Customers directed to checkout preview

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A shop is experiencing an issue where certain customers are redirected to a checkout preview displaying the latest created product (which is in draft status) instead of their actual cart. This prevents them from completing checkout.

Key details:

  • Affects the same users across multiple browsers and platforms
  • Persists despite clearing cache or waiting multiple days
  • Occurs seemingly at random, then sometimes resolves on its own
  • Testing with both custom and Dawn themes shows the same behavior
  • Cannot be reliably reproduced by the shop team
  • 4 instances reported in the last 2 weeks

Recommended troubleshooting steps:

  • Review apps and scripts that generate draft checkout links (abandoned cart recovery, marketing integrations, upsells)
  • Inspect cart.js and custom cart code for unintended product ID appending
  • Check installed apps that modify checkout/cart experience
  • Review Order Drafts in admin for unexpected entries
  • Consider adding validation to ensure only published products reach checkout URLs

Current status: The team is reviewing scripts and apps line by line. If no app/script cause is found, escalation to Shopify Support with checkout session IDs and customer timestamps is recommended.

Summarized with AI on October 25. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Greetings,

Our shop is experiencing that individual customers are directed upon checkout to a preview of the checkout containing the latest created product, despite that product being in draft as well as all of their information filled. This directly prohibits them from checkout and affects the same user across platforms (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera GX has been tested by the customer), emptying cache or trying for multiple days did not help our customers.

As the shop we have tried to switch from our custom build theme to Dawns and we have tried to launch our own theme on a development store, but for both cases the issue remains (one of my colleagues had the same issue appear), but seemingly at random it begun to work again.

It has been very hard to troubleshoot, because we can see our customers responses, but we can’t seem to recreate the scenario. Is this something anyone else is experiencing, we have had 4 instances the last 2 weeks and rolling back all changes to custom built features has not helped.

Thank you for your time and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Kindest regards

Markus

2

Hi Markus,

Thanks for sharing the details, this is a tricky one. Based on what you’ve described, the issue sounds less related to your theme (since both your custom theme and Dawn show the same behavior) and more likely tied to how checkout sessions or draft checkouts are being generated in your store.

A few things I’d recommend checking:

  1. Draft Checkout Links

    • Sometimes apps or custom scripts generate draft checkout links tied to a specific product (even one in draft).

    • Review any apps, custom scripts, or marketing integrations (email flows, abandoned cart recovery, affiliate links, etc.) that could be generating checkout URLs.

  2. Cart / Checkout Redirects

    • Inspect your cart.js or custom cart code (if any) to see if it’s accidentally appending the last-created product ID to the checkout link.

    • Also, confirm that your /checkout redirection in Dawn hasn’t been overridden.

  3. App Conflicts

    • Since this happens intermittently, look at apps that modify the checkout/cart experience (upsells, subscription apps, draft order generators, etc.). Try disabling them temporarily and testing.

  4. Customer Session Caching

    • Shopify sometimes caches cart/checkout data per session. If a draft checkout was generated previously for that customer, it could resurface. Clearing cookies, not just cache, may help in testing.

Since you’ve already tested multiple themes and rolled back changes, I’d strongly suggest:

  • Checking your installed apps one by one for draft checkout generation.

  • Reviewing your Order Drafts in the admin to see if any are being created unexpectedly.

If this continues, I’d recommend reaching out to Shopify Plus Support (if applicable) or submitting a support ticket with checkout session IDs from affected customers — that helps Shopify’s team trace the exact cause.

I know this is frustrating, but based on the behavior, it’s likely linked to an app or draft checkout process rather than the theme itself.

Kind regards,
Fayyaz

3

Thank you Fayyaz for your reply and time
Our team is reviewing our scripts line by line and will be troubleshooting the apps, it just seems unusual for products in draft to show up in live production checkouts.

Kindest regards,
Markus

4

Hi Markus,

You’re absolutely right, under normal circumstances draft products should never surface in a live checkout. That’s why this stands out as unusual. If you do find it’s not linked to an app/script, it may be worth escalating with Shopify Support along with checkout session IDs + affected customer emails/timestamps. That data makes it much easier for Shopify’s technical team to trace whether something deeper (like session handling or checkout draft linking) is happening on their end.

In the meantime, one temporary safeguard could be:

  • Restricting any draft products from being exposed via API calls (double-check permissions/scopes used by apps).

  • Adding a quick validation rule in your scripts so only published products can be passed into checkout URLs.

That way, even if a draft link is generated, it won’t load into the cart/checkout.

Keep us updated on what you find, this could be very useful for others in the community running into the same odd behavior.

Best,
Fayyaz

5

For those wondering

The team ended up finding the error, it was a hidden input in our searchbar messing up your shopify session.

That meant that every time our customer used a search url through the searchbar to find their products it would cause the unintended behavior to happen.

In conclusion it was our own mistake of a single one liner during a rework of the search bar, that caused the error and the deceitful nature of the error only showing up on checkout meant that locating the bug took longer than expected.