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Product Review of OneStepCheckout for Magento

April 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

OneStepCheckout is a great addition if you are running an ecommerce site using Magento.  What this plugin does is take the standard mulit-step checkout and allow you to reduce it to a single step.  Why would you want to do that?  Simple!  It’s because you want to increase the conversion rate of the checkout process on your ecommerce website.  This product review is going to discuss the nitty gritty details of this plugin including the costs and the pros and cons using OneStepCheckout on your ecommerce website.

A few facts worth talking about regarding OneStepCheckout

  • OneStepCheckout currently runs on over 3000 Magento websites. (As of April 2011)
  • Lots of documentation and guides to help you better use this plugin in your business
  • Over one billion dollars worth of transactions annually have been processed through OneStepCheckout
  • This plugin is only used on Magento websites

Let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of using OneStepCheckout on your ecommerce website.

Pros of using OneStepCheckout

  • Optimizing a 6 Step Checkout Process - This is the biggest selling points as to why people buy this plugin.  The thought is that if you decrease the number of steps in a checkout you will in turn increase the number of sales on your ecommerce website.  The value proposition offered here is something that many online business owners want, spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars trying to implement and offers it in an easy to implement manner.
  • Easy to Customize User Interface - A lot of ecommerce software out there today is still difficult for the average user to customize once its installed without a web developer or being a web developer.  There are a number of customization options that you can set yourself in  OneStepCheckout’s user interface allowing you the ability to get your one page checkout looking the way you want it looking.
  • 3 Versions to Suite your Needs – There are currently 3 versions of OneStepCheck all with different price points and depending on what version of Magento Commerce runs your ecommerce website there is a version that you can install.

Cons of using OneStepCheckout

  • Only Magento-friendly – Even though OneStepCheckout is such a great addition to your ecommerce website just remember that its only available for use with Magento Commerce.
  • The Price - This add-on for your Magento ecommerce website is not for the faint of heart.  Sure its got a lot of features and functionality but it comes at a price.  With a base cost of 245 Euros this is definitely not an easy cost to swallow but just remmeber the saying “You get what you pay for” because it applies here.

Case Study: How OneStepCheckout Increases the Conversion Rate on an Ecommerce Website

I figured that you would want to the proof behind implementing OneStepCheckout on your ecommerce website.  The site that conducted this case study is http://www.thecorkscrew.ie/ and they conducted this case study to figure out how OneStepCheckout increased the conversion rate on their website.

Using the Traditional Magento Commerce Checkout Process

After implementing OneStepCheckout

As you can see the increase in people checking out of the website went from 16% to 43%.  That’s a great increase in conversions for any website.  Feel free to read the more about this case study by clicking here.

How much does OneStepCheckout cost?

There are 3 types of OneStepCheckout including Standard, Professional and Enterprise that OneStepCheckout offers which also coincide with the different editions of Magento Commerce.

  • The Standard edition is used for smaller Magento stores, you can only use it on a single domain and it comes with free upgrades for 6 months after you purchase it.  This edition sells for 245 Euros.  Click here to check it out!
  • The Professional edition is primarily used on Magento stores that run Magento Professional or Enterprise version, it supports all features of both of these Magento version and again it can only be used on a single domain and comes with the same 6 months of free upgrades.  This version sells for 345 Euros.  Click here to read more about it!
  • The Enterprise edition is targetted at customer that need to use OneStepCheckout on multiple domains and have high demands for support.  This version covers all versions of Magento and offers lifetime support and upgrades!  Click here to read all about it!
Filed Under: Magento Plug-ins and Add-ons, Product Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

The one page checkout process explored!

April 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you are looking to develop an ecommerce website or your company already runs one in place then considering a one page checkout process over a multi-page checkout process may be a way to cut down the number of clicks and increase the amount of conversions your ecommerce website has.

Some ecommerce website owners prefer a longer checkout process while others prefer a quick one page checkout.  To some degree, it is sometimes more of a personal preference especially when the choice is not based on statistics to back up the decision.  With that being said, it’s important to remember that running an ecommerce website means that you need to think about your customers and how they are going to use the website, how do you want them to checkout and how do you want to allow them to perform this process.

Advantages of the one page checkout

The “all-in-one” solution – Just as it sounds a one page checkout is just that.  It allows you to checkout in one page (well technically 2 pages because once you’ve submitted sometimes a “thank you” page is generated but you get the point).  This is the selling point behind a one page checkout and it’s a great solution.

Sometimes the number of clicks a user must make to become a customer of yours causes them to drop off more than simply having the checkout process in one step however this isn’t always the case.  In the case of multi page checkouts, one common way to analyze the problem of people dropping off can be done using “sales funnel visualization” which can tell you a lot about where people are dropping off, where they entered the sales funnel and point you to possible reasons why they left without checking out of your ecommerce site.

Disadvantages of the one page checkout

The big guys don’t use it - Many fortune 500 online retailers don’t use the one page checkout process on their website.  People seem to follow businesses that are successful so just because the one step checkout option is available people may choose to follow the success of online retailers over trying something different.

There is no winning formula – When it comes to the checkout process on your ecommerce website there is no winning formula other then the formula that works for you.  Some ecommerce websites do better with a 3 step checkout and others perform better with just a single step checkout process.  In order to find what works best for your ecommerce website you need to plan, test, review and analyze the results and then do it all over again with a new test case.  The thing of it is that eventually you are going to find what works best for you.

If you are looking at your ecommerce website thinking “where do I start?” just remember to test and you may find that a one page checkout works just fine for you and if it doesn’t at least you know and in the meantime keep testing until you find your “checkout process mojo!”.

Filed Under: Website Tips Tagged With: , ,