By Jayden Grayston · MoreConversions · From our database of 1,000+ A/B tests across $50M to $300M DTC Shopify brands

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How to use this playbook

13 checkout optimizations, ordered by revenue impact. Ship the admin toggles today. The UI Extensions over the next 3 days.

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On this page

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Want to see examples first? Jump to Beautiful checkouts we've recently designed at the bottom for 5 brands: Duvin, Ethique, Inessa Wellness, Mugsy, Kith.

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What you'll get when you run this

This is the exact checkout rebuild we shipped on a 9-figure Plus brand. Without changing traffic or offers, checkout CVR climbed 25% and held through 30 days post-launch.

🧱 13 named optimizations. Every Checkout UI Extension and Branding API change in the stack. Ordered by revenue impact, with admin paths or code targets for each.

📈 Per-optimization lift bands. The realistic CVR or AOV delta from our $50M to $300M client work.

🧪 The Sandbox deep-dive. What you can ship via Shopify's checkout sandbox that the off-the-shelf apps don't.

📋 A DIY checklist. Tick optimizations off day by day as you ship them.


Why most Plus brands waste the $2,500/mo

Most brands pay $2,500/mo for Shopify Plus, drop 2 icons into checkout, and call it a day. If they bothered to turn checkout extensibility on at all.

The upgrade was supposed to be the whole point. Checkout extensibility opens specific surfaces that the default theme can't touch. Each one moves a needle: friction reduction, trust, urgency, AOV, retention. Compound across all of them and the lift adds up to the 25%+ range on a baseline Plus checkout.

What actually happens at most Plus brands:

The dev team flipped extensibility on a year ago. Ran a color swap. Dropped two trust icons in. Marked the migration done. The rest of the surfaces stayed default. The CRO program kept testing PDPs and never touched the highest-intent screen in the funnel.

This playbook is the inverse. We start with the surface where the buyer is closest to converting and rebuild every part of it.


Setup: prereqs (5 minutes to confirm)