WooCommerce now powers nearly one-third of all online stores. In terms of market share, the platform continues to consolidate its lead over Shopify. The WooCommerce plugin has over 5 million active installations, according to WordPress. When one considers that the platform is only a decade old, its expanding ubiquity is all the more astonishing. That’s why Matt Mullenweg recently stated that “it’s day one with WooCommerce,” comparing it to the state of WordPress in 2008. Given that WooCommerce was only bought in 2015, I believe it is safe to believe Matt. Having said that, most people opt to hire companies like Visualmodo to help them with tasks. Whatever your method of choice is, the important part is to create a seamless checkout page.
WooCommerce, more than any other e-commerce platform, benefits from a robust plugin framework that gives merchants practically endless customization options. However, whether the expansion of the WordPress plugin market is keeping up with the rush of merchants unleashed by the pandemic remains an unresolved topic. WooCommerce keyword searches increased by 44 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. Meanwhile, searches for WordPress plugin keywords grew by 18%. There are approximately 50,000 WordPress plugins available, but only roughly one out of every 50 is dedicated to WooCommerce businesses.
All of this is to suggest that there are still issues to be resolved and plugins to be built, particularly in the WooCommerce sector. Despite being able to design their store to their hearts’ content, merchants using WooCommerce are not immune to the challenges that merchants using other e-commerce systems experience. Not at all. Surprisingly, a large number of these issues revolve around online checkout.
Frictional Checkout: The Unknown Plight of Merchants
The fact that around 70% of online carts are abandoned is one of the most often cited, yet no less terrifying, e-commerce figures. As previously stated, WooCommerce stores are no more or less successful than those of any other e-commerce platform. In reality, they may be worse off as a result of the lack of a ubiquitous, out-of-the-box payment and checkout solution like Shop Pay. Let us not, however, get ahead of ourselves.
A Brief History of Online Shopping
Take a moment to travel back to the year 2001. The Internet and online shopping are experiencing a boom. Because of the novelty of purchasing things online, you were highly likely to make a tidy profit if you could get your website to accept payments.
To put it another way, online customers were ecstatic. It’s the kind of scenario that online businesses must fantasize about these days when consumers are routinely referred to as spoilt and fickle. Consumers, on the other hand, have every right to be unsatisfied.
After all, how much has the internet checkout procedure changed in the last two decades? How much more convenient is it to buy anything online without autofill?
The Issue of Frictional Checkout
The same issue that was hidden beneath the surface in 2001 is now coming to the fore. Frictional checkout is the problem, and it comes in a variety of flavors and titles. Excessive checkout fields, pages, multi-step checkout procedures, long page load times, and account signup screens, to name a few.
In far too many online stores, these elements combine to create the ideal storm, one that leaves the customer unhappy and the merchant bankrupt. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle in most merchants’ cart abandonment problems. It could also explain why, out of the 24 million e-commerce stores out there, only about a million make more than $1,000 per year.
Result: Cart Abandonment
Frequently, the underlying reason for the cart abandonment epidemic is misidentified. Leaving aside the issue of price (since lowering prices is not a long-term strategy), frictional checkout is the fundamental reason for cart abandonment.
A buyer is less likely to make a purchase with each passing second that the checkout procedure takes. It’s important to note that I said seconds, not minutes. Whether it’s due to analysis paralysis or shorter consideration spans, seconds matter a lot in the realm of e-commerce.
So, what can WooCommerce store owners do to address this widespread problem? What are they up to right now? Is there a solution in the robust WordPress plugin infrastructure we mentioned earlier?
Streamlining the Checkout Process
Fortunately, autofill helps to reduce cart abandonment to some extent. To provide this functionality to your consumers, no plugin or PHP code changes are required. It’s worth mentioning, though, that autofill works best when you have a small number of checkout pages and fields. These days, there are a plethora of one-page checkout plugins to choose from. However, many themes already include one-page checkouts, so paying an extra for this seems unnecessary.
Checkout Field Editor
Playing around with the number and nature of your checkout fields is a less common, but more successful, option. You can use a plugin like ThemeHigh’s Checkout Field Editor or, if you’re tech-savvy enough, edit the PHP code in developer mode. Consider whether you really need to collect a customer’s phone number or if it’s the kind of field you can do away with.
WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery
Most companies believe that installing an email automation plugin that reminds clients to complete their transactions will solve the problem of cart abandonment. However, by that time, purchasing something from your store is almost certainly a foregone conclusion. Still, it’s a viable option to consider.
CartFlows Inc’s WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery plugin is solely focused on regaining customers by automatically sending emails to individuals who abandoned their carts on the checkout page. OptinMonster offers the same functionality as OptinMonster, plus the addition of popups and a newsletter distribution system. This technique completely misses the target for individuals who take one peek at a checkout screen and never bother to input their email.
Funnel Builder by CartFlows
Many merchants would spend hundreds of dollars (or the equivalent in effort) on a highly decorated, sophisticated multi-step checkout flow with cross-selling and up-selling possibilities. This is a common, but not optimal, route. CartFlows Inc, the firm behind the aforementioned cart abandonment recovery plugin, is most known for its funnel builder, which entails persuading your consumers to check out “one more item!” before completing their purchase.
Of course, the trade-off is obvious. You’re creating friction into the checkout process with each item you try to upsell (and this plugin lets you upsell a lot!). You’re increasing the chances that a consumer will become frustrated with the sometimes unnecessary CTAs and leave your site entirely.
Despite the fact that CartFlow’s plugin is excellent, this strategy often amounts to a merchant double down on a fundamentally flawed approach to checkout by adding more complexity and unfamiliarity to the equation. The strategy only works when the final product is a simple form of checkout with as few fields as feasible.
YITH One-Click Checkout
Other shops choose the worst option imaginable: they encourage or outright force clients to create an account, promising them that the next time they check out would be easier. Customers don’t bite, which should come as no surprise. They only need to go beyond the initial checkout hurdle to decide to never return to your store. If you’re like most internet store owners, you’ll want to bypass this one entirely.
However, if you find yourself in a situation where you have a lot of repeat customers, it might be worth thinking about. To be clear, you should never let a customer check out as a visitor, but allowing frequent customers to register accounts and then giving them access to a plugin like YITH one-click checkout isn’t always a bad idea.
PeachPay
But do you know what’s better than allowing returning clients to check out with a single click? Allowing online shoppers who have never visited your store before to use one-click checkout. The single best thing a merchant can do to remove frictional check out in today’s world is to allow customers to check out with only one click.
The PeachPay plugin for WooCommerce is your best bet for one-click checkout. When a consumer hits the PeachPay plugin’s button for the first time, it generates a streamlined form that is already easier to fill out than 90% of checkout flows. The true magic happens the following time the customer clicks the button because all of their information will be available for 1-click checkout, regardless of which site they originally clicked the button on.
What’s the best part? It’s free since the cost is included in the regular Stripe transaction fee. Merchants only need to sign up for a waitlist, which allows the PeachPay team to ensure a seamless onboarding process for everyone. You’ll just have to wait a maximum of 1-2 days, but they’ll most likely contact you much sooner.
