5+ Secret Tips to Speed Up WooCommerce Checkout Process

There are many factors that impact a buying decision in online store. One of them is the checkout process because it is the final important step before finishing the buying process. Thus, if you are running an online store with WooCommerce, just keep reading! This article will present five methods for you to speed up WooCommerce checkout process. It will help you lower cart abandonment rates, improve the shopping experience, and increase sales and revenue as a result.

Enable Guest Checkout

Ecommerce owners always encourage their customers to create profiles because it brings a lot of advantages:

• Offer clients a personalized experience
• Allows customers to efficiently check orders and manage carts.
• Enhance customers’ brand loyalty.
• Improve the relationship between customers and sellers.

Despite all of these benefits, some online shoppers do not want to register in your store but still wish to purchase your products.

In such cases, making it mandatory to join up will lengthen the checkout process and cause potential customers to abandon their carts. To deal with this issue, you should enable guest checkout on your WooCommerce site.

Both guest checkout and customer accounts have apparent advantages, so why not incorporate both into your website design?

Guest checkout refers to the ability for customers to make purchases from your store without registering or logging in to an account or saving any information in your database (such as username, password, shipping address, etc.). The customer’s information is used only once and is not saved for future use.

Best practices for guest checkout include giving the customer the option of creating an account or proceeding with the checkout as a guest. When the customer reaches the checkout stage, they should be one of the following options:

• Returning client
• A new client
• Check-out for visitors

By enabling both types of checkout, store owners can provide their customers with full control of their own shopping experience.

Consider a one-page checkout

One-page checkout displays all aspects of a typical checkout, such as cart contents, billing, and delivery addresses, shipping options, and payment information on one page only. This type of checkout will help you streamline the checkout process by requiring fewer clicks and pages.

There are fewer clicks. Consumers checking out on an eCommerce store with a one-page checkout must make fewer clicks than customers checking out on a business with a multipage checkout.

It appears to be simpler. A one-page checkout may appear to be quicker to complete at first glance, as fewer stages may appeal to time-conscious customers.

Fewer clicks. Ecommerce stores that have a one-page checkout require their customers to make fewer clicks than customers checking out on a store that has a multi-page checkout.

Appears to be easier. The idea of a one-page checkout can initially appear easier to complete as fewer steps can appeal to time-conscious customers.

If you want to enable one-page checkout in your shop, you can download Woostify theme and create single page checkout with Woostify.

Remove unnecessary fields

According to Baymard Institute research, around 26% of shoppers abandon their potential purchase due to so many checkout form fields.

When faced with a large number of form fields and selections to finish the checkout process, customers are frequently annoyed and perplexed.

By default, WooCommerce provides all the essential fields for your checkout page, including:

• Billing details
• First name
• Last name
• Company name
• Country
• Address
• Town/City
• District
• Postcode/ZIP
• Phone
• Email address
• Order notes

Depending on the products you sell in your store, there are some checkout fields you might not need, and you can remove them from the checkout form. For example, you can eliminate the customers’ company name section because you sell solely to consumers.

To edit your WooCommerce checkout page, you can use the Woostify theme that allows you to create your own checkout page, and add or remove any part of the checkout form.

The fewer form fields you offer your visitor, the less overwhelmed they will be and the more likely they will convert into a customer.

According to a Baymard Institute analysis of the major retailers, the sweet spot for physical objects is between 6 and 8 form fields.

Anything you can do to reduce the number of fields enhances the likelihood of them becoming a customer.

Below are some fields you can consider hiding in the checkout form to make the checkout process faster.

Remove the Company Name field

If you are solely selling straight to consumers, this field is completely irrelevant to them.

Hide the 2nd Street address field

The second “Street Address” is not always used. Second addresses are normally used by a small percentage of users (not every consumer has one). As a result, we propose that you remove this field entirely.

Use Shipping Address as Billing Address by Default

The primary reason store owners want billing information is to match payment/credit card information and prevent risk.  In most circumstances, billing address is not neccessary. Because normally this step is optimized by the payment providers like Stripe or PayPal. Beside, the majority of consumers use the same billing and shipping address.

As a result, if your store accepts these payments, you won’t need to take that extra step.

Autofill Information

Most people dislike having to fill out the same information over and over again when shopping online. It can be a complete chore at times. In addition, people frequently forget their account passwords.

According to one study done by Digital Information World, 78% of the 500 respondents admitted to having to reset the passwords for one personal account in the last 90 days of their calendars.

The inability to enter personal information into checkout forms, combined with the password reset, completely disrupts the checkout flow.

That is why, in order to speed up the WooCommerce checkout process, you must autofill information for your customers.

WordPress autofill plugins can be used to allow your users to autofill information including Addresses (such as their billing address, email address) and the coupon code (if there is).

Auto-fulfill the address

To make the process of filling addresses automatically, you can use the Google Address Autocomplete plugin.

With this plugin, when the customers enter the first few characters of their address, they are presented with a list of potential address suggestions. Then, they can pick out the address they wish.

Google Address Autocomplete works correctly in most parts of the world, but you can specify which countries to exclude. This checkout page optimization hack makes the purchasing process quick and easy.

This simple automation will assist your customers in filling out checkout forms and completing the purchase process more quickly.

Auto-fulfill the Coupon Code 

Discounts are an excellent way to increase sales and strengthen customer relationships. It is a method of enticing your customers to return to your store and buy it again.

When you auto-apply the coupon code, you not only discourage people from searching for it, but you also show them how much money they can save by making the purchase.

When auto-applying coupon code, the new order total will get displayed.

In case there is no coupon code, you should make the coupon box collapsible, instead of disabling the coupon field entirely. So if online customers have any coupon code, they can apply it to your store.

You can also add custom text to congratulate them on successfully applying the coupon code.

To enable a collapsible coupon box, from your WordPress dashboard, navigate to WooCommerce > Checkout > Coupon.

• Check the Collapsible box to activate it.
• Add the successful message as you desire in the Success message section.

Provide Multiple Payment Options

According to Baymard, 9% of users abandon their carts due to a lack of payment options. Another 4% leave because their credit card was declined.

If you only offer the traditional options (VISA, MasterCard), you will lose customers who do not want to use these cards and prefer to pay with other cards or payment systems. 

There are a variety of payment methods, both offline and online, you can include on your WooCommerce checkout page.

In such cases, you can go for PayPal, or Stripe because of their popularity. If you are a beginner, PayPal seems to be more suitable since it is easier to use in comparison with Stripe. You can also allow payments from digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Optimize WooCommerce checkout page to boost speed of the checkout process

The success of your eCommerce business is determined not by the number of people who visit your website, but by the number of them who convert. The more conversions you receive, the more revenue you make, and your checkout page plays a vital role in this. When optimizing your WooCommerce checkout process, you should not ask for too much information from users. You can use any of the ideas in this article to improve conversion rates in your WooCommerce store.