CheckoutWC 7.0 is a pivotal version for us. With the refactors in this release, we moved the project into a better trajectory – one in which we hope to do fewer substantial refactors and focus more on long term stability.

Now let’s dig into the release notes!

Better Optional Address Fields

Sometimes the most exciting things are the little things. Optional address fields will now be hidden behind a link by default. Research indicates that users are often confused by fields such as Address Line 2, which are infrequently filled out and often filled out incorrectly.

By hiding these fields behind a link such as “Add Address Line 2 (optional)” or “Add Company (optional)”, we can reduce customer confusion and improve our conversion rates.

A New Full Name Field

Another area of usability we are addressing is the number of form inputs which can be especially costly to fill out on mobile.

Namely we are providing a new optional feature to combine the first and last name fields as a single Full Name field.

We parse the full name into the respective first and last name fields so everything else will work the same. And our parsing library understands a large variety of names. 

Example 1:

Entered Full Name: Dr. David Livingston Jr.

First Name: David

Last Name: Livingston

Example 2:

Entered Full Name: Olivia de Havilland

First Name: Olivia

Last Name: de Havilland

We are excited to hear from customers like you on whether this boosts your conversion rates.

Field Rendering Jujumagumbo

7.0 also includes a big directional change regarding how we render fields. Since our first version, we used a separate function to render input field markup: cfw_form_field()

In 7.0, we are reversing course. We are using the raw input markup from woocommerce_form_field() and making minor adjustments to it. This should cleanup a lot of lingering edge cases where plugins expect fields to be rendered a certain way and then they are not rendered that way.

This should be completely invisible to the user.

Inline Postcode Validation

We have heard your feedback! The way we validate the shipping and billing post codes is not working.

Consequently, we’ve redesigned the whole process. This is how post code validation will work in 7.0:

Inline Email Domain Validation

How many times do you get an order where the customer entered the wrong email address, leaving you unable to reach out to them and leaving them frustrated, wondering where their receipt and updates are?

In 7.0 we’re going to help fix this by validating email addresses in real time. What we do is take the domain name from the email address and make a DNS request for the MX records associated with that domain. If no records come back, we display an error to the customer. It looks like this:

A New Login Flow

We are going back to the drawing board with logins. 

As CheckoutWC has become more complex, we have started to question the usability of our login system. The way it works now is that if a user either enters a known email address that matches an account OR they click on ‘Login’, a Password field and Login button was revealed underneath the email address field. 

This process worked pretty well, but it had some quirks. For example, when the login button was revealed, the email field functionally became a username OR email field. But it was still validated as an email field. This was confusing for some users.

On top of this, there were logistical issues with the other functionality that was co-located in that area of the form, such as creating an account and when to show a password field for that purpose.

The New Login Modal

Beneath the hood, there is more going on here. 

1. We’re still checking for existing accounts. If a user enters a known email address, we will open the login modal with their email address pre-filled. And we change the language: It looks like you already have an account. Please enter your login details below.
2. Clicking “Lost your password?” seamlessly opens the Lost Password modal.
3. We only prompt the user to login (by opening the modal automatically) once per 7 days.

New Admin Settings Design

Ok, I’m definitely biased but don’t these new admin screens look sexy?

But it’s more than just a new look. We took care to categorize settings into useful groups that pair similar types of settings together

It’s also clearer when a setting is dependent on another setting.

We have more to do here but we’re really happy with how it turned out.

House Number and Street Name

We’ve been asked a lot about how to better handle addresses in certain European countries. The pain point is that WooCommerce doesn’t offer discrete fields for Street Name and House Number.

This is problematic for certain jurisdictions where culturally people think of Address Line 1 as two components, and when they see ‘Street Address’ they instinctively write their street name, resulting in an incomplete address and sometimes a failed shipment.

We’ve solved that by allowing merchants to enable discreet Street Name and House Number fields. In additional to enabling the fields, you can also choose the order in which they appear.

On submit, we stitch them back together into one Address Line 1, following the country based formatting rules we apply for Google Address Autocomplete.  

New Free Features

7.0 also makes some common features free for everyone:

• User Matching
• Order Review Step
• One Page Checkout
• Php Snippets

Now that we have thoroughly vetted these features and no they don’t increase our support load, we’re comfortable making them available to all license holders.

New Order Bump Feature

In 7.0.9 we added a quick new feature: You can now choose what happens when an Order Bump becomes invalid.

Example, say someone adds a T-Shirt to the cart and they get offered a second T-Shirt at 50% off. They accept the offer and then they decide to remove the original T-Shirt from the cart.

Previously the second T-Shirt would revert to the normal price and they would no longer get the discount. However now you can configure this on each Order Bump. You can elect to remove the Order Bump from the cart if it no longer meets the conditions required to show it.

This is helpful for stores that offer unpublished products as Order Bumps and don’t want people to be able to purchase them at any price without the requisite conditions being met.

That’s It For Now

We have more coming in 2022. If you would like to be notified about updates, subscribe to our e-mail list by signing up in the box below.

The post CheckoutWC 7.0 Released appeared first on CheckoutWC.

Today we are going to do a deeper dive and talk about all of the new features to expect in CheckoutWC 7.0.

