WooCommerce ships a checkout that works. Works is not the same as converts. The default checkout is responsible for most of the revenue gap between a well-tuned store and a 'we installed the Storefront theme' store. Eight fixes, ranked by impact.
1 · Collapse to one page
Multi-step checkouts (cart → shipping → payment → review) look tidy in Figma and leak customers in production. Every URL change is an opportunity to bail. One of our menswear clients saw a lift in AOV of roughly 18% just from this change alone.
2 · Drop 'company name' (unless B2B)
By default WooCommerce shows the Company field. Remove it for B2C. Every optional field you keep visible drags completion rate down by 2–4% based on studies we've run on stores from 500 to 15,000 orders a month.
3 · Email first, account later (or never)
Never force account creation. Offer 'checkout as guest' by default, and if you want to push accounts, do it on the thank-you page after the sale is closed. 'Already have an account? Log in' at the top of the checkout is fine; blocking guest checkout is not.
4 · inputmode + autocomplete
Phone field should have inputmode='tel'. Card number inputmode='numeric'. Postal code inputmode='numeric'. Email inputmode='email'. And every field should have the right autocomplete='…' attribute so iOS + Android keyboards and password managers can autofill. Out-of-the-box WooCommerce doesn't set half of these.
5 · Sticky order summary on mobile
One short email every few weeks. Like this note, but in your inbox.
75%+ of checkouts happen on phones. The order summary disappearing behind a form kills trust. Make it a collapsible sticky strip at the top of the checkout on mobile with the total, expanding to full detail on tap. Small change, noticeable lift.
6 · Clear errors, field-level, in the same language as the button
Default WooCommerce error messages are a red box at the top saying 'Billing Postcode is a required field' while the user is looking at the bottom of the form. Switch to inline errors directly below each field. Same tone as the CTA. No jargon.
7 · Real thank-you page
The page after payment is the first moment of a relationship. Most stores redirect to the homepage or a generic 'success' stub. Instead: 'Thanks, {first name}', big order number to copy, what happens next (tracking email in 24h), one soft cross-sell relevant to the purchase. No newsletter popups in the first session.
8 · Instrument everything
Add-to-cart rate. Cart-to-checkout. Checkout-to-paid. Median checkout time in seconds. Mobile vs desktop split. Refund rate per shipping method. If you don't have these in GA4 / PostHog / your analytics of choice, you're optimising blind.
"A tuned WooCommerce checkout is worth more than any single page of marketing copy. It's the conversion leverage you already own and almost never touch."
All of this, packaged
We bundled the eight fixes above into a single WooCommerce plugin — one checkbox each, zero theme edits, no separate config page per tweak. Also in our store: lafabricadeplugins.com. If you'd rather implement by hand, the snippets live in our GitHub — ping us.