, once the customer engages with your shopping cart, the checkout experience is only beginning.

The question is: How do you start optimizing your checkout experience for maximum conversions and customer satisfaction?

The answer is: Curate a thoughtful purchasing journey for your customers.

The Checkout Experience: Part of the Ideal Customer Journey

You've likely given some thought to enhancing the customer journey for your online store. After all, a seamless customer experience brings numerous advantages to your brand and your customers.

Today we're focusing on one aspect of the customer journey: the checkout experience.

Do these thoughts keep you up at night?

• 🎢  How can we make bank despite the economic rollercoasters? 
• 🦄 Which is easier: building the perfect customer journey or finding a unicorn? 
• 🤖 How can we automate…everything?

You probably understand that a successful checkout experience is a delicate balance between data and design. 

And you likely obsess over any proposed change to your checkout process that might impact your conversions.

So, to overcome these challenges, we’re excited to introduce you to your new secret weapon—a toolkit designed to optimize your checkout experience, grow your profits, and build customer loyalty even your mother would envy.

Introducing Rebuy's Checkout Optimization Suite

Creating a seamless and enjoyable checkout experience is crucial for maximizing conversions and customer satisfaction. 

Sound hard? It can be.

The good news is this—you can easily optimize the entire checkout experience using the Rebuy Checkout Optimization Suite.

These three Rebuy products are known collectively as the Checkout Optimization Suite. 

• Smart Cart™
• Checkout Extensions
• Post-Purchase Offers

Let's get a look at each one individually. Then, we’ll look at how each solution works together to create an amazing checkout experience for your Shopify Plus store.

Smart Cart: Enhancing Customer Engagement

Our intelligent flyout-style shopping cart operates efficiently around the clock, transitioning passive browsers into devoted, long-term customers.

Fueled by advanced AI technology and fully customizable to align seamlessly with your brand identity, it serves as a trusted ally for every shopper.

Rebuy Smart Cart™: Here's What's New

June 2024 Release: Explore new and improved Smart Cart features that deliver greater usability and even more Rebuy-powered merchandising for your Shopify or Shopify Plus store.

Checkout Extensions: Elevating the Shopping Experience

Having accumulated items in their cart, customers move through the consideration stage as purchase intent climbs. This is the pivotal moment when shoppers commit to their purchase decisions.

Think of Rebuy Checkout Extensions as the candy rack at your local grocer, offering customers the chance to grab extra goodies just before completing their purchase. These offers can introduce customers to products they didn't initially know they wanted.

For example, customers often visit Lululemon to pick up shirts and shorts. Offering a sweatband on the checkout page might be the perfect complement to their new shirt. 

Rebuy Checkout Extensions provide opportunities to upsell items that can push customers above the free shipping threshold, boost AOV (average order value), and increase the profitability of the order.

Post-Purchase Offers: Sustaining Customer Satisfaction

Once the checkout is complete, purchase intent is at its peak, and your customers are excited about their purchase. This often-overlooked golden moment is the ideal occasion to prolong the celebration.

Rebuy Post-Purchase Offers helps you do this with irresistible upsell and cross-sell options, meticulously personalized for each new customer, ensuring they continue to explore and engage with your offerings.

Rebuy Smart Cart, Checkout Extensions, Post-Purchase Offers, and Content Blocks are designed to work together—the whole is greater than the sum of thier parts.

This party of four can move customers through the purchase journey from Consideration to Conversion to Retention, delivering AOV increases of up to 30%. 📈🚀 

Seamless Transition: From Cart Flyout to Quick Checkout

With over 35 pre-built integrations and 16 native features, Rebuy Smart Cart™ is the only all-in-one shopping cart complete with AI proven to grow AOV, increase conversions, and extend CLV (customer lifetime value) out of the box.

Overview of Rebuy Smart Cart

The Smart Cart does three important things to guide your shoppers through the consideration stage and safely onto the checkout page. 

• Builds trust 
• Overcomes objections 
• Offers incentives

Build Trust

If your cart is a bit old school, with an outdated design, complicated interface, and static content—or if it’s just not serving customers like it should—building trust won’t be easy. 

But with Smart Cart, your customers can confidently glide through the consideration stage with ease. The intuitive design is reassuring. And the hyper-personalized product recommendations align with your customers’ preferences and shopping habits. 

Don’t forget to build a winning product recommendation strategy. Choosing a strategy that resonates with your customers not only builds trust but also increases customer loyalty. (And significantly boosts your sales.)

