One Page Checkout: Love it? Hate it? Fine with it?

caughlan wrote: I'm not too thrilled with the one page check-out at all, I feel that the name itself is a misnomer. When a customer clicks the continue button they no longer see the fields they've just filled in so in effect they think they are on a new page altogether. I dislike the scrambling of the page when you click continue - oh, have I mentioned I dislike the 'click continue' feature altogether? I wish for a true one page, all fields expanded, no need to click continue checkout.

I understand the idea behind using the accordion effect, but I do agree that it's rather disorienting while moving through the process.

Should still be able to use AJAX to populate the conditional issues coming up further down the process (for example, shipping options depend upon the shipping address entered) without having to use the accordion effect.

However, here's the puzzler: what event will define when to trigger the necessary AJAX without using a continue button? For example, when would the shipping options be retrieved? After entering country? But things are also limited by state and zip code (potentially) in addition to country. How to know when to go retrieve the appropriate shipping options? In this example, a "continue" type button might be absolutely necessary. But moving from Billing Info to Shipping info? Not so much.

Similarly with entering discount codes. That has to trigger a recalculation of the cart. What event would trigger this? OnBlurr (after mouse focus is moved from this field)?

These are tricky things to work out to find that balance between presentation and easy of use in the interface and the hella complicated logic that goes into much of this.

Greg Dinger wrote: I really like the idea about the radio buttons for ship-to address.

I too am in favor of that simple change.

We like it... but it seems like customers are confused with the continue buttons on each step. I do have 1 recommendation. I think the select a shipping drop down should be radio buttons instead.... so it takes up a little more room and a customer can easily spot it out. Basically, they will see the options for add new shipping address or use billing address without having to click a drop down menu.

Also we get a lot of calls on "How do I gift wrap this item?" Now that a customer actually has to go to checkout to add gift wrap they never find it because they assume it should happen when adding to the cart or at least in the viewcart before clicking checkout.

Hi Matt,

(2) This has been corrected already.

Thank you for your feedback. Of course, we are listening. That said:

(1) Negative feedback on One Page Checkout has been very, very limited
(2) As we said before, we have actually received positive feedback on the drop-off rate, not negative, just like Ben Pate reported above (although he indicated it might have also been driven by a more robust, error-free checkout process).
(3) The "guest checkout" login problems (confusing messages when logging in) have already been solved and will be part of the upcoming v4.1. In addition, Guest Checkout has been turned into an optional feature. We are considering posting a patch for v4 with these changes.
(4) Developing One Page Checkout was a project that required hundreds of development hours. Creating a new checkout system will be no different. The number of variables and scenarios to keep into account is astonishing. This is absolutely not something that we will work on in the short term.

All in all, we have yet to see any evidence of stores reporting an increase in the drop-off rate from switching to version 4. Quite the opposite. And that - at the end of the day - is what counts (and the reason why so many of you loudly requested this substantial structural change to ProductCart while v4 was in development).

Edited by earlyimp - 02-April-2010 at 2:32pm