In celebration of our newly released free Ubercart guide, we’re posting a 5-part series of tips for making your Drupal online store shine!

First up is taking a good look at your checkout process. The purchasing process is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Ubercart’s defaults might work well for you, but don’t make assumptions! The last thing you want to do at this crucial point is introduce hurdles to your customers and encourage them to wander off and not complete a transaction. 

Luckily Ubercart gives you several options for adjusting this process to suit your needs.

Here are some settings to check up on and questions to ask yourself:

Are you selling one-off, unique items?  If not, check "Display an optional quantity field in the Add to Cart form" at example.com/admin/store/settings/products/edit/general — that is, assuming someone might want to buy more than one of whatever you sell. Changing this setting lets customers buy multiples of an item with one click, otherwise they’ll have to do this on the Shopping Cart page.

In addition to the above, consider bypassing the Shopping Cart step after customers click "Add to cart", in favor of sending them straight to the Checkout screen. This is best if you’re selling a single item and want to drive customers directly to the payment step without seeing an unnecessary screen. To do so, change the "Add to cart redirect" field at example.com/admin/store/settings/cart/edit from "cart" to "cart/checkout".

Does the "Cart" metaphor work for your site?  If you’re selling downloadable items, site memberships, or conference registrations, you might want to change the "Add to cart" text at example.com/admin/store/settings/products/edit to something more appropriate (such as "Sign up" or "Subscribe") to avoid confusion.

Do your products require explanation and further details before anyone is likely to buy?  Unless you’re selling a commodity item, there’s not much point in displaying the "Add to cart" form on your main catalog grid pages.  You can disable this at example.com/admin/store/settings/catalog/edit/grid

Only ask for the information you absolutely need.  Luckily Ubercart does well compared to many e-commerce sites out there, many of which require you to register or provide details before you can even see shipping costs!  Make sure in the checkout (example.com/admin/store/settings/checkout/edit/panes) and payment settings (example.com/admin/store/settings/payment/edit/methods) that you are only asking for customer details necessary to complete the sale.

Another setting that’s still on my wishlist is to make the order review screen optional. Others have brought up the same desire so here’s hoping it will become an option in a future version of Ubercart.

Don’t forget to use Google Analytics tracking to find out your cart abandonment rate so you can see the before and after!

Stay tuned for ÜberTip #2… it’s the simplest of them all!