Soon, your customers will be trusting you with their passwords. (Well, at least their credit cards.) Let’s face it. It’s just easier to build trust with your customers when the shopping experience feels unique to them. 

• 80% of consumers are more inclined to do business with you if you deliver tailored experiences 
• 90% of consumers want a personalized shopping experience

Overcome Objections

We all have reservations about pulling out the credit card from time to time. Your shoppers do, too. The challenge is to overcome those objections early in the process. 

Fear not. Smart Cart Apps are powerful cart integrations that fit perfectly into the cart and address almost any objection your customers may have. These app integrations align the shopping experience with your brand values and those of your customers.

Think about your customer base. What are their common objections to buying from your store? What do they value? What do they typically need to move from shopping cart to checkout?

Chances are good there’s a Smart Cart App to help you overcome objections.

Overcoming your customers’ objections can be challenging. Especially online and asynchronously. But with Smart Cart Apps, you can address all their needs early in the process. So by the time your shopper hits the checkout page, they’ve already whipped out their card and started entering payment details.

Offer Incentives

You’ve built trust with personalized product recommendations and an intuitive cart flyout. You’ve overcome objections with Smart Cart Apps. 

But believe it or not, some shoppers still need a nudge. A little something extra to sweeten the deal before they drop their hard-earned cash.

That’s when you reach for a targeted incentive (or two) to guide your customer to checkout. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say a segment of your customers aren’t committing to your coffee subscription, and only return sporadically to buy your specialty coffee. What’s your strategy? 

Buy More Save More was designed for this very scenario. 

The fact is, consumers are more likely to engage with your brand if it offers incentives. In fact, 78% of consumers prefer to access rewards and incentives online and want them immediately. That’s why we’ve built Smart Cart with powerful incentive mechanisms like the Multi-Tier Progress Bar, Gift With Purchase, and Buy More Save More, to name a few. 

Now, you may be thinking, “How will I know which incentives work best?”

Well, for those of you who like to really nerd out, you can use our A/B Testing tool to test up to 10 carts. See which Smart Cart Apps, features, or incentives perform best for your customer base. You can even test out unique data sources to create hyper-personalized experiences for customers.

So go ahead. Build trust, overcome objections, and gamify the checkout experience with Smart Cart. Then, watch as Smart Cart escorts more and more customers along the buying journey. 

Optimize the Checkout Page

Clicking through to the checkout page strongly signals that they’re interested in buying from your store. Purchase intent is surging! 

Can you keep them engaged and add even more value?

You can with Rebuy Checkout Extensions. to inspire more spending, that's how!

Must-haves at this stage:

1. A transition from the cart that feels natural and consistent.
2. Timely and personalized last-minute recommendations.
3. A frictionless payment process that makes it easy to check out.

For more tips, read our article on how to optimize your checkout page. 

Build Loyalty With Post-Purchase Offers

Congratulations! Your customer has successfully completed their order. But the checkout experience isn’t over yet. The third stage of the checkout experience is focused on retention.

Purchase intent is peaking and your new customer is excited about their new merchandise. Now, it’s time to capitalize on that excitement. This is your chance to build loyalty, boost retention, and go above and beyond to inspire your new customers to come back soon.

In the post-purchase stage, you have 100% of your customer's attention. 

The question is, what are you going to do with it? 

Cue Rebuy Post-Purchase Offers. 

This powerful post-purchase solution pulls up quick to capture customer attention and maintain excitement for a moment longer. It extends the checkout experience in two ways: by rewarding trust and starting a loyalty loop.

Reward Trust

Your customer trusts your brand and has made a purchase at your shop. Congratulations! But don’t wave goodbye just yet. While they’re still high on the buying experience, follow up with an AI-powered post-purchase offer as a reward for choosing your brand. 

Post-purchase offers are sales offers presented to customers immediately after they make a purchase (but before the Thank You Page).

The moment after an order is placed and before your customer leaves your store is full of buying opportunities. For example, you could run a post-purchase flow based on complementary products, then click to activate a second promotional flow for BFCM.

💡 Pro Tip: You can run multiple post-purchase flows concurrently for up to ten customer segments. 

Start an Instant Loyalty Loop

A loyalty loop is the journey a customer takes from discovering your brand for the first time to becoming a loyal customer. It’s based on the “pay it forward” philosophy. If you treat your customers well enough, they’ll be loyal to your brand. 

An effective loyalty loop drives consistent revenue growth, grows your customer base, and encourages return visits. In fact, you can shorten the time to your customer’s next purchase to seconds with data-driven post-purchase offers that complement the original order. With a one-click conversion process, customers can add an extra item and complete their order without skipping a beat.

