Archive for the ‘Magento checkout’ Category

New features in version 4

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

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We are proud to announce the release of OneStepCheckout version 4! The past couple of months have been spent on crunching out new features, and we have also spent a lot of resources into refactoring the existing code to make it more extendible and maintanable. We think the resulting product is great, and is eager to share it with you!

New features

Besides the refactored code, we want to single out:

Refactoring

With all the new features thas has been implemented the past couple of years, it was needed to do some cleanup in the backend code that handles processing of the order. The end result was that we completely deleted our existing “Checkout” block and replaced it with events/observers to achieve the same goal. This allows us to use more of Magento’s internal methods for saving quote data, which improves compabiilty with third party modules that affects the same part of the system.

This refactoring has ensured us that we are well fit for the future when it comes to compability with third party shipping and payment modules, and it should be much easier for third party module creators to make sure their module is compatible with ours. We have created a new wiki page that explains integrators how to be compatible with our module.

Order preview before confirmation

This is a feature we have received a lot of requests for. In both the dutch and german market, there are trust programs that require ecommerce shops to let the customer get a final review of his details before the order is placed. It works like this; once all details have been filled out, and the customer clicks “Place order”, a popup / overlay will display and show all the entered details – and let the user get one last look before finally clicking “Place order” again and sending the order.

Redirect to checkout automatically after adding to cart

A lot of Magento stores are focused on just one single product – for them it is often unecessary to let the customer even go to the “Cart” page, to check quantities and such. As we have received a lot of requests for it, it is now possible with just one setting change in administration to let the customer be redirected directly to the checkout after adding the product to the cart (customer clicks “Add to cart” from product page, next he sees is OneStepCheckout).

Improved GeoIP support

Using GeoIP to automatically detect and fill out the customers country and city will definitely help you to get more completed transactions. Using GeoIP technology to auto-detect country/city is a very popular feature, and we are happy to announce that it now has become even better. This feature have always been included in our Enterprise edition, but we are now offering this module under Standard and Professional license for €30.

Bugfixes

  • Fixed Javascript validation for “Confirm password” fields
  • Improved Javascript popup displayment (login and terms box)
  • Language files are cleaned up and have all necessary translations

How can I get started?

If you are have an Enterprise license, or a Standard license that was purchased within the last 6 months, you will automatically have access to the latest version by logging in to our account area. Download it from there, and then follow our upgrade guide to upgrade your installation to the latest version.

If you don’t have a OneStepCheckout license, you need to purchase it from our website.

If you are a Standard licensee but your 6 months have expired, you can extend your access by 6 months for 50 EURO, or by 12 months for 75 EURO. You can also upgrade to Enterprise version for 395 EURO, this will give you lifetime access to the latest version, as well as free support and usage on unlimited domains.

OneStepCheckout version 4

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

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OneStepCheckout is a checkout extension for the Magento ecommerce platform that has taken the community with storm. We launched the first version in fall 2009, and currently have over 5000 installations of OneStepCheckout in all possible Magento versions, everything from old Magento Community versions to brand fresh Magento Professional and Magento Enterprise 1.11 installs. OneStepCheckout has become the checkout module in the Magento ecosystem.

In the latest version we have gone through a major refactoring of all the code to improve compability with third party modules like shipping and payment modules, and also a lot more. We are proud to announce the most compatible checkout module for Magento!

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Make it simple

OneStepCheckout simplifies the checkout process of your Magento store. Checking out is often the most complicated part of placing an order online, and many users end up abandoning their order. Some customers will be motivated enough to purchase regardless of how difficult it is – but others will be lost due to checkout complexity. OneStepCheckout greatly simplifies this process, leading to an increase in sales.

six-to-oneKey features in OneStepCheckout

OneStepCheckout is all about reducing customer abandonment and increasing conversions. Our module comes packed with a ton of features. You reduce checkout steps from six to one, simplify the process completely, avoid confusing customer with questions about registration. Simply provide a better checkout experience.

Here are the key features in OneStepCheckout

  • Disable unwanted fields like zip, city, state, country, zipcode and more
  • Show popup window to let customers confirm their details
  • Set default values for fields like zip, city, state, country and zipcode
  • Redirect customers to checkout automatically after adding product to cart
  • Separate housenumber from street address
  • Rearrange the order of the fields to match your country/region
  • Super easy installation process – just upload files and you are done
  • Set a default shipping and payment method
  • Enable checkbox for subscribing newsletter and approving terms
  • Change title and description from backend interface
  • Auto-update prices, totals, taxes and more when customer changes country / shipping / payment
  • Possibility to hide shipping and payment method options
  • Supports many different registration setups – read more
  • Fully compatible with Magento Professional and Magento Enterprise features
  • Auto-detect users country with GeoIP technology
  • Allow customer to enter gift message for the order
  • Allow customer to enter coupon codes directly in the checkout
  • Allow customer to enter a comment for the order
  • “How did you hear about us” feature to allow customer to choose referrer
  • Allow customer to add further products to cart while in checkout – eg: Rush fee, Gift wrap

Our Magento module is very easy to install, and follows the module development guidelines set out by Magento. The software is delivered as a ZIP file (you can download it from our download area) and it can be uploaded directly to your Magento installation. Also, the source code is not encrypted in any way, so you are free to make changes as you desire.

General product information

OneStepCheckout is developed like any regular Magento extension and follows the Magento module guidelines. It does not override any core classes or templates, which makes it unlikely to come into conflict with other modules. Installation is as easy as uploading the contents of the ZIP file to your Magento installation, and the rest will be done from the administration interface. Also, the module will not overwrite any files, just add new ones.

OneStepCheckout is thoroughly tested on all Magento editions and versions. Our module is also tested in all modern browsers. The source code is not encrypted in any way, so it is fully possible to make customizations as you desire.

