9 Best Plugins to Optimize WooCommerce Checkout

This is not only a list post on WooCommerce checkout plugins. Because here, you’ll also learn what type of checkout works best for your business and why, along with the plugins for each.

Moreover, you’ll also see some basic coding aspects to customize your WooCommerce checkout fields page as well as some strategies to grow sales. So let’s begin.

WooCommerce checkout is like a gravitational force

It was from the apple, Newton discovered gravity – the pull force or attraction. Right?

Similarly, in WooCommerce, it’s how you design your checkout process or the checkout page WooCommerce that pulls visitors from the buying stage to your paying customer database.

The checkout page is from where you get the money. And you make sure you do it right.

However standard WooCommerce checkout fields won’t convert everytime

Now, if your users have made it to the cart or checkout page, it’s an achievement. Not many design their sales funnel right.

But the default WooCommerce checkout page won’t work always.

Why?

Because all customers are not the same. Some may find form filling cumbersome, some may find confusing steps, some may find unwanted fields. This forces customers to leave the checkout immediately.

If your checkout Woocommerce process is not optimized, customers will abandon it no matter how strong your offer or product is.

To turnaround this scenario, it’s mandated to modify the checkout experience so that the user passes through the purchase stage smoothly and hassle-free. It involves efforts but the results yielded are very fruitful – more sales, potential leads, more customer loyalty, etc.

That said, let’s come to the core section of the article.

How to customize WooCommerce checkout – Plugins v/s Coding

Now there are two approachs here.

One approach is to redesign your checkout WooCommerce process or experience (may include checkout page) – like skipping the cart page.

Other approach is to modify only the default WooCommerce checkout page – like adding or removing fields.

For some, coding is a passion. So they will stick with code and customize the checkout page Woocommerce.

However, for marketers, store owners and even developers who work for clients, they are looking for some quick solution based on their requirements.

And that’s what we have listed below. Different types of WooCommerce checkout plugins based on your store type or the products you sell.

We have also covered some coding bits to customize the WooCommerce checkout page.

Best WooCommerce checkout types and plugins that gives breakthrough results

These are categorized into five types for increased sales leads & revved online revenue :

• WooCommerce direct checkout
• WooCommerc one page checkout
• WooCommerce one-click checkout
• WooCommerce multi-step checkout
• WooCommerce custom checkout

Note – Checkout may differ for every niche. More than one checkout type works well for a particular niche. It’s purely your choice to identify the best one for your niche based on your analytics data.

Let’s look at each type of WooCommerce checkout in more detail along with the plugins for it.

WooCommerce Direct Checkout

The first type of checkout in our list is the WooCommerce direct checkout. Here, the user skips the cart and directly enters the checkout page.

What’s good:

• Great from a user experience point of view due to faster checkout process
• Faster order processing

What’s not good:

• User can’t review cart or modify cart items
• Not suitable when multiple products are present in cart

However, these limitations can also be taken care of via a side cart panel using Cashier plugin.

Best suited for WooCommerce stores selling:

• Digital products
• Jewellery
• Music items
• Home & decor items
• Bookings
• Health & fitness products

Btw…the same businesses for whom WooCommmerce direct checkout is applicable can also opt for WooCommerce one-click checkout and vice-versa.

Seven popular plugins make it to our list. We have covered the three most popular ones below.

View all WooCommerce direct checkout plugins here

Cashier for WooCommerce

Cashier plugin is available on the WooCommerce marketplace. It helps you optimize your checkout funnel. Cashier will help you add a Buy Now button or link, clicking on which users can skip the cart and proceed to checkout.

Cashier can also skip checkout and payment steps and complete the order in one click based on customer’s previous order and payment details.

Top features:

• Autofill shipping and billing related information for logged-in customers
• Automatically recommend frequently bought together items
• Show both the WooCommerce Add to Cart and Buy Now buttons on the product page
• Share Buy Now links via email, social media, or embed them anywhere on your website
• One-click checkout works with these payment methods – Stripe, PayPal Standard, Braintree, Authorize.Net, Cheque Payments, Direct Bank Transfer and Cash on Delivery.
• Enable side cart panel to allow users review and modify cart items from the checkout page
• Use Add to Cart links to redirect users to any page
• Set min-max quantities
• Cost of Goods metric for simple and variable products

Pricing: $49

Get Cashier for WooCommerce plugin

WooCommerce Smart Offers

Based on Amazon’s 1-click purchase model, WooCommerce Smart Offers from StoreApps is the original and successful one-click checkout plugin that skips cart, checkout, payment screen and completes the order in one-click.

