Custom checkout: what it is, how it works and how to create yours

A custom checkout is a payment page configured with your business’s visual identity and sales elements, instead of a default screen that looks the same for everyone. It is not a separate payment system: processing, security and anti-fraud remain the platform’s responsibility. What you gain control over is what the buyer sees in the final seconds of the purchase.

And that is exactly where most sales are lost. The Baymard Institute puts the global average cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, a figure drawn from 50 independent studies and updated in September 2025. In plain terms: out of every ten people who reach your payment page, about seven leave without buying.

Before that sounds discouraging, it’s worth reading the data in full. A good part of that abandonment doesn’t come from lack of money or lack of interest, it comes from friction and distrust on the final screen. These are two problems you can solve by changing settings, without spending money and without depending on anyone on the technical team. That is what this article is about.

What is the difference between custom, transparent and standard checkout?

The difference lies in two axes: where the payment happens and how much of the page you control. A standard checkout takes the buyer outside your environment. A transparent checkout keeps the payment inside your site. A custom checkout is the visual customization layer that can exist in either of the two.

A checkout can be transparent and custom at the same time, and that combination delivers the best result for anyone selling digital products: the buyer doesn’t leave the flow and keeps seeing the same brand from start to finish.

Why does customizing the checkout change your conversion rate?

Because the decision to buy online is, to a large extent, a decision about trust. And trust is built with visual signals.

The cart abandonment survey by Opinion Box shows that, for 57% of Brazilian consumers, knowing the site is trustworthy is the single biggest factor in choosing where to buy. That comes ahead of promotions, cited by 48%, and lower prices, cited by 47%. In other words: looking trustworthy matters more than being cheap.

The CX Trends 2026 study, conducted by Octadesk in partnership with Opinion Box with 2,000 respondents, reinforces the point from another angle: in it, 67% of consumers say they gave up on an online purchase in the past year because of a bad experience, and distrust of the store or fear of scams appears among the main reasons, cited by 56%.

When buyers click to purchase and land on a screen that seems unrelated to what they were looking at, they stop to think. And overthinking at that moment usually turns into giving up.

There is also a simplicity effect. Baymard points out that the ideal checkout flow has seven to eight form fields, while the market average is double that. Every extra field is one more chance to quit. Customizing well, therefore, isn’t about filling the page: it’s about deciding what stays and what goes, something that also applies to your sales page.

What can you customize on a payment page?

The available elements vary by platform. On Hotmart, the Payment Page Appearance tool brings together four configuration groups: appearance, functionality, components and device version. Let’s go step by step.

Visual identity: colors, fonts and background image

This is the foundation. You choose the page’s background color or image and the text font, and you can start from a ready-made template or build yours from scratch.

The practical rule is simple: the checkout should look like a continuation of the previous page. If your sales page is dark and the payment page opens white with a different font, the buyer feels the switch even without being able to explain what changed.

Badges, reviews and testimonials: the trust components

These are the elements that answer the silent question of someone holding a card: can I trust this? On Hotmart, you can display guarantee badges, product reviews and text blocks with testimonials and support channels. If security is a concern for your audience, it also helps to know whether Hotmart is secure and trustworthy.

It’s also possible to enable chat and WhatsApp support on the payment page itself. For higher-ticket digital products, this is usually the component that unlocks the purchase, because doubt stops being a reason to leave the page.

Countdown and exit pop-up: the urgency components

The countdown shows the time remaining on an offer. The exit pop-up appears when the buyer tries to leave the page without completing the purchase, giving them one last reason to reconsider.

Both work, and both wear out if used all the time. Fake urgency is spotted quickly: if your countdown restarts by itself every time the page reloads, you haven’t created urgency, you’ve created distrust. Use it when the offer really has a deadline.

Video and supporting texts on the payment page

The video field supports two uses that solve different problems: a short instruction video guides the buyer on how to fill in their details, which helps a lot with audiences less familiar with online shopping, and a complementary sales video reinforces the decision of someone who got this far still in doubt.

The texts follow the same closing logic. This is not the place to reintroduce the whole product. It’s the place to restate the guarantee, keep the support channel visible and list in one line what the person receives on completing the purchase.

Mobile version and desktop version

The two versions are configured separately, and this is the step most people forget. The Hotmart editor lets you copy the finished template from one version to the other and adjust only what’s needed.

Take care, because behavior changes from screen to screen. A block of text that fits well on a computer becomes three scrolls on a phone, and every extra scroll is a chance for the person to get distracted by something else.

