The average WooCommerce cart abandonment rate is around 70%. That means seven out of ten people who add something to their cart never pay. Most of those losses happen at or before checkout. Here are five things you can do about it.
1. Skip the Cart with a Buy Now Button
The most direct fix: remove the cart entirely for customers who are ready to buy. The TheForge Buy Now Button adds a straight-to-checkout button on product pages. Fewer steps, fewer drop-offs.
2. Reduce Checkout Fields
Most WooCommerce stores ask for far more information than they need to ship a package. Remove unnecessary fields, make address line 2 optional, and auto-complete addresses where possible.
3. Offer the Right Payment Methods
In cash-heavy markets, not offering COD kills conversion. But offering COD without controls invites fraud. The Smart COD Control plugin lets you offer COD intelligently — available to genuine customers, blocked or fee-gated for risky ones.
4. Show Real Shipping Costs Upfront
Surprise shipping costs at checkout are the number one stated reason for cart abandonment. Live carrier rates via the EasyPost Shipping plugin mean customers see accurate costs before they start the checkout flow.
5. Validate Addresses Before Payment
Nothing kills the checkout experience like a payment failing because of an address error. Real-time address validation catches problems before the customer hits the pay button.
All three TheForge plugins — EasyPost Shipping, Smart COD Control and Buy Now Button — are free and built specifically for WooCommerce stores that take performance seriously.