To manage an online store that truly stands out, it helps to be innovative wherever possible, particularly regarding checkout. The crucial steps of completing checkout during shopping is one of the most crucial elements of the whole experience. Knowing how to customize checkout fields and then add these custom checkout fields will make your job easier.
This seems like a simple enough undertaking. After all, as long as you can understand the buyers’ needs, putting together your checkout architecture shouldn’t be too hard. That being said, there is a great deal riding on your checkout process being not just convenient, but strategic.
Why Proper Checkout Is Essential
As someone is making their purchase from an online store, the checkout process is what allows them to pay for their goods and confirm that their order gets delivered. During this, online shoppers demand a few key things these days, like speed, efficiency, and transparency.
Being unable to provide this level of openness and comfort puts stores at risk of cart abandonment and loss of conversions. Therefore, your primary order of business is to see that the checkout process is utterly immaculate.
What WooCommerce Brings To The Table
Being a quintessential plugin for building WordPress stores, WooCommerce offers a range of built-in functionalities. Among them are its built-in checkout capabilities, which are in the form of the following fields.
- First and last name
- Company name
- Country
- Address lines 1 and 2
- Town or City
- Province, County, or District
- Postcode
- Phone number
- Order notes
These fields are no doubt helpful, but they don’t offer the complete level of personalization and efficiency that many online shoppers require. Without options such as billing and shipping, you cannot expect to wow customers enough to make them stick to your store. So, while WooCommerce has its merits, it could definitely use some help.
Checkout Field Editor Plugins
Certainly, online store owners have the option to manually customize checkout fields via some backend code manipulation. But even if you have some knowledge of coding, this isn’t always the most efficient or reliable way to do things.
Instead, you can consider investing in a high-quality checkout field editing plugin available from professional developers. These extensions are readily available, easy to operate, and can make a significant difference to your WooCommerce interface.
Plugins like the WooCommerce Checkout Manager are some of the best tools out there for customizing your various checkout elements.
How To Customize And Add New Checkout Fields To WooCommerce
Making tailored and easily modifiable changes to your WooCommerce checkout page is fairly straightforward, as we’ll learn through the following steps.
Activating Your Checkout Plugin
- Through your administrator panel, head over to the “Plugin” section in the WooCommerce sidebar.
- Select “Add New”, before typing “WooCommerce Checkout Field Editor” in the resulting search bar.
- After finding the plugin, simply install and then activate the plugin.
- To access the plugin, go to “Settings” and find it under “WooCommerce”.
Customizing Your Checkout Fields
Under “Checkout” settings, this plugin will provide access to four different new field types. These are a) billing, b) shipping, c) additional, and d) account. Here’s what you need to do to customize them.
- Head over to the section tab for whatever field you wish to tinker with.
- Choose the “Add New” option to select the field that you want to add.
Configuring Fields
- Select the type of field, like text, email, phone, radio, date, text area, or any other type you want.
- Enter the details related to the field, like names, labels, placeholders, field width, or character limits.
- Finalize your configured changes through “Save Changes”.
Managing Field Visibility
Part of customizing checkout fields is making sure they appear at the desired sections of the checkout page. Here’s what you need to do.
- Drag and drop the fields to the desired points to ensure they appear where you want them to.
- Check the “Display on Order Detail Pages” option to make sure your chosen fields are available during checkout.
- Select “Display in Emails” to make sure that the fields are accessible in emails.
Conditional Fields
Conditional checkout fields allow you to make certain fields visible based on certain conditions. These might include how much the buyer has ordered, or whether they’re eligible for certain discounts or shipping deals.
- In the checkout section where your field is added, click the tab titled “Conditional Fields”.
- Based on details like cart contents, subtotals, product variations or categories, or user roles, modify the settings for your conditional fields.
Test Your Final Changes
This is a crucial step for making sure that your checkout fields are working as they’re meant to.
- Once all the checkout fields have undergone customization, ensure that you click on the “Save Changes” option.
- Perform a quick double-check to make sure that the fields are visible and working as intended, including the conditional fields.
Good Luck Optimizing Your Checkout
As promised, the process of customizing your checkout fields and adding them to your WooCommerce is not that difficult. All you need is an idea of the type of checkout setup that your buyers will appreciate the most.
Combined with the best Checkout Field Editor that developers have to offer, consider your job done. After all, in e-commerce, checkout does a lot more than alert your customers of your billing and shipping details, thus making life easier for them.
It also lets store owners gather some much-needed information about their buyers. This data will surely come in handy when you’re tasked with improving customer experience. So, tailor your checkout architecture accordingly and enjoy the flexibility it offers.
Jon Crain has written hundreds of website design and marketing article blog posts.
He is the sole owner of Pittsburgh SEO Services LLC which is a small business in Pittsburgh PA that specializes in affordable wordpress websites and digital marketing campaigns. Jon Crain has a marketing degree specializing in digital marketing and holds multiple internet marketing certifications. Jon Crain has over 25 years of experience along with managing hundreds of website projects and marketing campaigns. He also has won a variety of awards over the years from Tribune Review, Post Gazette and other publications.