A Checkout Built for Better Conversion

With the focus often on the design of your shop (colors, fonts, etc.) or the logistics of creating products and shipping out orders, your online store’s checkout flow may be the last thing on your mind. That’s cool, we’ve been thinking about it on your behalf. Big Cartel has added refinement and features to keep your customers cruising towards that order confirmation page.

Here’s how Big Cartel has optimized your checkout experience:

• Expanded payment methods, including popular “buy now, pay later” options

• Fewer clicks to get from cart to completed checkout

• Custom domains throughout checkout

• Autofill customer payment info when possible

• Discount field earlier in checkout

• View order summary and total earlier in checkout

Expanded payment methods

Combine your Big Cartel shop with Stripe as a payment processor for their minimal checkout experience, which looks right at home on your site. And now Stripe includes the option to offer more than just credit card processing for your customers. Your store can offer a “buy now, pay later” (or BNPL) option like Afterpay. More than 70% of businesses using BNPL report higher conversions, bigger average order value, and more customer acquisitions. Stores using Stripe will automatically have Afterpay/Clearpay switched on (if located in Australia, Canada, France, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom, or the United States), or you can change up the options from your Stripe admin.

And the good news keeps on coming: Apple Pay and Google Pay are now automatically switched on when you connect a Big Cartel store to Stripe, and Microsoft Pay is also available with a few quick clicks in your Stripe admin.

Fewer clicks to get from cart to completed checkout

We won’t get too deep in the weeds on this, but market research shows that a shopper is more likely to complete their purchase if there are fewer clicks from “Add to cart” to “Your order is complete.” So we’ve taken a fresh look at our checkout flow and streamlined the whole process.

Custom domains throughout checkout

With our old checkout, your customer would start in your store, then switch to a checkout.bigcartel.com URL. Not a big deal, but it was a small detail that stood in the way of some functionality like getting your products added to Google Shopping, or following a shopper via Meta Pixel all the way from social post to order completion.

Now your custom domain will persist as the URL from your storefront all the way through order confirmation. It opens the door for better integrations, and it’s a more cohesive experience for your brand.

Autofill customer payment info

When you use Stripe as your payment processor, their technology assists shoppers as they complete purchases and autofills payment details as possible. The result is a quicker checkout that reduces roadblocks for your customer as they place their order.

Discount field, order summary, and total shown earlier in checkout

Shoppers like to know exactly what they’ll be spending in your shop as soon as possible. So we’ve moved up the order summary, discount field, and order total near the top of the checkout page. Your customers don’t have to scroll or wait and wonder if they’re comfortable with the final price. Instead, they know the details upfront and can confidently move forward with the purchase.

How do you get all of these new checkout features?

We’re rolling out the new checkout to Big Cartel stores starting now. There’s nothing you need to do on your side, except make sure that your store is connected to Stripe if you’d like to access Afterpay or other specific payment options.