Your customers will be able to experience the final step of your shopping experience, which is checkout. Many factors influence a customer’s decision to buy your products.

Your checkout must flow — the transition from one page or field to another — is as smooth as possible. While the default WooCommerce checkout can be a great starting point, depending on your products and industry, there might be other things you can do to make it easier and more painless.

Let’s look at some ways you can improve the shopping experience and increase your conversion rates.

How to succeed with the default WooCommerce checkout flow

The default WooCommerce checkout page was designed to make your customers’ shopping experience as easy as possible. With a theme such as Storefront, you can present a clean, simple experience that will serve as the final touchpoint to everything you do with your store.

The customer can immediately go to the shopping cart to complete their billing and shipping information. A summary of their order is also available. This simplifies the ordering process and minimizes distractions.

Customers can switch between multiple shipping or payment options easily if you offer them. This establishes expectations so that a customer who decides to pay via PayPal knows what to expect.

Depending on your settings, the checkout page can be as simple or long as you like. For example, if you ship only to the United States, customers can select this country as their only option. This saves them time and hassle.

Modifying the checkout page

The default WooCommerce checkout is a great option, but it may not work for you.

Different products, industries, and stores merit different checkout experiences. Your customers will be more cautious about choosing the right items and more likely to double-check the specifications. A customer can have a bad experience if they rush through the checkout and leave out important details.

You can personalize your products with additional options To add gift messages, donations, and laser engraving to your products, you can get Product Add Ons

You should also consider products that will likely be purchased by businesses, such as laptops and desktop computers. If the purchase must be submitted as a company expense, a simplified checkout that does not detail or obscure pricing can be problematic.

Be sure to think about your customers’ preferences before making any changes to the checkout.

One-page checkout is possible

One-page checkouts have become very popular. They are often more successful than multi-page versions because they are simpler. But, it all depends on the shop and your audience. One store may see an increase in orders, while another store may see sales decline.

Why? It’s not about how many pages you have. It’s all about what signals you send to your shoppers. If you have unnecessary fields, distracting questions, or other distractions, a one-page checkout can be as frustrating as a multi-page checkout.

If your checkout has multiple pages, it might be worth adding a visual indicator to show the progress of the shopper. This could help them to worry less about how long they have to order. Although the checkout page is only one, you can still see it in action when you exit.

This shifts a buyer’s perception from “ugh! How long before I can order my shoes?” to “Oh, just one step until I can order shoes!”

To speed up the process, eliminate unnecessary fields

You might not need the WooCommerce default checkout fields depending on what you sell. You might not ship physical goods because they are picked up at your location or digital downloads. You might not need a business name if you only sell to consumers.

To speed up your checkout process, you should eliminate any redundant fields. If the product isn’t shipping, no one wants to have to enter their shipping address. Why not turn them off entirely?

The WooCommerce checkout field editor extension makes it easy to modify checkout fields. Without needing to dig into any code, you can rename, edit or remove any field from the default checkout page.

It can also be done in reverse. You can add or remove a field in seconds. Let’s suppose your store offers local pickup. Customers need to indicate the date they will be dropping by. You can add a date picker and make it mandatory.

Be aware that removing default checkout fields can cause WooCommerce themes to behave and style differently. You can also disable shipping products by setting global rather than removing them. It’s much easier.

Customers should be kept on-site for payment

Customers who have to leave your website to pay for items can disrupt the checkout process. Customers could get distracted and leave your site to pay for their items. Or they might not trust the third-party site that they are directed to.

It is important to choose a payment gateway that will keep customers on the checkout page through the entire process. WooCommerce payments are super easy to integrate with your store.

This plugin helps reduce abandoned carts and allows you to manage all aspects of recurring payments, disputes, refunds, and more directly from your WordPress dashboard. You can also accept Apple Pay and receive instant payments.

Access the details via the checkout page

Some products require complex information or pages full of photos. Even with all this extra information, sometimes you will need to add more at checkout. Perhaps you are selling dangerously hot sauces and need to warn customers or remind them about your return policy.

While it’s important to send these reminders last minute, distracting shoppers from the checkout process is not a good idea. If they are distracting enough, links that lead shoppers to the last page could potentially turn off a sale.

You can provide important information last-minute while maintaining checkout flow by linking to content that opens in a new tab. If a customer needs to see your return policy, FAQs, or safety warnings before they purchase (hey, ghost peppers are really hot! ), this will allow them to do so. They can also view your FAQs and return policy without having to abandon their cart.

Don’t let customer accounts trip you up

Required user accounts can be used for certain stores but not others. It is a good idea to ask customers to sign up before they purchase digital downloads that are tied to their email addresses, memberships, or other products.

Guest orders and guest checkout will work just fine. It can be very annoying to ask a customer to quit doing other things to sign up. For some customers, it’s enough to make them go to another store.

You might add a prompt to “create an account” to either the checkout or before you checkout. This not only keeps the process moving, but also allows interested shoppers to save their information so they can return next time.

A simpler way to create an efficient checkout

WooCommerce has released a new Checkout Block. This is in keeping with the above principles, such as making it easy for customers to use and eliminating unnecessary steps. This can be used as an alternative to the default checkout process using the WooCommerce blocks extension.

How does it look? The Checkout block can be used as any other WordPress block. You can also add additional blocks to your Checkout page. You can add safety warnings, instructions manuals, and FAQs to the Checkout page. Drag and drop a block directly from the WordPress editor.

Do you want to delete checkout fields? You can remove checkout fields by simply clicking a button.

You can also offer payment options such as Apple Pay, credit cards, checks, and even Apple Checks. This makes it easier and faster for your customers.

The best thing about it is that all information is on one page: contact details, billing, shipping information, and a simple, clear order summary. This checkout was created to simplify the shopping experience for customers and store owners.

Optimized checkout results in more orders being completed

Like everything else in eCommerce, you will not find the right default settings for every store. Optimizing your checkout page to reflect your business, products, and audience is key to achieving the best results.

Do you have any questions about optimizing your checkout experience to reduce interruptions, make shoppers happier, and get more orders completed? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section.