Post purchase app: Post-Purchase Checkout Extensions: Now Available for Beta Access

At Shopify, we’ve always focused on providing a world-class commerce experience that keeps up with evolving industry needs and rapidly changing merchant and buyer expectations.

It’s important for us to ensure that the core commerce experience stays fast, reliable, and scalable for our merchants.

At the same time, it’s also critical that we design a system that is flexible enough to accommodate our merchant needs. So if our merchants want to expand their business model by offering subscriptions, or to explore new growth opportunities through other niche commerce experiences, they have a wide range of options built by our partner ecosystem to choose from.

One such example is the post-purchase experience—an interaction between the merchant and buyer that occurs after the purchase is made but before the customer has exited their store. It falls between checkout and the thank-you page, a place where the buyer is highly captive and engaged, and the perfect real estate to offer product upsells, subscription offers, requests for surveys and donations, discount offers for future orders, and more.

We knew that our Shopify ecosystem was full of innovative developers with creativity and expertise around these post-purchase experiences. We also knew that we were best suited to deliver on a fast, reliable, and secure checkout. Bringing the two together, we sought to build an infrastructure that would allow developers to use post-purchase app extensions to build apps that would integrate directly into Shopify Checkout.

Late last year, we worked with select partners to launch the first set of these post-purchase apps. Today, we are excited to announce beta access is open to the entire developer ecosystem, so you can start building post-purchase experiences and support merchant growth directly within Shopify Checkout.

"Today, we are excited to announce beta access is open to the entire developer ecosystem, so you can start building post-purchase experiences and support merchant growth directly within Shopify Checkout."

The post-purchase checkout extension will let you:

Build on Shopify Checkout. Integrate directly with Shopify Checkout, so you can focus on building great post-purchase experiences for your users’ buyers, while Shopify delivers a fast, reliable, and world-class checkout.
Fully integrate with Shopify. Your app will always be compatible with features, API updates, and improvements made to the Shopify platform. Since post-purchase extensions run natively on the Shopify platform, your app will work seamlessly with features like discounts, shipping, reporting, and payments.
Grow merchant businesses. Whether it’s increasing average order value with an upsell offer, gathering critical customer information through surveys, or promotional offers to drive future business, your post-purchase app will play a key role in meeting your merchant’s business objectives and helping them grow.

How post-purchase checkout extensions work

Post-purchase checkout extensions enable developers to build post-purchase experiences directly into Shopify's checkout using a brand-new, Shopify-created technology called App Bridge Checkout. Post-purchase extensions are built with JavaScript or Typescript using App Bridge Checkout components and then pushed to Shopify servers for hosting and publishing.

When a customer completes checkout, the post-purchase checkout extension can conditionally show the post-purchase page. Extensions can use fetch and related globals to make HTTP requests to a server to forward contextual data to obtain an appropriate cross-sell offer, and then render the offer using App Bridge Checkout components. Since the extension is hosted and rendered by Shopify, checkout stays performant, accessible, and consistent.

Building diverse post-purchase experiences

post purchase app: screenshots of mobile and desktop examples of a donation extension to support a community garden fund

The post-purchase checkout extension is rendered on an interstitial page, after the buyer checks out but before they view the thank-you page. There’s a world of possibility with what can be done with this space, and we look forward to seeing the creative ways developers leverage the post-purchase app extension in the beta.

To spark inspiration, here are a few examples of some common use cases for post-purchase app extensions:

Upsells: One of the most common examples of a post-purchase experience, upsell offers typically include suggested products that complement the original purchase and serve to increase average order value. Done at scale, these offers can make a significant revenue contribution to a merchant’s bottom line.
Subscriptions: Customers are most engaged after placing an order, making it a great time to extend the buying experience and reduce churn. Merchants can use subscription offers to surface products that are likely to be repeat purchases and automate the buying process through recurring orders.
Surveys: Merchants can use the post-purchase page to survey their customers, gathering valuable information that can be used as inputs for product, marketing, and merchandising strategy. While it can be difficult to reach a customer through email with a survey request, buyers are often more open to spending a few minutes answering important questions while they’re already actively engaged with the merchant.
Donation requests: The post-purchase canvas can be used to solicit donations to support the business in challenging times like COVID-19, or request support for entirely different organizations such as a preferred charity.
Promotional offers: The post-purchase page can be used to provide discount codes, referral rewards, and other promotional offers for future purchases.
Other important info: Merchants can choose to leverage the post-purchase page in different ways, whether that’s offering links, PDFs, or other information that they need to get in front of their buyers.

It’s clear that the use cases for the post-purchase page are diverse, and that the opportunity to build with the post-purchase app extension is an exciting one. We look forward to seeing these, and even more interesting use cases, surface throughout the beta.

How to get started with post-purchase checkout extensions

Getting started with post-purchase checkout extensions is easy—you can start building your app immediately on a development store today.

Once your app is built and ready for approval, you’ll need to submit it for review (a necessary step for any app launching in the Shopify App Store). Please note that approval is also required for app developers with existing apps looking to add the post-purchase app extension to it.

For more information on getting started, requirements, limitations and more, check out our detailed developer documentation.

Mandy Pardehpoosh