Better Optional Address Fields

Sometimes the most exciting things are the little things. Optional address fields will now be hidden behind a link by default. Research indicates that users are often confused by fields such as Address Line 2, which are infrequently filled out and often filled out incorrectly.

By hiding these fields behind a link such as “Add Address Line 2 (optional)” or “Add Company (optional)”, we can reduce customer confusion and improve our conversion rates.

A New Full Name Field

Another area of usability we are addressing is the number of form inputs which can be especially costly to fill out on mobile.

Namely we are providing a new optional feature to combine the first and last name fields as a single Full Name field.

We parse the full name into the respective first and last name fields so everything else will work the same. And our parsing library understands a large variety of names. 

Example 1:

Entered Full Name: Dr. David Livingston Jr.

First Name: David

Last Name: Livingston

Example 2:

Entered Full Name: Olivia de Havilland

First Name: Olivia

Last Name: de Havilland

We are excited to hear from customers like you on whether this boosts your conversion rates.

Field Rendering Jujumagumbo

7.0 also includes a big directional change regarding how we render fields. Since our first version, we used a separate function to render input field markup: cfw_form_field()

In 7.0, we are reversing course. We are using the raw input markup from woocommerce_form_field() and making minor adjustments to it. This should cleanup a lot of lingering edge cases where plugins expect fields to be rendered a certain way and then they are not rendered that way.

This should be completely invisible to the user.

Inline Postcode Validation

We have heard your feedback! The way we validate the shipping and billing post codes is not working.

Consequently, we’ve redesigned the whole process. This is how post code validation will work in 7.0:

Inline Email Domain Validation

How many times do you get an order where the customer entered the wrong email address, leaving you unable to reach out to them and leaving them frustrated, wondering where their receipt and updates are?

In 7.0 we’re going to help fix this by validating email addresses in real time. What we do is take the domain name from the email address and make a DNS request for the MX records associated with that domain. If no records come back, we display an error to the customer. It looks like this:

A New Login Flow

We are going back to the drawing board with logins. 

As CheckoutWC has become more complex, we have started to question the usability of our login system. The way it works now is that if a user either enters a known email address that matches an account OR they click on ‘Login’, a Password field and Login button was revealed underneath the email address field. 

This process worked pretty well, but it had some quirks. For example, when the login button was revealed, the email field functionally became a username OR email field. But it was still validated as an email field. This was confusing for some users.

On top of this, there were logistical issues with the other functionality that was co-located in that area of the form, such as creating an account and when to show a password field for that purpose.

The New Login Modal

Beneath the hood, there is more going on here. 

1. We’re still checking for existing accounts. If a user enters a known email address, we will open the login modal with their email address pre-filled. And we change the language: It looks like you already have an account. Please enter your login details below.
2. Clicking “Lost your password?” seamlessly opens the Lost Password modal.
3. We only prompt the user to login (by opening the modal automatically) once per 7 days.

New Admin Settings Design

We are not quite ready to demo this one, but we’re redesigning our admin pages again to be easier to navigate. We are organizing settings by category to keep like settings together.

We will share more about the new admin screens design soon.

House Number and Street Name

We are not quite ready to show this one, but we are working on a feature that our European friends frequently request: Separate house number and street name fields

It comes up a lot. We think we can solve this elegantly and help stop orders with missing house numbers.

When will CheckoutWC 7.0 launch?

We plan to launch 7.0 this coming Friday, February 25th Friday, March 4th.

You can help test our beta.

If you would like to help test our beta, just reach out to support and we will send you the latest build.

The post All About CheckoutWC 7.0: Making WooCommerce Checkouts Better appeared first on CheckoutWC.

However, in most cases when you’re using a premium plugin it’s not possible to install that plugin with Composer without a lot of unpleasant hacks. 

But it’s important! That’s why as of today we have full support for installing CheckoutWC with Composer! 

Get started with our guide:

How to Install CheckoutWC with Composer

Special thanks to Delicious Brains for their fantastic documentation of their process adding composer support. It was invaluable.

The post Introducing Composer Support for CheckoutWC appeared first on CheckoutWC.

Just in time for Thanksgiving (here in the US) we have launched our most requested feature: The thank you page!

With a few clicks, you can replace your Order Received page with a beautiful new thank you page, styled to match our checkout templates:

Feature Highlights

• Order Status Bar: Show your customers what their order status is and how many steps there are till they receive it.
• Map: Remove uncertainty by showing your customers that their address is correct on a real map.
• My Account: When customers view their orders from My Account, they see the same thank you template as they did when they placed their order.
• Configurable: Configure which order statuses are displayed and set an icon.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What license do I need to use this feature?

A. Address Autocomplete is a Premium Feature available to Growth and Developer licenses.

Q. How do I enable the thank you page?

A. If you have version 2.39.0 or later, you can enable the thank you page in General settings. We added a doc with lots of information.

Q. Do you have a demo?

A. All of our demo sites are configured to use the new thank you page. Click here to try it now.

Q. Do I need a new Google API Key?

A. Nope! You can use the same Google API Key you configured for Address Autocomplete. We’ve added a brand new guide for registering and configuring your Google API Key.

Q. What if I don’t want to use your thank you page?

A. Then don’t! The feature is disabled by default and you can enable it or disable it at any time.

The post Introducing Thank You Pages appeared first on CheckoutWC.