Checkout settings

Checkout settings:

The first two checkboxes let you specify whether or not checkout is enabled at all (disable to not sell products or rely solely on a third party checkout system) and whether or not it is enabled for anonymous users.

The next two text boxes let you adjust the buttons displayed on the checkout screen. We've tried to choose default words that minimize confusion for the customer, but no doubt you'll know your customers better than us. Give it a tweak and run through checkout to see how the changes fit.

The next checkbox should remain checked in most cases. When checked, it will cause various parts of checkout to hide themselves when no shippable products are found in the customer's cart.

The next settings group refers to the way checkbox displays the checkout screen form. Different parts of the checkout screen are displayed in what Ubercart calls panes. By default, panes are collapsed and are progressively expanded by the use of buttons on the form. This takes the place of a multi-page checkout. You can uncheck these boxes to have all the forms expand from the get go. There is also a text field that lets you change the text of the next buttons on checkout panes to your liking.

The final settings group relates to things that happen upon checkout completion. When new customers checkout at your site through an anonymous checkout, they will have accounts created for them. By default, new customers receive an e-mail with their new account details along with an e-mail notifying them of their order details, but you may use the first checkbox here to turn that off. For new customers, the notification e-mail also has their new account details, but that can be adjusted in the checkout completion invoice template if you desire.

Furthermore, some sites may wish to have the user accounts for tracking purposes but do not want users logging into their sites. In those cases, you may uncheck the second checkbox in this group so that new accounts are created with a blocked status preventing them from logging in with those accounts. You will want to adjust your notification settings to make your customers aren't receiving an account notification and then finding their accounts blocked.

Lastly, you may specify an alternate checkout page if you need to. This isn't recommended, as some contributions may rely on the default checkout page. Advanced users may find this option helpful if they want to execute arbitrary PHP upon checkout completion through another page on their site.

Checkout panes:

Each section on the checkout page is defined as a checkout pane. These panes display to or collect from the user information regarding their order. Checkout panes are defined by modules and may be toggled on or off. You can rearrange them by adjusting their weight. Panes are displayed on the screen in order of lowest weight to highest weight. Feel free to tweak the default order to something you think is more natural for your customers to use, but bear in mind that some panes depend on other panes for information:

• The billing information pane has a button to copy the delivery address to it.
• The shipping cost pane calculates a quote based on the cart contents and delivery address blocks.
• The payment method pane keeps a running list of order line items based on the cart contents, taxes based on the delivery address, and shipping quote.

Furthermore, some checkout panes will have their own settings. These are displayed as part of this form in collapsible sections below the main form. Click the title to expand the section and adjust the settings as need be.

Checkout messages:

All the text boxes in this section let you adjust various messages on the cart pages. Each one should have a little description underneath that lets you know where it will be displayed. Feel free to play with these and run through the checkout process several times to make sure you're happy with the results.

For the checkout completion messages, you can use the following tokens that Ubercart will translate into different things:

• !site - This will translate out to the site name.
• !new_user - This will translate out to the username of a newly created user.
• !new_password - This will translate out to the password of a newly created user.

There's a list of other available tokens at the bottom of the pane.

If you have any recommendations for other useful keywords, let us know in the forums!

Address fields:

The delivery and billing information panes collect standard address information from your customers. However, different countries and stores will have different needs. The address fields have been made flexible to account for this. On this form, you may enabled/disable different fields, rename them (e.g. Postal code to Zip code for U.S. stores), and mark them as required or not required.

Tips:

You might consider the following design tips for your site:
Remove checkout distractions