When customers fill out a shipping form to buy a product, it's important that you ask them only the information you absolutely need.

Customizing your shipping form is one of the ways to optimize your checkout page experience based on your business needs and target audience. We inherit many great features from top eComm platforms in the country-based shipping form, but also enable multiple customization options. For example, you can delete the fields you don’t need, change their order or add custom fields.

1. The default Shopify address form

The default form is the one you see in your Shipping section. The customization options are limited with the default form. In the preview mode, the Email and Phone fields are not displayed. If you want to see the full default shipping form, you can use the preview mode in the customization settings.

Default shipping form

There are different kinds of previews available:

By device. See how the form is displayed on mobile and desktop devices by clicking the icons on top of the form preview.
By country. Change the base country the form is displayed for. It will change the fields, for example the form for the USA will have States, while the form for Italy will have Provinces.

Note: The default form is active until you create at least one custom shipping form. You can’t delete the default form.

If you want to limit the list of countries which your buyers can select on the checkout page, you can do this in Countries section. You can find it in the bottom left corner of your interface. Please save the default form after introducing changes.

2. Create a custom shipping form

A custom shipping form is a static form you can create for your specific business needs. With our shipping form editor, you will be able to define which standard fields should be displayed, how they should be ordered, and much more.

2.1 Create a custom shipping form

To create a new custom shipping form:

Go to the Shipping tab.
Click Create new shipping form +.
Choose either a form from scratch or select a base country form.
If you start from scratch, you will see no preselected fields. Selecting a base country will get you started with a Shopify shipping form for the selected country, with all the specific fields and typical address logic.

Two ways to create a shipping form

If you create a custom form from scratch, it will be set for all countries. To limit the number of countries in the dropdown of the "Country" field, you’ll need to define the locations for which this shipping form will be displayed. Click the Edit countries button at the bottom of the left panel and make your selection.

With such settings, this custom form will be displayed only for the US customers

Important: if you create several custom shipping forms for different countries, all of them will be listed in the "Country" dropdown.

2.2 Reorder the fields

To change the order of the fields in the shipping form, you can drag and drop points in the menu on the left. Just drag them to set the order you’d like to see.

Reorder the fields so that the form makes more sense to your customers

2.3 Delete the fields

To delete the fields, go to the menu on the left and click the field you want to remove. You will see a bin icon. Click it to remove the field.

Click the field to remove it

For example, you can remove the address and some other related fields if you sell digital products and only need an email.

Important: Shopify requires any shipping form to have at least 1 required contact field (email or phone number). They use this info to create customer profiles in their databases.

If you choose to delete the email field, you’ll need to change the setting on Shopify so that it identifies your customers with a phone number and saves this property. Go to the Shopify admin panel > Settings > Checkout > Customer contact. Select the option “Customers can check out using either their phone number or email.”

For Shopify to identify your user by phone if they leave only their phone number, allow using the phone number to check out in the default checkout settings

3. Customize selected fields

You can edit all the elements by selecting them and adjusting them from the menu on the right. In this section, we’ll study how you can edit the fields of your shipping form.

Currently, you can:

edit element’s label text
make it required
set up the maximum length
change the element width for the desktop and mobile devices.

3.1 Edit element’s label text

To change the label text:

Select the element.
Edit the text in the menu on the right.

For example, if you don’t like the default label of the Zip code, you can change it to a Postal code.

Edit label text

3.2 Make the field required

If the field is required, your customers won’t finish the purchase without filling it in.

To make the field required:

Select the element on the left panel.
Click the Required toggle.

This setting will make the Last Name field required

3.3 Set up the maximum length

Maximum length toggles limit the input length of the field to avoid typos in the standardized data, like zip codes.

To limit the maximum length of a field:

Select the field on the left panel.
Set the toggle of Max length to active.
Add the maximum field input length.

This setting will limit the Postal code input field to six characters

3.4 Change field’s width

In the layout section of the menu, you can change how much space a field takes: set it to fill 100%, 50%, or 33% of the row. You can adjust the layout if, for example, you see that the Province field looks too small in the desktop version of the checkout.

Note: You can edit the field's width separately for only desktop layout.

To adjust the layout:

Select the element.
In the menu on the right, select two blocks for 50% of the general width. Or even one, if you want it to take up the whole line.
Change the field's width only for the desktop versions of the form.

Drag the lines in the order you want them to be displayed.
Save changes.

4. Add custom fields

Add custom fields to your checkout to collect additional information from your customers, for example, answers to a survey or additional properties for the order. You can also transfer a custom field as a standard address field.

Checkify supports the following five custom field types:

Email
Dropdown
Phone
Number
Text

Checkify transfers the data from the custom fields to the Additional details section of your order on Shopify.

Custom field data in the order’s additional details on Shopify

To create a custom field:

At the top of the left menu, create a new field.
Choose a type of custom field.
Edit the label text.
Set your placeholder, so that customers do not miss the requirements. Without the placeholder, the customers will see the first option.
Add your field options. Once you create an option, you can edit or delete an option in the same menu.
Save changes.

That’s it. Set the form to active if you create a new form, and your customers will fill in the custom fields while checking out.

5. Custom shipping forms and third-party integrations

We give you the maximum flexibility in shipping form customization. However, some third-party apps pull specific information from this form and may not work properly with shortened variants.

Important: We highly recommend you test your integrations right after publishing your custom shipping form.

6. Common issues

🙀 Can I have a separate form for digital products?

Currently, you can customize your form for digital products, but your customers still will see it based on the location you set.

🙀 Can I use third-party integrations that work with shipping forms?

Yes, third-party integrations that pull data from the shipping form will work. So, you’ll be able to connect apps that provide delivery options. However, they mostly rely on having all fields in the form, so check what fields are required so that you don’t remove ones the app requires. We also recommend testing your integrations right after publishing your custom shipping form.

🙀 Can I delete the email field?

Yes, you can. However, in this case, you’ll need to let Shopify identify your customers by their phone number. Go to the Shopify admin panel > Settings > Checkout > Customer contact. Select the option “Customers can check out using either their phone number or email.”

🙀 Can I transfer a custom field to the standard fields?

Yes, you can. Choose the option from the menu on the right to transfer it as a standard shipping address field.