If you run an e-commerce store, you probably already know about marketing funnels and conversion rates. You likely know how important it is to clear obstacles between the top of your funnel (awareness) and the bottom (new paying customers).
In every marketing funnel you will lose people along the way. So as a store owner you should be asking yourself, “How do I remove obstacles so that I can convert more lost customers into paying customers?”
Where can you get the biggest return on investment?
If you are using a theme with great WooCommerce support like OceanWP, you are actually way ahead of most stores and you haven’t even started. Congrats!
Truthfully, there are many ways to improve your sales funnel. including your landing pages, product pages, and cart pages, all of which impact your conversion rate.
But what if I told you that more than 75% of all online shoppers end up abandoning their cart? By definition, that means that it’s the single biggest impact you can make on your store’s revenue. And it’s also the most chronically neglected page in any WooCommerce store. The checkout page.
Why are checkout pages so bad?
No page in any store has more complex user interactions than the checkout page. You have numerous fields, conditional states, total recalculations, discount codes, shipping options, payment methods, etc.
The truth is, most checkout pages were designed by developers, who understand what is required to successfully create an order, but are obviously not well positioned to design an intuitive user experience.
Services like Shopify have capitalized on this. Their design first approach has made it easy for merchants to setup stores that, while not as customizable, provide end customers with a much better out of the box experience.
Not convinced? Compare the default Shopify checkout page with the default WooCommerce checkout page:
Which form would you prefer to fill out?
It doesn’t have to be this way. WooCommerce can work just as well as Shopify and it’s actually really easy to setup.
How to fix your WooCommerce checkout page in about 5 minutes
Fortunately, you can fix your WooCommerce checkout page in just a few minutes, and you won’t have to open a single theme file or write a single line of code with a product we call Checkout for WooCommerce.
Checkout for WooCommerce replaces your entire checkout page with a highly optimized, conversion focused checkout experience. It’s theme agnostic, so whether you’re using OceanWP or a custom theme, it will work exactly the same way.
Checkout for WooCommerce improves the checkout experience in numerous ways. Here are a few of the benefits:
Beautiful designs, inspired by the best.
Checkout should not only be functional and performant, it should also be designed to delight. We follow design cues from industry leaders like Shopify, so we have confidence the design patterns we’re using have already been vetted by millions of stores.
We use best practices to increase conversions.
Studies show that multi-step checkouts outperform single page checkouts in most cases. This is especially true for stores that sell shipped products.
A multi-step checkout asks customers to focus on a single context and domain of knowledge at a time. Instead of presenting them with 30 fields, we show them just a few in a particular category and gently lead them through the process.
Pro-active Automation
Anything we can do for the customer is something they don’t have to do for themselves. Anything they don’t have to do for themselves, increases the chance that they will convert into a paying customer.
We automate a few elements of the checkout page:
City and State Autocomplete
Once someone has provided their country and postal code, it’s easy to look up their city and state, so that’s exactly what we do. That’s at least two fields your customers won’t have to think about!
Form field Persistence
When a customer fills out the checkout form, we cache the value of each field in the user’s local browser storage. This means if they refresh the page, all of the data and options they selected persists magically.
Gone are the days of crashed browser tabs and accidental refreshes forcing customers to start over.
Login Lookup
When a user provides their email address, we instantly look up whether they have an existing account. If they do, we show the password field.
If they don’t, we keep the password field hidden and automatically check the “Create an account” checkbox for them.
This means your customers don’t have to try to remember if they have an account, or worry themselves with the details of creating a new account.
Fast payment buttons get top billing.
Whether you are on an iPhone or Android phone, or using Safari or Chrome on the desktop, the fastest way to order in 2018 is with Apple Pay or Google’s Payment Request buttons.
If you’re using the Stripe gateway, PayPal Express, or Amazon Pay, your users can skip the queue and order faster.
Everything adds up to more sales.
When you have the right product, and you’re reaching the right customers, reducing friction in your sales funnel will result in more sales. It’s simple math.
Every decision we make with Checkout for WooCommerce is for customers. We are pro-merchant only because we are pro-customer.
Happy customers are returning customers and referring customers. A great checkout page has a huge impact on how customers feel about their purchase, and when you leave a good impression you’re setting yourself up for more success in the future.
Risk-free opportunity
We’re so confident that you’ll not only love Checkout for WooCommerce but also improve your sales, so as a special courtesy for OceanWP subscribers, we’re inviting you to try out what it can do for you completely risk-free for 7 days, without any payment. If you don’t think it’s the best checkout template for WooCommerce after the 7 days, you’re absolutely free to disable and go back to the default.
