One of the biggest problems a WooCommerce store owner can encounter is when the checkout fails. There are a lot of different types of issues that could happen during checkout, but these can be fixed easily if you can identify what is causing the problem. However, finding out the cause is not always easy for the average user. In this post, we will teach you how to fix the common checkout problems in WooCommerce.
The information in this post may or may not help with the specific problem that you are experiencing with your checkout. You may have a similar problem but the source could be different, hence the solutions mentioned here may not work for everyone. It is best to have a developer adept in both WordPress and WooCommerce make the suggested fixes for you. We also recommend that you create a staging/development site and do your debugging there rather than on the live site.
Most Common WooCommerce Checkout Issues
Here at Wooassist, a lot of new clients come to us with problems on their checkout. Having issues on the checkout page can be daunting as it can be difficult to figure out the cause. The checkout page is crucial because it is the last page of the “user shopping experience”. A simple error that could be fixed in a few minutes can hurt your business if it is not addressed swiftly. You could end up losing business opportunities and customers. To fix the problem, we need to figure out what the error is first.
Below are some common issues we encounter that you could be experiencing right now on your WooCommerce store.
Checkout Page Isn’t Available and is Just Redirecting Back to an Empty Cart
While there are many reasons why checkout would redirect to an empty cart, it’s usually because your hosting is not totally compatible with WooCommerce.
The issue is most common with stores that enabled “force https on checkout”. In this case, the issue could be caused by a PHP security module called Suhosin. WooCommerce already has an official fix posted for this.
Simply paste the code below in your server’s PHP settings.
suhosin.session.cryptdocroot = Off
Review Order Section is Stuck on Loading
When a customer enters their shipping/billing information, this triggers a script to reload the review order data. When there is an error in the script, it will just get stuck without an error shown that would’ve helped you understand what’s happening.
This usually happens when the returned data is not what WooCommerce expects. This is caused by either a plugin or template conflict. To fix this, you will need to check compatibility with all plugins installed and update any outdated WooCommerce templates.
Payment Option is Not Working
Some popular payments options are PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net and eWay. These are the services that you’ve installed in your store to handle the payment process between you and your customers. This is the page where users enter their credit card information and hit the “place order” button.
Here are some scenarios where the payment option does not work:
Payment option is not available on checkout
You are sure that you have completely configured your payment option but it’s not showing up on the checkout page. This usually happens with stores that don’t have an SSL certificate installed and the payment option requires one. You can learn more about SSL in this post.
Authentication error pops up
When an authentication error pops up, this means there is something wrong between the connection of your store and your payment option service provider. To fix this, check that the credentials you entered in the payment option’s settings are correct.
Unknown error pops up
Unknown error popping up could mean that a PHP script in WooCommerce isn’t working properly. There are many things that could cause this. It may be due to a plugin conflict, or your hosting doesn’t support the custom AJAX endpoints utilized by WooCommerce. To fix this you will need to check each plugin installed. Try disabling the plugins one at a time and see if that fixes your problem. Another test that you can do is to downgrade your WooCommerce back to the last 2.3 version of WooCommerce, which is before the custom AJAX points were implemented.
Nothing happens after clicking “Place order” button
If nothing happens when you click the place order button, then most likely there is a JavaScript conflict in the checkout page. The best way to fix this is to check your browser’s console to see which scripts are in conflict. You’ll want a developer to do this for you though.
Did any of these help solve your checkout page problem? If you have any other problems with checkout on your WooCommerce store, you can hit the comments or contact us and we’ll see what we can do for you.
None of the Above
My checkout page is squished into a small right column with a large white space then a squished left column.
Hi Jay,
Are you running the most recent versions of WordPress, WooCommerce and all your plugins? You can try updating everything to see if that would fix the issue.
You can also try deactivating all plugins on your site except WooCommerce so we can rule out the possibility of a plugin conflict.
Please email us at support@wooassist.com so we can further help you troubleshoot the issue.
This is sad. Woocommerce is probably the best eCommerce platform out there. But, because of issues like this, people are tricked into Shopify.
You just have to know how to setup Woo correctly is all. There is nothing out there that has the flexibility of Woo.
Hi Toddjir,
Agree completely. Shopify is good but, in our opinion, WooCommerce wins because of the customizability.
Mine says “Error while placing order (You are not authorized to access this resource).” If I click on Place Order, can you help me with this please?
Hi Benjie,
You may purchase a support package from the link below and we can have our developers fix the issue for you.
https://wooassist.com/pricing/
Or if you have any further questions, you can email at support@wooassist.com
After clicking place order, the page does not exist. What should I do
Hi Andre,
Can you check if your Checkout page is published?
You can also try deactivating all your plugins except WooCommerce to see if checkout will work.
If checkout works when you deactivate your plugins, you can enable them one by one and test checkout at every step to find out if it is a plugin conflict.
Hi there,
On my checkout page I receive the following message “Sorry, it seems that there are no available payment methods for your state…”
Payment options display correctly on the single product page and from the cart…it is just the checkout page that shows this message.
Any ideas on how to fix this?
Thanks in advance!
Robyn
Hi Robyn,
Was your payment gateway working before? Did you install any new plugins recently? Are your plugins updated?
Hello,
My site has been up for several years now. I’ve recently added SSL. Even more recently I’ve added WooPayments to give another option other than Paypal. When I try to “place order” at checkout I get “Error: Invalid integer:xx” (xx is a decimal such as 0.4). I sell grains by the pound but customers can purchase by the hundredth of a pound, i.e. 1.28 lbs. or 0.4 lbs.
My site is setup to allow these decimals and everything is OK except WooPayments seems to not like non-integers. Any ideas on how to remedy? I have no programming knowledge.
Hi Adam,
I would recommend contacting WooCommerce directly as this an issue with their plugin and they are best people to ask regarding your problem. Here is a quick link to their contact page: https://woocommerce.com/contact-us/
Hello !
I located your article after researching the solution to a problem I am having.
After finalizing the checkout, some errors like: wrong credit card number, failure to check the Checkbox giving the knowledge that the customer read the site policies … That does not appear. I believe that there is some incompatibility between the payment plugin and thema.
If you know how to help me thank you, but also from your experience do you know of any PLUGIN where these checkout notices are shown to the customer as Popup on the screen?
Hi Andre,
For further help with problems regarding WooCommerce checkout, we do offer a premium support service. We can have our developers look at and fix the issue on your website. Here’s a quick link to our pricing page.
We also do not know of any plugin that converts checkout notices to pop-ups. It’s not something we would recommend though as it would most likely just cause more problems in the long run. WooCommerce checkout works just fine out of the box. Like the popular adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 😉
I’ve just updated to the latest version of wordpress and ever since, my site is not redirecting to the order received page when a customer checks out. I’m receiving the order (often two orders since my customers are thinking the first attempt didn’t work when it actually did). Can anyone help with a fix as I’m struggling to find any information online. TIA
Hi Alana,
Since you mentioned the issue happened since you updated WordPress, it might be a good idea to restore to a previous backup.
I would then recommend testing your updates on a staging site and fix the checkout problem there.
If you need any help getting it done, we do offer a premium support service where our WooCommerce developers can look into and fix the issue for you. Here is a link to our pricing page.