New documentation Wiki

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

We are proud to finally announce our new documentation Wiki for OneStepCheckout. The new Wiki is the only resource you will need to install, upgrade, customize and troubleshoot your OneStepCheckout installation. Using PDF files for documentation is rigid and not very flexible, and with our new Wiki we can always add new content easily and have it available for everyone immediately, instead of re-creating PDFs and sending them around.

The Wiki can and will be improved further as new issues occur and we find a solution for them. The most important areas of the current wiki are:

From now on the Wiki will be our main place to add information related to using our product. If you have any suggestions to common questions or similar that we haven’t covered already, please contact us and let us know.

OneStepCheckout version 2.1 released

Friday, March 5th, 2010

I am happy to inform you that we now have officially released version 2.1 of OneStepCheckout. The new version fixes some critical issues that has been reported by our customers. These customers have received the new version already and all have provided feedback that the issues has now been resolved and that everything is working properly.

Changelog

  • Improved error handling, it will never show a blank screen with error message anymore
  • Fixed issues regarding discounts that disappeared
  • Fixed issue with creditcard payment methods in combination with Paypal (redirected to Paypal even though customer chose different method)
  • Implemented the Magento Javascript form validation – to show user friendly error messages when form is not filled out correctly
  • Added a new default skin in addition to a skin with Magento look and feel – Can be chosen in administration panel
  • Improved look of popup boxes (login and terms and conditions) with rounded corners and background
  • Fixed newsletter subscription, will now not subscribe and send email about subscription if customer already subscribed
  • Fixed bug regarding customer comments that weren’t displayed on the order
  • Fixed problem with not updating shipping rates based on zipcode after logging in

New look and feel

We are also very excited to inform you that the latest version of OneStepCheckout introduces an improved design that looks a lot better. We have also implemented a new skin in addition to our default skin, which you now can choose in the administration backend. Here are screenshots of the new skins:

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The new default skin of OneStepCheckout

New look for popup boxes in OneStepCheckout

New improved look for popup boxes with rounded corners

The "Magento" skin in OneStepCheckout

The "Magento" skin in OneStepCheckout

How to upgrade

To help our customers upgrade their OneStepCheckout installations, we have created an upgrade guide (always available from our support page). To get the latest version, please send us an email or use our contact form and we will send you the latest version immediately.

We are working on a better release process so all customers will be notified of new versions and be able to download them immediately, without contacting us.

Roadmap

The development of OneStepCheckout version 2.2 has already started and we are planning some nifty new features that have been requested by our customers:

  • Possibility to enter a discount code directly from the checkout page
  • Possibility to change the order the fields are displayed in the backend, to easier adapt to different countries standards for entering addresses
  • Better support for third party extensions
  • And much more…

If you have any feature requests you are more than welcome to contact us and let us know. Also, if you come across any bugs or errors, please inform us so we can address the issues and improve our product. You can also use the comment field below to let us know what you think of the latest version!

New registration features in OneStepCheckout

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Finally, after several months of development we are excited to launch the latest version of OneStepCheckout which now fully supports registration and login! During the past months we’ve received a lot of input from our customers that want different variations of support for registration (as in being able to create an account while placing an order).

In order to satisfy every customers request, we’ve built OneStepCheckout to support different registration modes. Each registration mode offers different kind of behaviour in regards with logging in and creating a customer account in Magento.

Click read more to see more details about the registration features.

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Screencast: OneStepCheckout administration interface

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

This screencast explains the administration interface for OneStepCheckout with all its settings. The screencast is rather long (8 minutes) and if you want to skip ahead, here are the timelines:

  • General settings – 0:20
  • Exclude/include fields – 2:00
  • Registration – 3:10
  • Trigger AJAX update 6:40
  • Terms and conditions 7:42

If you have any questions or comments to this Magento screencast you are welcome to let us know by adding a comment below. Thanks!

Screencast: OneStepCheckout from store owners point of view (Magento)

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

This screencast demonstrates our checkout for Magento from a store owners point of view.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please add a comment below.

Screencast: OneStepCheckout from users point of view

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

We have created some screencasts to demonstrate the features of our product OneStepCheckout. This first screencasts demonstrates the checkout from a users point of view.

If you have any comments or suggestions, you are very welcome to let us know by adding a comment below.

A/B test case study: Single Page vs. Multi-Step Checkout

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I came across an interesting case study by Get Elastic on the Official Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store. They originally had a long multi-step checkout, but created a new single-page checkout with all the options on a single page. With A/B split testing, 50% of traffic was redirected to the original checkout, while the other 50% was served the new single-page checkout. After only 300 transactions, the winner was clear and they stopped the experiment after 606 transactions.

Findings:

  • Successful completion rate for the entire checkout process increased by 257.26%.
  • Overall site conversion rate increased by 0.54%.
  • Some unexpected improvements during this experiment, like an increase of 8.54% in the average order value!

Link to the case study: http://www.getelastic.com/single-vs-two-page-checkout

I want to emphasize that the Official Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store does not run on Magento/OneStepCheckout.

Launch of One Step Checkout for Magento

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Hello, and welcome to the blog of OneStepCheckout.com! After many months of developing our product, we are proud to officially launch it! Our product is simply:

A better Magento Checkout

We have been doing consultancy Magento work for the past two years – and has been involved in launching several dozen online stores, in addition to have started a few ourselves (both with virtual and physical products). If there is a single issue that most of our customers complain about – it is the complexity involved in the original Magento checkout process. Also, from the ecommerce sites we run ourselves, we got weekly calls from our customers that were stuck in the checkout – trying to complete the purchase. As this were causing lost sales on a daily basis, we decided to do something about it …

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