Not only that, we’re also giving OceanWP subscribers a special 15% off. So make sure to take advantage of this special offer.
$129 is the cheapest option for a checkout? REALLY? 130 god damn MF dollars?
Dudes, that’s more than my yearly hosting + domain and SSL. For a checkout plugin (you can achieve almost the same result with free WordPress checkout field editor?) Oh and that’s a YEARLY price? WTF.
I think that that’s very, very unrealistic pricing for a product like this. Maybe, MAYBE if it was $19-29 MAYBE was going to worth it if it was with a perpetual license for the updates, MAYBE.
Whatever, wish you luck.
Hi Hristo,
Checkout for WooCommerce is intended for businesses already making money on their websites, who want to provide a better experience and convert more customers. If you have an established store, an additional $129 a year (~$12/mo) to increase your sales is a no brainer.
If you’re pre-revenue, or your sales are too low to invest in optimization, then we probably aren’t a good fit for you yet.
Clif
Guys, I also think like Hristo, that WordPress developers tend to overvaluate their stuff a bit. It started when EDD lifted their prices, but then saw that it was too greedy and no one was buying anymore, so they had to go back to the old prices. Of course, it’s much work and effort, but I think we need to come back to the WP roots. No one says it must be free, but please let’s stay realistic.
I think it’s pretty great price point; right in line with services like Sumo, Leadpages, etc. Closing is pretty important right? I charge a bit more than $149, so if it helps me sign up a $1,299 client it’s pretty worth it right?
Seems a steep for me aswell. Editing the layout of the checkout page can easily be done for free, oceanwp distraction free checkout is great aswell, and auto form completion is build into most browsers anyway.
Ok if you have expensive products with a decent margin a couple of extra purchases can make the difference, but for everyone else i think there are better ways to spend money to gain extra customers
Agreeing that this is way too steep. I was thinking since OceanWP’s recommending it, the thing would be great as well as affordable. I can understand a one-time payment of $150, but per year seems a bit much! Perhaps you should go by size of client. Since I have sold ONE item in two years…I’m not sure what I’d pay. LOL.
Yeah yikes. I like what it does but no way I’d pay that much. $30 or even $50 but no way I’d pay more for a checkout plugin than the pro version of OceanWP. They’re nuts.
This plugin is obviously not for a completely new e-commerce store. It’s meant for established stores, which is doing sales already.
It’s simple math, to be honest. Let’s do a fictional example:
Socks’R’Us sells socks at $10 a pop.
Now let’s use the same example with this plugin, that has multiple cases of proved conversion rate increases.
If we calculate over a full year, that’s $18,000 of added revenue. So with that in mind, would you pay $109 to add $18,000 in yearly revenue in this case? I know I would.
So before you bash the price and product, make sure you understand if it fits into your structure.
Happy holidays! 🙂
Looks pretty much like Shopify checkout page but hey everyone love Shopify checkout page, including me.
Whats interesting to me is that the checkout page to buy the plugin is frustrating and doesn’t have many features the plugin offers. Its also totally unclear how to get the trial.
Maybe they can’t afford their plugin?
Hi Ben,
Due to the vastly superior tools for selling WP plugins with licensing, we are currently using EDD. If we had time, we would make an EDD version of the plugin, but right now we are 100% focused on the WooCommerce experience.
When you purchase, you pay nothing up front and are billed 7 days later unless you cancel.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Best,
Clif
Clif,
In reality, the price is fine to me if it does what it says and doesn’t prevent me from adding up-sells during the checkout process. But the trial/refund thing is just wacky. “Try Checkout for WooCommerce for 7 days for free. Every product we sell comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.” I would have bought it right away, if it had a trial or a money back guarantee but that arrangement doesn’t even make sense. Is it 30 days from the end of the trial? Or 30 days from the day I sign up? But I’m turned off because its not clear.
I don’t have problem with the initial purchase pricing but the yearly pricing, why is it same as the initial price when I’m going to get just the updates every year, I don’t think my checkout page is going to be served from your cloud server, maybe half the initial price for every year would cut the deal for me.
I would buy it and do the updates my self..
We use this plugin and its really buggy. The checkout is reloading for 2 times, everytime you click on a new field like when you switch the payment method.
The Payment logos are gone after every new update. and Paypal Express Checkout is not working anymore with that plugin.
When this bugs would be done, it would be a really good checkout plugin… Support is really slow
simple form but very elegant design. this will make it easier for woo-commerce users