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osCommerce

The e-commerce.

Less pages to checkout.


WebPixie

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Ok,

 

So streamlining customer checkout seems to be high on the top 10 most wanted list for osC so I tried to streamline mine a bit. Cut 2 pages out of my new customer checkout so that's good. Thought it would be nice for folks to share how they streamlined their checkout so others can get some ideas and do the same.

 

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This is what I did for my checkout, I hope it can help someone.

 

Ok, top of page has "my account", if user clicks it gives them the login ala amazon login box. Normal login, new user can create account by click "new user" and going to create_account.php, or they can login and go to their account page. nothing special here except the "amazon style" login seems a bit friendlier.

 

 

If a user has items in cart, they click "checkout" it skips the login page and takes them to create_account with a "returning users skip this page *click here*" part at the top (which takes returning customers to login and then directly to checkout_shipping). I tried adding the login box to the create_account page but couldn't get it to work, so I gave up and added the text notice on the page instead.

 

create_account now says "Your shipping information" at the top instead of "account information" to make the user feel as if he is just checking out not "signing up".

 

if the user has items in their cart when they submit create_account I assume they are checking out and it skips create_account_success and drops them straight into checkout_shipping, since I don't know many folks who would create an account for a store unless they were buying.

 

When they hit checkout_shipping if they have no items in their cart, I assume they DID want to just create an account, so checkout_shipping will drop them into account.php instead of back into an empty shopping cart like it did before.

 

Then the user goes to payment information, which tells them their billing address must match their credit card statement address etc.. etc.. and proceeds like normal.

 

So basicly now checkout flow is:

 

create_account --> checkout_shipping --> checkout_payment --> confirm --> done

 

Didn't do much but take out login and account_creation_success, but 2 clicks less seem to make checkout seem a bit friendlier then before. I also added the graphics that show where you are in the checkout process to the top of the pages so folks can see they are almost done easier :P

 

I didn't add anything crazy to the files, just changed where the pages redirected when checking out and such.

 

Example in create_account.php:

Changed this:
tep_redirect(tep_href_link(FILENAME_CREATE_ACCOUNT_SUCCESS, '', 'SSL'));

To this:
tep_redirect(tep_href_link(FILENAME_CHECKOUT_SHIPPING, '', 'SSL'));

 

 

It seems like a lot less hassle now to checkout, but not sure if I am missing anything important, or if there is more that I can do.

 

I would love to be able to allow users to put billing and shipping information into create_account but don't know the best way to handle it... Add the billing address just to that order or create 2 address book entries on create_account? too much for my brain right now.

 

Anymore ideas out there for shortening the checkout. I was really trying to make it shorter without having to hack up the code too much, but any suggestions would be great.

 

Maybe someone can share so other people can try their ideas too :)

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I initially planned on doing a guest login capability, but decided that a lot of the account capabilities are impressive, even if we have very few repeat customers, and noticed that the guest account contributions are not trivial.

 

Also, several people expressed that all of their customers went ahead and created accounts rather than use the guest login.

 

So I implemented the same approach as you for streamlining the checkout process.

 

I changed checkout_shipping.php & filenames.php to handle the redirects to default to new customer setup and skip the welcome screen.

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