As you know, retention is a critical part of a successful online business strategy. And an effective post-purchase strategy offers all sorts of benefits including better retention and customer loyalty.

But how do you know which post-purchase offers will enhance the checkout experience the most? 

Turn Data Into Dollars with A/B Testing

Rebuy Post Purchase is equipped with built-in A/B testing tool so you can dial in the perfect offer strategy. Effortlessly assign custom traffic weight giving your team flexibility to answer your business questions while still having complete control of your bottom line. You can even automate the winner selection, so once a winning recommendation is determined, it’s automatically activated and live on your site. 

Learn more about Rebuy Post Purchase Offers.

Personalize the Order Status / Thank You Page with Content Blocks

In the final stage of the checkout experience, your customer views the Thank You Page to confirm their order is complete. This page doubles as the Order Status Page (OSP) if and when the customer returns to track the status of their order while it's en route.

With the introduction of Content Blocks, you can now add custom text content to these two critical stages of the checkout experience:

• Checkout Page
• Order Status / Thank You Page

Content Blocks is an enhancement to Rebuy Checkout Extensions and offers a new way to add content to the checkout process.

For example, you can create a compelling super title, title, and description within these content blocks to express gratitude to your customers, offer additional insights about your business, or showcase any information you'd like to convey.

This capability enhances the checkout experience for your customers, further solidifying their connection to your brand.

✍️ Note: Your Shopify store must be on Shopify Plus with checkout extensions active to use Content Blocks. For more information, check out our Content Blocks Overview.

Why Using Rebuy's Checkout Optimization Suite is the Ultimate Checkout Strategy

While Rebuy Smart Cart, Checkout Extensions, and Post Purchase work well individually, this powerful trio is designed to work together to help you achieve even greater results year-round.

1. Fortify Your Revenue: Navigate Economic Turmoil With Confidence

As a merchant, you’re likely to face a number of challenges in the next 24 months. The rising cost of goods. Inflation. Supply chain issues. Economic uncertainty. Decreasing consumer demand. The list goes on. Rebuy’s Checkout Optimization Suite helps you grow through economic turbulence, automating AI-powered personalization for your shop and boosting AOV, retention, and CLV (customer lifetime value).

2. Designed for Scaling Brands: Simplify, Maximize, Optimize

Scaling your ecommerce brand can feel like a juggling act with a dozen balls in the air. That's where the multi-layered Checkout Optimization Suite comes into play. It simplifies your tech stack and supercharges your remaining apps, allowing you to seamlessly integrate them throughout the checkout experience. This means revenue growth, optimized business operations, and site improvements through A/B testing and strategic feature deployment.

3. More Than Just Dollars: Enjoy Added Benefits

What if your ecommerce setup did more than just generate revenue? What if it reduced costs, prevented overstock nightmares, boosted Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), fostered customer loyalty, and amped up engagement throughout the entire checkout process? With the Checkout Optimization Suite, it's not just possible; it's a reality.

4. Data Synergy: The Power of AI

Imagine if your AI algorithms could communicate, share, and use data effectively. Now, they can. When used in tandem, this mighty trio produces highly personalized and relevant offers that practically scream, "Buy me!"

5. Unified Customer Experience: Seamless Shopping

The Checkout Optimization Suite helps your customers smoothly transition from cart to checkout and finally to post purchase, with irresistibly personalized offers along the way. This creates a seamless, fluid journey that leaves them wanting more. With this unified approach, you can bid farewell to cart abandonment woes.

6. Lifetime Value Increase: Beyond the Purchase

Finally, let's take a quick minute to highlight the importance of upsells and cross-sells on CLV. By strategically implementing hyper-personalized upsells and cross-sells across all stages of the checkout experience, your business can significantly increase its AOV. But it doesn't stop there. You'll also boost retention and CLV, turning one-time shoppers into loyal brand enthusiasts.

Optimize the Checkout Experience with Rebuy

From the moment your customers interact with their shopping cart, the checkout experience takes shape. And now, with the Checkout Optimization Suite in your arsenal, crafting the perfect checkout experience becomes a breeze.

By combining the power of Rebuy Smart Cart, Checkout Extensions, and Post-Purchase Offers, you'll unlock a seamless, personalized, and branded shopping experience your customers want. Because it's not just about revenue; it's also about fostering unwavering customer loyalty to your brand.

Interested in partnering with Rebuy? Let's do it.

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