The Future of Checkout: Leveraging AI to Personalise the Shopify Journey

We've all heard it by now. AI is going to change everything. Your uncle's told you about it at a family dinner because "that Google bit at the top" gave him an answer about his dodgy knee. Your mate's using it to plan holidays. Your boss has dropped it into at least three meetings this month and you're being asked to write blogs about it.

But here's the question I keep coming back to..

Will AI actually change the way we shop?

Not just the way we ask google for answers for things…it's already doing that but the full end to end experience of finding a product, deciding it's right, and hitting buy?

Shopify (and lots of others) seems to think so. And honestly, the more I look at what they're building, the more I agree.

At Yoyo, we're seeing this play out in real time. More and more of our clients particularly in the charity sector are looking at how they can bring their in store shops presence online. Not just listing products on eBay or Vinted, but genuinely thinking about how they get found, whether they should have their own storefront, and how they compete in a landscape where AI is increasingly deciding what gets recommended to shoppers.

The tools Shopify is rolling out don't require you to be a developer to use them. If you're already comfortable asking ChatGPT a question, or getting Gemini to summarise something, or using Claude to help draft an email then the AI features baked into Shopify are going to feel completely normal. It's that same kind of interaction, just pointed at your store.

At Yoyo, we pride ourselves on giving you the tools and knowledge you need to run your site in-house as effectively as possible and Shopify's direction here fits perfectly with that. The platform is doing more of the technical heavy lifting so you can focus on what you actually know best: your customers.

The checkout problem nobody is talking about

If you've spent any time in ecommerce, you'll know the checkout is where the magic happens or doesn't. Globally, around 70% of online shopping sessions end with an abandoned cart (yep AI helped it grab that one). On mobile, it's even worse. That's a staggering amount of revenue left on the table by merchants who've done everything right up to that point.

But here's what I think a lot of people are getting wrong: they're treating checkout optimisation as a purely technical problem. Fewer form fields. Faster page loads. More payment options. And look, all these things matter, for example, Shopify's one-page checkout has driven real conversion lifts for merchants who've adopted it. But they only solve half the puzzle.

The other half? It's psychology. A shopper sitting there with items in their basket isn't necessarily struggling with your UI. They're wrestling with doubt. "What is the returns policy?" "Will it arrive in time?" "Am I actually getting the best deal?" When those questions go unanswered because the answers aren't easy to find, people leave.

I feel this might be where AI is starting to change the game. Not just by making checkout faster, but by making it smarter, answering those doubts contextually, in real time, and at scale.

It's not just about recommendation carousels

When most people hear "AI personalisation," they immediately think of product recommendations or content based on your preferences. And yes, well-implemented recommendation engines can boost conversion rates significantly 25%+ average increases in some cases. But the real opportunity is to personalise the entire checkout flow.

Think about what that actually looks like on Shopify:

Dynamic payment options.

Instead of throwing every payment method at every customer, AI can surface the ones most relevant to each shopper based on their location, device, order value, and past behaviour. A returning customer might see Shop Pay Instalments front and centre. A first-time mobile visitor gets Apple Pay as the primary option. Small shift, big impact.

Contextual trust signals.

Not every shopper needs the same reassurance. Your loyal repeat customer doesn't need to see the returns policy at checkout but a first-time buyer spending over £100 absolutely does. AI can dynamically adjust which trust elements appear and where, based on who's actually checking out.

Adaptive form experiences.

Address auto-fill, smart shipping defaults, pre-selected preferences from previous orders these micro-interactions compound. They turn a checkout that works into one that feels like it was built for that specific person.

Shopify's Checkout Extensibility framework has replaced the old checkout.liquid approach entirely, and it's built to support exactly this kind of AI-driven customisation.

If you haven't migrated yet, that's step one.

Agentic Commerce and why you should care

Now here's where it gets really interesting. Shopify has been rolling out what they're calling "Agentic Storefronts." The idea is that merchants can sell directly inside AI-powered conversations via ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and more. A shopper asks an AI assistant for a recommendation, your product surfaces, and they complete the entire purchase without ever visiting your website.

That's a big shift from "customers come to you" to "you show up wherever they already are."

Shopify has co-developed something called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with Google to standardise how checkout works across these AI surfaces. Elements like discount codes, subscription billing, and loyalty credentials are all handled inside a conversational interface. It's early days, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.

And this is what I mean about the accessibility of it all. You don't need to understand how UCP works under the bonnet. Shopify is doing the heavy lifting so that merchants whether you're a DTC brand or a charity shop getting online for the first time can show up in these AI conversations without writing a line of code.

For Shopify merchants, this means your checkout experience needs to work seamlessly not just on your storefront, but inside AI agents, chat interfaces, and embedded experiences across the web. The brands that start preparing for this now will have a serious head start.

What you can do right now

If you're running a Shopify store and want to get ahead of this, here's where I'd focus:

Get your data house in order.

If you've been to any AI webinar or conference over the last year or so, you'll know AI is only as good as the data feeding it. Are you capturing customer preferences, browsing behaviour, and purchase history cleanly? How does that data flow between your store, your email marketing platform, or any of your third-party apps? This is the foundation everything else sits on.

Embrace checkout extensibility.

If you're still on legacy checkout, migrating to Checkout Extensibility isn't optional anymore it's the baseline for any AI-driven customisation, from dynamic upsells to personalised trust elements.

Start experimenting with AI recommendations at checkout.

Even basic implementations can reduce cart abandonment. The key is relevance, try showing complementary items based on what's actually in the basket, not just your bestsellers or things that need shifting that month.

Prepare your catalogue for agentic commerce.

Rich, structured product data is what AI agents use to surface and recommend products. Populate your metafields, flesh out your product attributes, and make sure your catalogue is thorough. The merchants with the cleanest data will be the ones getting recommended in AI conversations.

Test relentlessly.

A/B test checkout layouts, payment option ordering, trust signal placement. Track conversion rate by segment, not just in aggregate. Small, data-driven tweaks compound into significant revenue gains over time.

The bigger picture

The average ecommerce conversion rate for 2025 sat somewhere between 2% and 3%. That means even well-optimised stores are losing the vast majority of their traffic before a purchase happens. AI-driven personalisation won't magically fix that overnight but it shifts the odds meaningfully.

At Yoyo, we're seeing 2026 as the year AI moves from a "nice-to-have" to a genuine competitive differentiator in Shopify commerce. The checkout is where revenue is won or lost, and personalising that experience intelligently, contextually, at scale, this is how you tip the balance.

First it was cookies. Then the algorithm figured out what you liked. Now checkout is catching up. The future isn't just faster or simpler. It's smarter. And it knows who you are.

What are you seeing in your own Shopify checkout data? Are you experimenting with any of this yet? We would love to hear what's working.

Let's talk