You can enable Buy Now for the entire store or create special buy now links for products of your choice. You can even embed coupons, choose shipping and redirect to a page of your choice with Buy Now links.

Top features:

• Works for both guests and logged-in users
• Complete the payment in just one click for customers with at least one previous order.
• Enables users create one-click WooCommerce upsells, BOGO, order bumps and other offer types based on targeting rules.

Pricing: $99

Get Smart Offers plugin

PeachPay

PeachPay, a WooCommerce-backed company, allows a direct checkout with an easy-to-implement, conversion-optimized checkout window on the product page.

Top features:

• Customers with prior PeachPay purchases on other stores are remembered
• Fully customizable checkout button (color, width, text, rounded corners, shine effect, disable by page, and more…)
• Fully customizable window (additional fields, coupon/discount field, upsells/cross-sells, related products, product images, and more…)
• Support for four payment methods: Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay
• Multicurrency/multilingual functionality
• Test mode to try PeachPay on site before showing customers

Pricing: Free

Get PeachPay

WooCommerce One Page Checkout / WooCommerce One Page Shopping

The WooCommerce one page checkout or WooCommerce single page checkout process places the entire purchase process on a single page. Your product, cart, checkout form, payment details, all are on a single page.

This checkout is suitable for WooCommerce stores selling a single product, very expensive products, digital products having a maximum of three or four pricing plans.

What’s good

• Low abandonment as everything on a single page
• Increased sales

What’s not good

• A lot of clutter and clumsiness on the page
• Too many fields on a single page result in slow speed and bad user experience
• Can’t be used in industries with multiple products categories

Best suited for WooCommerce stores selling:

• Digital products
• Club Memberships
• SEO services, web developments
• Hosting
• Events, concerts

There are six popular plugins here. We have covered the most popular one below. View all WooCommerce one-page checkout plugins here.

Woocommerce One Page Checkout

This is the official one-page checkout extension on WooCommerce.com. The plugin displays product features and checkout on a single page, providing the user with an easy and seamless shopping experience. Customers can add or remove products from their cart and complete payment without leaving the page.

Top features:

• Simple code-free setup
• Built-in & custom templates to suit your website
• Create unique landing pages for special events, promotions or select customers
• Compatible with popular WooCommerce extensions – Chained Products, Smart Coupons, Subscriptions, Bookings and others

Pricing: $79

Get WooCommerce One Page Checkout plugin

WooCommerce One-Click Checkout

In WooCommerce one-click checkout type, the entire cart page or even checkout page is skipped. And users can buy the product with just a click of the button.

It uses customer’s pre-filled data capture from previous sessions to make the purchase. In such a scenario, the payment information is not captured along with shipping details but extracted from predefined entries.

What’s good

• Instant checkout
• No cart, checkout, payment stage involved
• Ideal for returning customers
• Best for one-click upsells

What’s not good

• Doesn’t factor in the modifications which may be necessitated due to change in billing or bank details.

Best suited for WooCommerce stores selling:

• Books
• Literature items
• Fitness consultation
• Digital products
• Medical equipments
• Photographs

In the above cases, the users are almost absolutely sure about what they need. Hence, a 1-click checkout is an optimum choice.

Now, we have got two one-click checkout plugins in this category.

Cashier for WooCommerce

As mentioned above, along with the direct checkout option, Cashier plugin can also complete the checkout in one click based on customers’ previous details. This plugin is available on the WooCommerce official website. It helps you optimize your checkout funnel.

Get Cashier for WooCommerce plugin

WooCommerce Smart Offers

WooCommerce Smart Offers plugin also falls in this category. You can embed Buy Now buttons for each product or sitewide, clicking on which the users can complete the order in one click if previous details are available.

Get Smart Offers plugin

WooCommerce Multistep Checkout

The fourth checkout type is the most common and used by many – WooCommerce multistep checkout. Here, there are multiple pages to gather product-level data and shipping/payment details. The user is provided with varied options in terms of categories, product features, and payment methods.

What’s good

• The user is assured of drilling down to the minutest details during product purchase to guarantee a fulfilled experience.
• User can easily navigate between multiple steps to re-confirm details or stay assured.

What’s not good

• Has more abandonment rates compared to other checkout types
• Understanding analytics for this stages for improvement is a complex task
• Consumes lot of user’s time

Best suited for WooCommerce stores selling:

• Electronics
• Clothing & fashion accessories
• Baby products
• Retail/FMCG/Grocery
• Food & Beverages
• Hospitality
• Finance & Banking services

We have got two popular plugins in this category:

CheckoutWC

CheckoutWC is a top-rated and popular WooCommerce multi-step checkout plugin. The plugin replaces your checkout page with a beautiful, responsive, and conversion optimized design.

