Checkout Detector

Detects whether a website has an active checkout / payment capability, identifies the payment providers and e‑commerce platform, and tells you whether the checkout is reachable without a signup wall.

Built for bulk enrichment (Clay / CRM): give it a bare domain, get back a clean true/false plus the supporting detail.

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⚡ How it works — HTTP‑first, browser only as fallback

Most detectors launch a full browser on every site. A browser costs 10–40× more compute and runs 10–50× slower than a plain HTTP request, and the most reliable checkout signals (response headers, Content‑Security‑Policy, loaded SDKs, JSON‑LD, platform APIs) don't need one. So this Actor inverts the usual order:

TIER 1 — HTTP only (no browser)            resolves the large majority of sites
  • one homepage GET → HTML + headers + CSP + Set‑Cookie
  • parallel platform API probes:
      /products.json · /wp-json/wc/store/v1/cart · /rest/V1/store/storeConfigs · robots.txt
  • match curated payment/platform fingerprints (Wappalyzer methodology)

GATE
  • decisive signal            → return immediately (no browser)
  • commercial but unconfirmed → render once (Tier 2)
  • no commercial signal       → return false (no browser)

TIER 2 — ONE passive Playwright render (only when needed)
  • reads JS globals (window.Shopify / Stripe / Paddle …), dataLayer,
    localStorage cart keys, and the fully‑hydrated DOM
  • strictly passive: no clicking, no add‑to‑cart, no cart mutation

The browser launches only on the minority of sites Tier 1 can't resolve — that's where the cost saving comes from, with recall held steady by the passive render.

Detection model

Signals are graded, not summed into a fragile weighted score:

• Decisive (any one ⇒ has_checkout: true): Shopify /products.json, WooCommerce Store API, Magento storeConfigs, shopify-checkout-api-token, JSON‑LD Product+price, cart <form action>, third‑party hosted checkout (Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, FastSpring, Chargebee, Recurly, Snipcart, Kit), a payment SDK in script-src, a platform/PSP JS global, a store response‑header or cookie.
• Corroborating (combine for the SaaS / ambiguous middle): pricing page + signup CTA, dataLayer e‑commerce events, e‑commerce cookies, product URLs, shipping/billing fields, visible prices, PSP allowed in CSP, card‑brand mentions.
• Negative: parked domain, sales‑gated with no self‑serve, contact‑sales‑only without prices.

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📥 Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
url	String	required	URL or bare domain (e.g. example.com or https://example.com)
timeoutSeconds	Integer	30	Max time for the browser fallback. Tier 1 (HTTP) is much faster and ignores this.

{ "url": "https://zuvees.ae", "timeoutSeconds": 30 }

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📤 Output

One JSON object per run, pushed to the dataset.

Field	Type	Description
domain	String	Root domain analyzed
has_checkout	Boolean	true if an active checkout/payment capability was detected
checkout_type	String	ecommerce · saas · third_party · donation · unknown
checkout_accessible	Boolean	true if reachable without a signup/login wall (inferred SaaS = false)
detection_method	String	The single strongest signal used (e.g. shopify_products_json, psp_sdk, cart_form)
payment_providers	Array	Detected gateways / methods (e.g. ["Stripe", "Apple Pay", "Visa"])
ecommerce_platform	String	Detected platform (e.g. Shopify, WooCommerce), or null
confidence	Number	0.0–1.0
scraping_status	Object	{ tier, browser_used, blocked, error, time_elapsed_ms }

Example (Shopify store):

{
  "domain": "zuvees.ae",
  "has_checkout": true,
  "checkout_type": "ecommerce",
  "checkout_accessible": true,
  "detection_method": "shopify_products_json",
  "payment_providers": ["Apple Pay", "Google Pay", "Visa", "Mastercard"],
  "ecommerce_platform": "Shopify",
  "confidence": 0.95,
  "scraping_status": { "tier": "http", "browser_used": false, "blocked": false, "error": null, "time_elapsed_ms": 2310 }
}

scraping_status.browser_used: false means the result came from the cheap HTTP tier — most rows will look like this.

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💡 Clay / CRM usage

• Filter prospects: keep rows where has_checkout = true (add checkout_accessible = true to target self‑serve commerce, or checkout_type = "saas" for subscription products).
• Personalize: reference ecommerce_platform or payment_providers in outreach.
• Cost: browser_used = false rows are the cheapest; the Actor only spends a browser render when a site looks commercial but HTTP couldn't confirm it.
• Pair with the Pricing Detector Actor for a full monetization view.

Detection fingerprints are curated from the open Wappalyzer methodology (categories: Payment processor, Ecommerce) plus active platform API probes the standard tech‑detectors don't perform.