Shopify recently rolled out a new feature inside the Checkout settings page of the admin: personalized recommendations for how you configure customer information fields at checkout. Instead of guessing which settings to use for contact methods, name fields, and other customer data points, eligible stores now see Shopify’s own suggestions based on best practices. New stores are already being set up with these recommended defaults automatically, while existing stores can opt in through the admin.
On the surface, this looks like a minor admin tweak. But if you run a Shopify store and care about marketing performance, retention, or data quality, this update deserves more than a passing glance.
Why This Update Actually Matters
Checkout is the single most reliable moment you have to capture accurate customer information. A shopper who’s already committed to buying is far more likely to give you a real name and a real email address than someone browsing your homepage or filling out a pop-up form. Yet many merchants still run checkout configurations that were set years ago, often defaulting to looser requirements like allowing phone-only contact or skipping full name capture entirely.
Shopify’s recommendation engine is essentially nudging merchants toward configurations that produce cleaner, more usable customer records: email as the primary contact method, and requiring first and last name at minimum. That might sound like a small technical detail, but it has real downstream effects on:
- Email marketing match rates — campaigns and flows depend on having a valid email tied to every order.
- Customer segmentation — full names and consistent contact data make it easier to identify repeat buyers, household accounts, and B2B versus consumer patterns.
- Ad platform matching — tools like Meta and Google rely on customer data quality for audience matching and lookalike modeling; incomplete records reduce match rates.
- Post-purchase personalization — apps and flows that reference a customer’s first name or purchase history only work as well as the data collected at checkout.
Who Should Pay Attention
This isn’t just for large enterprise merchants. Any store that relies on email marketing, retargeting, loyalty programs, or CRM-driven outreach should review these settings. It’s especially relevant for merchants who:
- Migrated to Shopify from another platform and inherited legacy checkout settings that were never revisited
- Rely heavily on SMS or phone-based contact and haven’t standardized around email
- Use third-party CRM or ERP integrations that expect complete, structured customer records
- Run consistent email or SMS campaigns and have noticed inconsistent or incomplete customer names in reporting
If your store falls into any of these categories, it’s worth logging into the Checkout settings page and seeing what Shopify is currently recommending versus what you have configured.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
A few things merchants tend to get wrong when adjusting checkout field settings:
- Applying changes without testing checkout flow. Adding required fields or changing contact methods can affect conversion if not communicated clearly to customers. Always test the updated checkout on desktop and mobile before rolling it out broadly.
- Ignoring downstream integrations. If you have custom CRM or ERP connections pulling checkout data, changing field requirements can affect how that data maps over. This is a good moment to confirm your integrations are still capturing fields correctly, not just assuming they’ll adjust automatically.
- Treating this as a one-time fix. Data quality isn’t a switch you flip once. Checkout settings should be revisited periodically, especially after theme updates, app installations, or platform migrations.
- Assuming Shopify’s default recommendation is automatically right for your business. These are general best-practice suggestions, not a mandate. A B2B store with account-based ordering, for example, may have different requirements than a typical DTC brand.
Where This Fits Into a Bigger Picture
Checkout field configuration is a small piece of a much larger conversation about how well your store’s backend infrastructure supports growth. Stores that have gone through a platform migration — whether from WooCommerce, Magento, or BigCommerce — often carry over settings and assumptions that don’t reflect Shopify’s native capabilities or current best practices. Part of what we do at Turnaround Commerce when handling Shopify migrations is auditing exactly these kinds of settings, along with CRM and ERP integrations, so that customer data flows cleanly from checkout into the systems merchants actually use to run their marketing and operations.
If you’re unsure whether your current checkout configuration is helping or hurting your customer data quality, this update is a reasonable prompt to check. It costs nothing to review the recommendations Shopify is surfacing, and the potential upside — better data for marketing, segmentation, and personalization — is worth the ten minutes it takes to look.
Read more from Shopify: https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/recommended-changes-to-checkout-field-settings-are-now-available