Why we created Checkout Segments
Every customer arrives at checkout with a different story. Some have bought from a brand for years. Others are placing their first order. Some arrive after searching for a specific product, while others discover a brand through social media, email or an AI-powered recommendation. Yet those customers often arrive at the same checkout experience.
In late 2025, we started exploring what it would take to bring the personalisation merchants already use on their storefront into checkout. Instead of running out of extension targets and managing dozens of conditional rendering settings across blocks, could merchants show customers content and offers based on who they are and what’s in their cart, while still keeping control of the experience in Shopify’s checkout editor?
That idea became Checkout Segments.
Building the foundations
We knew that giving merchants more control over checkout was only part of the problem. They also needed to understand how those experiences performed.
Throughout 2026, we upgraded and extended the infrastructure behind Checkout Components, including how we store and process data across stores. This work gave us a foundation for more detailed analytics and personalised checkout experiences at scale.
We introduced a new analytics dashboard, giving merchants a clearer view of their checkout funnel, component performance and upsell results.
We then introduced A/B testing, followed by the ability to explore checkout performance across customer segments. Each release brought us closer to the same goal: helping merchants understand not just how their checkout performs overall, but how it performs for different customers.
Putting the customer first
Checkout Segments lets merchants start by defining who an experience is for. They can use Shopify customer segments or build audiences using rules relevant to their business.
They can then choose the components each segment should see and set their priority. Merchants remain in control of where content appears in Shopify’s checkout editor. Checkout Components determines which eligible experience to show, with a default for customers who don’t match a more specific segment.
The same position in checkout can show a relevant upsell, message or piece of content to different customers, without requiring a separate checkout layout for every audience. Merchants can also preview the experience for a segment in the editor.
Built with merchants
We worked closely with merchants throughout development, testing Segments against real checkout setups and using their feedback to refine it.
Boody wanted to show customers relevant complementary products based on their cart. Someone buying bras could see an underwear offer, while someone buying underwear could see a bra offer.
“One of our key initiatives at Boody is ensuring we're serving the right products to the right customers at the right time. We were lucky enough to trial Checkout Components' new Segments feature ahead of its launch, and we're thrilled with the results! It's allowed us to deliver more relevant, personalised product recommendations at checkout, creating a better shopping experience for our customers while driving stronger cross-selling performance.”
Working through that setup also helped us improve the rules themselves. A returns-cover product could cause an otherwise eligible cart to fall outside a product-based segment. We introduced product exceptions so merchants could account for items like this when defining an audience; as well as price range restrictions to ensure products being recommended were aligned in value to the customers carts.
From 12 October to 4 November, the three targeted Boody upsells generated 93 add-to-carts from 4,121 impressions, a 2.26% rate up from 0.95%.
A more relevant checkout
As customer journeys become more varied, checkout should be able to respond to that context. A first-time customer may need different information from a returning customer. A shopper with a particular product in their cart may be more receptive to a relevant recommendation than a generic offer.
Checkout Segments brings together the work we’ve done across analytics, testing and personalisation, giving Shopify Plus merchants more control over the experience they create for each customer.
We’re excited to see what merchants build with it.
Blake Waldron
A software engineer with over a decade in ecommerce and 400 Shopify builds delivered under his leadership at a Shopify Platinum Partner. Created Checkout Components out of pure passion which now supports over 600 Shopify Plus stores around the world.
