WooCommerce: 8 settings that increase conversion

When a client asks me to lift their shop’s sales, they usually expect a redesign or a miracle plugin. Most of the time I start by opening WooCommerce’s settings. That is where the small snags hide, the ones that make a buyer leave without quite knowing why. I’ll illustrate each point with the shop I built for AMI Informatique, a computer hardware retailer in Dakar: 86 products, same-day delivery in the city, cash on delivery and ordering over WhatsApp. The Senegalese context is specific, but the mechanisms hold for any shop in Europe.

1. Allow checkout without an account

Picture walking into a shop for a cable and being handed a membership form before you’re allowed to pay. You’d walk out. That is exactly what a shop does when it forces account creation before checkout. The fix is one tick box, under Settings, then the Accounts & Privacy tab: “Allow customers to place orders without an account”. I tick it on every shop. I do keep the option that creates an account automatically from the email address, though. A returning customer finds their order history without ever having signed up.

2. Show shipping costs before the checkout page

You’ve filled your basket, you’re ready to pay, and a delivery charge pops up at the last step. It is the most cited cause of basket abandonment in the studies, and I see it on every project I take over. In the Shipping tab, I set up clear shipping zones with a flat rate for each. I switch on the shipping calculator on the basket page and leave unticked the option that hides costs until an address is entered.

At AMI Informatique the promise fits in a few words, same-day delivery in Dakar, and it sits in the header and on every product page. The customer knows what to expect before clicking “Add to basket”.

3. Lighten the checkout page

A checkout page is a bit like the queue at the till. The longer it is, the more likely someone puts the basket down. Since WooCommerce 8.3, the checkout page uses the Checkout block by default: a single step, with errors flagged as you type rather than after you press “Pay”. I then remove the fields that serve no purpose: company name, second address line, sometimes the postcode in markets where nobody uses it. That’s done in the editor’s right-hand panel, field by field, switching each to optional or hidden. On a shop still running the older checkout page, a small setting added through the Code Snippets plugin does the same job. I also disable the coupon field when the shop has no use for it. Sat there in plain view, it invites people to go hunting for a code on Google, and they don’t always come back.

4. Offer the payment methods of the market

A missing payment method is a lost sale, whatever the quality of everything else. Out of the box, WooCommerce offers cash on delivery, bank transfer and cheque. Cards, PayPal and mobile wallets come through gateway extensions. The right mix depends on the country you sell in, not on what’s fashionable. In Dakar, cash on delivery dominates by a wide margin, so it was the first one I enabled for AMI Informatique, in the Payments tab, with a plain sentence on the checkout page: the courier collects payment when handing over the parcel.

5. Show stock and delivery time on the product page

A bare “In stock” doesn’t reassure anyone much. “Only 3 left” or “Delivered tomorrow if ordered before 3 pm” nudges a decision. Under Settings, Products tab, then Inventory, I enable stock management and set the display to show the remaining quantity, at least once it gets low. The low-stock threshold and its email notifications stop you selling something that’s no longer there, which costs far more than a missed sale.

For delivery time, WooCommerce has no field of its own. I added it just under the price with a small setting in Code Snippets, with wording adapted to the zone. On a shop of 86 products, that’s one line, not one more plugin.

6. Make prices readable, tax included

Nobody likes watching a price climb between the product page and the basket. In the Tax tab, two options decide what the customer sees, “Display prices in the shop” and “Display prices during basket and checkout”. For a shop selling to consumers, I set both to including tax. The price display suffix lets you write “incl. VAT” after the amount, which removes any doubt. The number format matters too, in the General tab. A price in CFA francs is written without cents and with a space every three digits.

7. Let real customers speak

Product reviews are built into WooCommerce, under the Products tab. I enable reviews, star ratings and, above all, the option that restricts reviews to verified owners and shows that badge. I resist the temptation to import generic reviews or write a few “to get things started”: customers can tell, and so can Google. A shop that has just opened starts with zero reviews, and that’s normal. The completed-order email can invite one at the best possible moment, just as the parcel has arrived.

On AMI Informatique, the buying guide and the product comparison tool do that reassuring job while reviews build up. They show the shop knows its products.

8. Open an ordering channel on WhatsApp

This last setting isn’t in WooCommerce at all, and yet it’s decisive in some markets. In West Africa, a share of customers would rather ask a question, haggle a little and order over WhatsApp than fill in a form. It’s the equivalent of ringing the shop before making the trip. On AMI Informatique, every product page has a button that opens a WhatsApp conversation with the product name and its link already written into the message. Technically it’s a simple link, with no plugin. The marketer sees a sales channel, the developer sees ten lines, the customer sees a shop that answers. On one condition: someone really does reply, quickly, and turns the conversation into an order created in the WooCommerce admin, so the history stays clean.

None of these settings calls for a redesign or a paid plugin. They can be checked in an hour. I’m not going to quote an improvement percentage; every shop starts from a different place, and I’m wary of figures without context. Every snag removed is one less reason to leave.

There’s a ninth lever that cuts across all of them: speed on mobile. A checkout page that takes five seconds to appear cancels out everything above. I described in another article how I took this same shop from 71 to 85 on mobile without rebuilding it. The two jobs go together.