A checkout doesn't just process payments. It's the last five minutes of a sale, and a bad one can give back half of what the landing earned. We've tuned dozens of WooCommerce checkouts and the principles are almost always the same.
One page. Always one page.
Multi-step checkouts — cart, shipping, payment, review — look clean in Figma and lose customers in production. Every step is an opportunity to abandon. Ship a single-page checkout with clear sections if you must break visual rhythm, but the URL doesn't change. We saw an ~18% lift on AOV in one menswear store just from collapsing four pages into one.
Fields you're probably asking and shouldn't be
- —Company name — only if this is B2B, otherwise hide
- —Second address line — merge into one, users will split if needed
- —Phone number — optional, and explain why you want it ('for delivery')
- —Create an account — never required; offer 'checkout as guest' always
- —Newsletter opt-in — unticked by default, post-purchase only
Mobile-first, for real
One short email every few weeks. Like this note, but in your inbox.
75–85% of checkout attempts happen on mobile. That means: inputs large enough that your thumbs work (44px minimum), type='email' and inputmode='numeric' on card fields so the right keyboard appears, a full-width order summary that stays visible as a collapsed strip at the top. Every desktop 'nice-to-have' you didn't manage to make mobile-good is a leak.
"If your checkout looks great on a 27-inch monitor and OK on an iPhone, you built it backwards."
The confirmation is part of the purchase
The page after payment isn't a receipt. It's the start of the relationship. Show a clear 'thanks, Ariel', an order number big enough to copy on mobile, what happens next (we'll email you a tracking code within 24h), and one soft cross-sell tied to what they just bought. Don't redirect to the homepage. Don't show a generic 'success.'
What we measure
Add-to-cart rate. Cart-to-checkout rate. Checkout-to-paid rate. Median checkout time (seconds). Mobile vs. desktop split. Refund rate by shipping method. If any of those metrics aren't instrumented, the next audit we do for you will pay for itself before the redesign starts.