Top features:

• Works with all WordPress themes out of the box.
• No configuration or coding knowledge required.
• Allows your customers to create an account without any additional information.
• Card Editing feature allows your customers to edit their cart right from checkout.
• Has an Address Autocomplete feature that uses Google Maps to autocomplete the address fields.
• Support most gateways, shipping providers, and add-ons

Pricing: 7-day free trial available, Pro plans starts at $149.

Get CheckoutWC plugin

ARG Multistep checkout

ARG Multistep checkout plugin is also a top-rated, fast and reliable multi-step checkout plugin. You can achieve a better user experience by dividing the most important elements of the default WooCommerce checkout process.

Top features:

• Compatible with all the WooCommerce and WordPress based themes
• Cross browser compatible, fully customizable and fully responsive
• Great user interface and experience, with smooth animations on changing and validating a step
• A powerful and reliable step by step jQuery form validation
• Built-in Login/Register step (two layouts)
• Built-in Order Review step

Pricing: $19

Get ARG Multistep checkout plugin

WooCommerce Custom Checkout

Here, you are playing with the existing WooCommerce checkout page with plugins and modifying fields based on your needs.

Custom checkout eliminates the non-priority fields and re-organizes the prime fields at the top so you deal with only what is important from a user point of view.

It’s better to conduct A/B testing on fields before finalizing on the correct format.

What’s good

• User can add or remove fields based on his choice
• Flexibility to modify parameters like logo, fonts, colors, links, etc.

What’s not good

• Requires coding knowledge if not using plugins
• Wrong field placements or missing fields can backfire at times

Best suited for WooCommerce stores selling:

• Services
• Ebooks
• Digital products
• Retail/FMCG/Grocery
• Electronics

In this checkout type, we have covered three plugins:

Express Checkout for WooCommerce

Express Checkout is a popular WooCommerce digital downloads plugin that eliminates the unnecessary details section for virtual and downloadable products (related to shipping and billing) & ensures a quick and smooth checkout process for the customers.

Top features:

• Gives you the option to choose what parameters you see on your checkout page and what you don’t
• Faster checkouts due to shorter forms

Pricing: $39

Get Express Checkout for WooCommerce plugin

WooCommerce Checkout Add-Ons

This extension allows you to add several additional options to your checkout page and determine which are free or paid. You can also sort and filter orders based on your shiny new options.

Top features:

• Create many custom field types – text, text area, drop-downs (i.e. select fields), multi-selects, radio buttons, checkbox, multi-checkbox lists, and file uploads
• Upsell additional products and services
• Dynamically update order details and total at checkout as options are selected or modified
• Optionally add fixed-amount or percentage-based costs based on how customers interact with the field

Pricing: $79

Get WooCommerce Checkout Add-Ons plugin

Checkout Field Editor (Checkout Manager) for WooCommerce

Checkout Field Editor plugin provides an easy way to customize (add, edit, delete and change display order) your fields displayed on the WooCommerce checkout page.

Top features:

• No coding required
• Easy install / customizable features for fields
• 17 custom checkout field types
• Customize, disable or delete default WooCommerce fields
• Developer friendly with custom hooks
• Rearrange all fields and sections as per convenience
• Create your own custom classes for styling the field

Pricing: $49

Get Checkout Field Editor plugin

Customize WooCommerce checkout page using coding

Phew! These are some really good plugins you can use and get your job done. Simple and cost-effective.

Now let’s look at some technical aspects of customizing the checkout page.
Here’s one example to add a custom field to your checkout page. We want to add Age on the checkout page.

First, you need to act on the functions.php file.

< ?php
/**
 * Add the age field to the checkout page
 */
add_action( 'woocommerce_after_order_notes', 'add_custom_age_field_on_checkout' );
function add_custom_age_field_on_checkout( $checkout ) {
	echo '
' . __( 'Heading' ) . '
';
	woocommerce_form_field(
							'add_age_field', array(
													'type' => 'text',
													'class' => array( 'age-field-class form-row-wide' ),
													'label' => __( 'Enter your age' ),
													'placeholder' => __( 'Age' ),
													'required' => true,
												),
							$checkout->get_value( 'add_age_field' )
						);
	echo '';
}

Next, you need to write the code for data validation.

