Despite a steady increase in daily website sessions and products added to cart, a significant number of customers were abandoning their purchases at the checkout page. For a cross-border business like Asian Portal, customizing this final step became an urgent priority to address specific customer concerns.
However, since they started with Shopify's Advanced plan when they began operations, Asian Portal couldn't customize the checkout page and were struggling with the inability to provide explanations and suggestions to customers on the checkout page.
They believed the major factors that led to abandoned carts included:
• Limited fields to fully show the total cost: For an international store, there is more than one shipping fee. This limitation in displaying additional shipping costs (VAT, custom duties, etc.) meant customers could not see the total shipping expenses until after entering their full shipping address, leading to sticker shock and abandonment.
• No space to give explanation or offer insurance for high-value items: With the default checkout page, there was no way to explain or offer insurance for high-value products, failing to alleviate customer anxiety about expensive international orders.
• Missed upsell opportunities: They also couldn't customize the checkout page to include upselling offers. With a store that has a vast inventory of nearly 50,000 SKUs, the inability to suggest related or complementary products at checkout meant leaving money on the table.
