Retailers can’t win hearts by innovating the checkout experience, but companies can build an Amazon-like checkout that actually converts.
Retailers often seek innovative ways to differentiate themselves. For many, this means rethinking customer interactions at every stage of the journey, from browsing to checkout.
But, as Rainbow Shops Vice President of Digital and E-Commerce David Cost said on a recent episode of The Frictionless Experience, "Checkout is not the place you want to innovate".
Instead, Rainbow Shops found success by simplifying the checkout process, focusing on the customer's mobile-first needs, and leveraging proven solutions like Shopify and Shop Pay to remove customer friction at checkout.
Here is why retailers should rethink innovation in checkout, how Rainbow Shops transformed their checkout experience, and the importance of a mobile-first strategy for their audience.
In e-commerce, a smooth checkout process is a piece of delivering a frictionless experience.
David notes that checkout isn't a place for retailers to differentiate themselves but rather an area where friction must be minimized. He explains:
Innovative checkout experiments often add unnecessary complexity, frustrating customers instead of delighting them.
For Rainbow Shops, the decision to migrate to Shopify was rooted in recognizing the importance of simplicity. Shopify's standardized checkout, supported by Shop Pay, provided a seamless experience that closely mirrored the frictionless transactions Amazon customers have come to expect.
Rainbow Shops' journey toward an optimized checkout experience wasn't without challenges. Initially operating on Demandware, the company faced a common problem: overly complex, customized checkouts that hindered efficiency.
David reflects:
"Every Demandware site had a dramatically different checkout experience… The only thing that did was introduce a bunch of complexity and make your checkout brittle and make it break."
The shift to Shopify's standardized platform solved these issues.
One standout feature was Shop Pay, which allowed Rainbow Shops to benefit from Shopify's extensive merchant network.
David explains:
"Shopify has a checkout that was as close as you could get to Amazon without being Amazon… It's one of these problems in the internet world that you can only solve with scale."
With Shop Pay's digital wallet functionality, returning customers could check out with just a six-digit code sent via text, significantly reducing friction.
Understanding their audience was key to Rainbow Shops' success.
With over 90% of its traffic coming from mobile devices, the company's mobile-first strategy was not just a trend but a necessity.
David explains:
"Our customers have always been mobile-first because essentially it's the only computing device they own… That smartphone is their access to the digital world."
This insight has shaped Rainbow Shops' approach to e-commerce. From ensuring an intuitive mobile app experience to optimizing their website for small screens, every decision has been made with mobile users in mind.
Importantly, their audience is almost evenly split between Android and iOS users, and Rainbow Shops is careful to avoid favoring one platform over the other.
For Rainbow Shops, a native app was crucial for their audience. While hybrid solutions are often cost-effective, they don't always meet customer expectations.
David shares:
"We moved from something that was more on the custom end to more on the hybrid, if not browser wrap end, and people actually saw the bandwidth usage and called customer service."
These insights, directly from customer feedback, highlighted the importance of native apps for reducing data usage and improving usability.
This move wasn't just about convenience. Many of Rainbow Shops' customers use limited data plans and rely on cached data within native apps to reduce their bandwidth usage.
"There was a real kind of usability benefit in the native apps, not something that we would have even thought of originally."
The move to Shopify and Shop Pay significantly boosted adoption and improved the checkout experience.
David recalls, "When we launched three years ago… about 20% [of checkouts used Shop Pay]. Today it's one in three, and it continues to grow. It hasn't capped out." This growth underscores the power of a simple and intuitive checkout system in building customer trust and loyalty.
The results go beyond numbers. Rainbow Shops' shift to a frictionless checkout aligns with the broader customer expectation set by retail giants like Amazon. As David notes:
Retailers often underestimate the importance of simplicity in checkout.
However, as David points out:
Rainbow Shops' experience highlights the real benefits of a standardized, intuitive system. By focusing on removing friction rather than innovating unnecessarily, they've created a checkout experience that is fast, reliable, and trusted by their customers.
Rainbow Shops' success with Shopify and Shop Pay offers valuable lessons for retailers:
Rainbow Shops' journey illustrates that winning in e-commerce doesn't require reinventing the wheel—especially at checkout. By prioritizing simplicity, embracing mobile-first strategies, and leveraging scalable solutions like Shopify and Shop Pay, they've built an experience that removes customer friction and drives more conversions.
As David puts it, "Turns out, checkout is not the place you want to innovate."
Retailers looking to replicate Rainbow Shops' success should take this insight to heart and focus on creating frictionless, intuitive shopping experiences that meet their customers where they are.