How to create a custom checkout on Hotmart

The full path has eight steps and requires no technical knowledge. If you’re new to the platform, start with how Hotmart works. According to the Hotmart Help Center:

1. Log in to your account at app.hotmart.com;
2. In the nine-dot menu, in the upper right corner, choose “Tools” and then “View all”;
3. Click Payment Page Appearance;
4. Select the product you want to configure;
5. Choose one of Hotmart’s templates or start a page from scratch and click “Use this template”;
6. Build the page with the components that make sense for your offer. To reorder, just drag and drop the blocks;
7. Repeat the adjustment on the desktop version by clicking the monitor icon at the top of the page. You can copy the template you’ve already configured;
8. Click “Save new page” and choose between “Save draft” or “Publish page”.

Once published, you define whether that page will be the product’s default or will apply only to a specific offer, using the Price-specific page option. You can also duplicate the configuration to other offers of the same product or to different products, which saves a lot of time in larger catalogs. One detail that often goes unnoticed: when you duplicate a page, the Order Bump is not copied with it and has to be set up again.

Hotmart checkout features that increase revenue per sale

Customizing the visuals improves the conversion rate. The features below act on another lever: how much comes in per completed sale and how much you recover from the ones that almost happened.

Order Bump: a complementary offer inside the checkout

The Order Bump is a complementary product offer shown on the payment page itself, accepted with one click and without taking the buyer out of the flow. Hotmart describes it as a free tool, with installments of up to 12 payments, and it is configured inside Payment Page Appearance.

The advantage is that you’ve already paid to bring that person to the checkout. Selling a second item there is a form of upselling that raises the average order value at no additional acquisition cost. The practical recommendation is to start with a single offer and test it. Too many offers on the payment screen tend to drag down the conversion of the main sale.

Cart recovery and recovery of declined sales

These are two different situations, and it’s worth separating them. One is the person who gives up and the other is the person who wanted to buy and had the card declined.

For those who give up, the first barrier is the exit pop-up you configure yourself in the editor, triggered when the buyer tries to leave the page. After that, Hotmart says it has more than five cart recovery tools, including Smart Recovery and Listboss.

For those whose payment was declined, the case is different. According to Hotmart, 43% of the purchases declined on the platform during the year were due to insufficient credit card limit. The Automatic Sales Recovery tool works in two layers: first it reprocesses the charge, adjusting the installment amount, and, if it still doesn’t go through, it offers other payment methods on the same screen. All in under a second, so it doesn’t get in the way of the purchase, and at no extra cost beyond the per-sale fee. To see how that fee works, check the Hotmart prices.

Payment methods, currencies and international sales

The lack of the preferred payment method is one of the most common reasons for abandonment and, on this point, the decision isn’t yours: it belongs to the platform you chose. Hotmart’s checkout processes more than 40 payment methods in 22 local currencies, with automatic translation and currency conversion according to the buyer’s country, and sales already made in more than 188 countries. Anyone selling from Brazil gets paid in reais. There is also a technical detail that weighs on conversion and almost never shows up: the checkout is acquirer-neutral and makes several attempts in milliseconds, which raises the card approval rate. See also the new payment methods and how international sales work at Hotmart.

It’s worth remembering that the structure is the same for producers and for affiliates: whoever promotes someone else’s product also benefits from a well-built checkout, because the link they promote leads to the same page. You can see all the features gathered on the Hotmart checkout page.

How to know if the customization worked

Compare the checkout conversion rate before and after the change, looking at an equivalent period. The math is straightforward: completed sales divided by visitors who reached the payment page. If you want to review the concept, it’s worth reading about conversion rate.

In Hotmart Analytics, you track sales, revenue, checkout conversion and sales origin in one place. Three metrics tell you almost everything about the effect of a customization:

• Checkout conversion: measures whether the page is convincing or getting in the way;
• Average order value: measures whether the Order Bump is being accepted;
• Recovered sales: measures whether the recovery layers are bringing people back.

A methodological guideline worth more than any specific setting: change one element at a time. If you change the color, add the badge, turn on the countdown and enable the Order Bump on the same day, you’ll see the number move without knowing what caused what. Wait until you accumulate enough volume before concluding anything, because on small bases natural variation misleads.

Checklist before publishing your custom checkout

• Do the colors and font match your sales page?
• Is your product or brand logo visible?
• Were the mobile and desktop versions configured separately?
• Is there an element that answers your audience’s most common objection, such as a guarantee or support?
• If activated, does the countdown correspond to a real deadline?
• Does the Order Bump offer something that makes sense alongside the main product?
• Did you open the checkout link as if you were a buyer, on both devices?
• Was the page published and set as the default or linked to the right offer?

Frequently asked questions