< ?php
/**
 * Checkout Process
 */
add_action( 'woocommerce_checkout_process', 'customise_checkout_field_process' );
function customise_checkout_field_process() {
	// if the field is set, if not then show an error message.
	if ( !$_POST['add_age_field'] ) {
		wc_add_notice( __( 'Please enter your age.' ) , 'error' );
	}
}

Next, you need to write the below piece of code to confirm that the details entered into the custom field by the client, is being saved or not.

< ?php
/**
 * Update value of field
 */
add_action( 'woocommerce_checkout_update_order_meta', 'customise_checkout_field_update_order_meta' );
function customise_checkout_field_update_order_meta( $order_id ) {
	if ( !empty( $_POST['add_age_field'] ) ) {
		update_post_meta( $order_id, 'customer_age', sanitize_text_field( $_POST['add_age_field'] ) );
	}
}

So with this, you would be able to add custom fields to your WooCommerce checkout page.

But but but…this was for adding just one custom field. Imagine if you need to add multiple custom fields. Or if you want to remove some fields, there’s another piece of code to write.

Are you willing to spend time on this? What if you are not into coding and make a mistake?

So, switch to plugins and make your life easier.

How to measure the success rate of each checkout?

Just a basic formula.

Divide the number of unique pageviews of the thank you page by the number of people who have viewed the checkout.

For example, unique views = 5885/9900 reveals the checkout success rate of 59%.

Strategies to increase sales before and after checkout

Getting the right checkout is not the only requirement to get sales. It all depends on how you keep the user engaged before and after checkout. So here are some strategies to encourage users to get pass the product stage and pay more after completing a purchase.

Five before payment/checkout strategies that works

Users tend to convert only if they are offered an assurance of quality, trust & long term bonhomie. Below are some time-tested tricks to affect sales before a purchase:

• List offers/deals/coupons – Promoting a value-added feature or product in form of deals can induce loyalty and long term value.
  Pro-tip – Order bump offer is your best bet to offer value addition product on the checkout page.
• Testimonials – Listing testimonials, case studies, reviews and ratings on product page imparts rapport and trust.
• On-sale top items – Projecting supplemental products on cart page will spur extra views on website pages and may affect more sales.
• Option for guest checkout – User who gets bored with the drudgery of filling long fields can directly go to checkout using a Guest account wherein details are covered at later stages.
• Free shipping – There is nothing such as FREE lunch is most common adage but in e-commerce, we can use this to advantage. FREE word is a common ploy wherein user is enticed to BUY due to value addition at buy stage.

Four after payment/checkout strategies that works

Happy with the sale? You shouldn’t be as you can still upsell or cross-sell after the payment is finalized. Some of the post-purchase promotion strategies are listed below:

• Display similar products – Display discounted or hot selling items just after the purchase. One-click upsell is your best bet at this stage.
• Refer a friend/ Share on Social media – A satisfied user is an asset and can spread the cheer to others.
• Feedback/Suggestions – You can never gauge the user happiness index even after purchase, there can be certain whims. So keep options open to vent their opinion by way of comments/suggestions.
• Retargeting Ads – A user leaving the purchase funnel halfway can be targeted again using retargeting advertising method by sending personalized email campaigns.

Start getting higher conversions

For a seamless and structured checkout functionality, adopt checkout optimization measures that will help your online store reap rewards in the long term. Whether opting for a one-click checkout or direct checkout, ensure that it suits the needs of your industry and your customers.

Plugins like Cashier, One Page Checkout, CheckoutWC and others come in handy to gather steam and engagement and can help push the value chain up further. Select the one that best suits your budget and specifications.

How valuable you found this article? Did we miss any industry or checkout type? Do let us know in the comments section below.

FAQs

What is WooCommerce checkout?
WooCommerce checkout is the process by which customers review their order details, enter their payment and shipping information, and complete a purchase on an online store powered by the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress.

How do I enable checkout in WooCommerce?
First, go to WooCommerce » Settings and click on the 'Advanced' tab. After that, open the 'Checkout page' dropdown and start typing in the URL of the WooCommerce custom checkout page you just created. When the right page shows up, select it.
For ease of use, you can also use the Cashier plugin or similar.

How do I manage checkout in WooCommerce?
Using the right plugin, you can manage checkout in WooCommerce. You can check out this blog to explore how to manage and edit WooCommerce checkout page (Code + Plugins)

How do I make WooCommerce checkout faster?
To make WooCommerce checkout faster, you can optimize your website’s speed and performance, simplify the checkout process, reduce the number of required fields, enable guest checkout, use a reliable hosting provider, and use a caching plugin to improve page loading times.