Executive summary
- Eligible stores now see personalized recommendations for customer information settings directly on the Checkout settings page in the Shopify admin.
- More complete customer records improve remarketing reach and identity matching, but every additional required field is a conversion decision, not a free win.
- Most relevant to established merchants whose checkout was configured years ago and has not been revisited since, especially those still using phone based contact.
What changed
Shopify is now surfacing suggested changes to the customer information section of checkout, tailored to the individual store. Typical recommendations include switching the customer contact method to email only, requiring both first and last name, and optionally collecting a phone number on the shipping address. Stores created recently already run these settings by default, so this is largely a catch up mechanism for older configurations.
Nothing is applied automatically. Existing settings remain exactly as they are until someone reviews the recommendations and chooses to apply them, and the change can be reversed from the same page. Treat it as a prompt in the admin rather than a platform change that lands on your checkout without warning.
Why it matters
The contact method setting is the consequential one. When customers can check out with a phone number instead of an email address, a measurable share of orders arrive with no marketable email attached, which quietly caps abandoned checkout recovery, post purchase flows, and list growth. Switching to email only closes that gap on every future order. Requiring first and last name separately also removes a persistent data hygiene problem for teams that push customer records into a CRM or ERP and have been parsing a single name field with guesswork.
The cost side is real and worth measuring. Each required field is friction in the highest intent moment on the site, and merchants running heavily optimised checkouts should not assume the recommended configuration beats the one they arrived at through testing. This is a settings level change, so it sits alongside rather than inside the larger checkout extensibility work most enterprise teams have on their roadmap.
Role-specific impact
- Marketers: moving to email only contact raises the share of orders carrying a marketable identifier, which directly widens flow reach. Capturing an address is not the same as earning permission, so consent handling still governs what you can send.
- Developers: applying recommendations changes the shape of the customer data your integrations receive. Check anything that assumes a phone number is present, anything that splits a combined name string, and any validation that expects Latin script or a two part name.
- Store admins: the recommendations are opt in and reversible, which makes this a change to schedule and measure rather than apply on impulse. Record the current configuration before you touch anything.
Use-case example
Real-world scenario
Take a merchant processing 60,000 orders a quarter with phone or email contact enabled, where roughly 78 percent of orders carry a usable email address. Switching to email only brings that to effectively 100 percent, which puts around 13,000 additional addressable order records into the marketing stack each quarter. The number worth watching on the other side is checkout completion rate: if it moves down by even a third of a point, that is thousands of orders a year, and it belongs in the same calculation as the email gain rather than in a separate report.
Implementation checklist
- Open Checkout settings and read the recommendations in full before applying anything.
- Screenshot or document your current configuration so reverting is trivial.
- Map every proposed field to its downstream consumers: ERP, OMS, CRM, 3PL, and carrier notifications.
- Confirm your name handling copes with single name customers and non Latin scripts.
- Verify marketing consent capture separately, since collecting an email address does not grant permission to market to it.
- Apply during a low traffic window, never during an active promotion or peak trading.
- Track checkout completion rate and support ticket volume for at least two weeks after the change.
- Log the change in your release notes so a future conversion dip has a documented cause to check against.
FAQ
Q: Can these recommendations change our checkout without us acting?
A: No. Existing settings stay in place unless someone applies the recommendations, and the change is reversible from the same settings page.
Q: Does email only contact method undermine our SMS programme?
A: It changes the default collection point, not your ability to collect numbers. If SMS carries real revenue, capture the number and consent deliberately rather than relying on the checkout contact field to do it.
Resources
Shopify's guide to editing the checkout form options documents each contact method and customer information setting.
Need guidance? Talk to Makro.