Change Checkout behavior for Billing Address entry

Hi Nicolas,

We have noticed over many months that we get quite a significant number of new customers in our shop, who select goods and reach the stage of checking out for their first order but never get to complete a payment - WHY?

We have followed up with a number of people who tell us they simply did not understand the requirement to fill in a Billing address before being able to complete the checkout and gave up and went elsewhere - this notwithstanding that we have a Bold Red Message just above the Address fields on the checkout page as follows:

"Please select Billing and Shipping Addresses. If no address details are showing in the boxes below,
please enter these now. (Only needed at time of first purchase, thereafter details will be remembered)."

I was wondering if there is any way of modifying the checkout process so that a customer can only proceed to the main checkout and payment actions page after selecting the billing and shipping address - being forced in effect to complete this first?

If this part was on a separate page with the first steps of checkout being LOGIN ADDRESS - and only when complete being able to NEXT to the remaining Checkout processes - it might resolve our problem? Ideally any attempt to click NEXT before selecting or filling in the address, if a first time user, to bring up an error message box, multi-language, explaining what is needed.

Would appreciate any help on this - maybe this is a mod already undertaken by others as I guess we can't be the only ones who are seeing this leakage of business. Otherwise some guidance as to the best route to go would be good.

Regards

Chris

Hi Nicolas,

I figured it out thanks - simple really, especially when you read the instructions!

Regards

Chris