So disappointing, so featureless

  • Well, this is a kick in the nuts!

    I was all excited after seeing WP Crafters video on this. “FINALLY” i thought… “I CAN DITCH THE ASTRA THEME” as I only use it because they have a nicer checkout page than WP’s stock page layout.

    But no… i cant, because it’s frankly an incomplete plugin, should not & cannot be used on a live site.

    Some of the things i noticed within minutes of playing

    1) One of my businesses sells alcohol and therefore I cannot allow guest checkout. So I need customers to be forced to create an account on their first order. I cannot rely on “Allow customers to create an account on the “My account” page ” as all WP askes them for is an email address and password. So I was finding that people were just creating hundreds of fake profile accounts with emails like sdfsdfsdf @ sdfsdfsdf . sdef

    With WooBlocks, leaving this feature unticked “Allow customers to place orders without an account” breaks the new checkout page and wooblock checkout disappears.

    2) I need to force the customer to agree to T&Cs, as per my agreement with my payment processor. – this simply isn’t visible on the new Woo Block checkout

    3) NO payment gateways work with the new Woo Block checkout except Stripe and paypal. lol even the built-in ‘pay by cash’ doesn’t show and SquareUp doesn;t work either. Worst of all, if you use more traditional (and cheaper) payment gateways (trustpayments, takepayments, firstdata, cardstream) none of their plugins will work and you can’t use them as I have already tested… It’s very shortsighted of Automattic to not allow payment plugins to work.

    so in effect, it’s style over substance.

    • This topic was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by mrmac78.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hi there,

    I can understand your disappointment when trying out the Cart and Checkout Blocks when you have such high hopes for how they work! However, I think it’s important to mention (as we pointed out in our release post – which was also linked to from the changelog), that we released these new blocks as a preview. They definitely are not in the final form or functionality of what we consider for inclusion in WooCommerce core.

    The purpose of this feature plugin (as outlined in the plugin notes) is:

    …This plugin serves as a space to iterate and explore new Blocks and updates to existing blocks for WooCommerce, and how WooCommerce might work with the block editor.

    Use this plugin if you want access to the bleeding edge of available blocks for WooCommerce. However, stable blocks are bundled into WooCommerce, and can be added from the “WooCommerce” section in the block inserter.

    Given that, we are gathering feedback as a part of the preview process to discover the things folks look for most in Cart and Checkout flows so we can prioritize our work for future iterations.

    We do recognize, that as people try them out, the initial limited integrations won’t be suitable for all stores, but we are iterating and will improve them with the feedback we get.

    I appreciate you taking the time to share what matters most for you and your shop

    All the best!

    Thread Starter mrmac78

    (@mrmac78)

    Hi Darren, you must be pig sick of telling people that this isn’t a fully-fledged plugin yet and it’s out there for test & feedback.

    In all honesty, I never read the notes… so that’s my bad. But I did watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6HjxaHBPm8&t and at no point did WPcrafter indicate that this is an explorative plugin to test the feedback for the direction that Woo is no doubt headed. In fact, at minute 11 of said video, WPC challenges ppl to install and use this on a live to ‘see if conversions increase’.

    I think this could be why so many ppl have thought this was an end-product? nad yes I know WPC is not connected to Automattic, but he is a heavy influencer & speaker.

    I think the new layout is the right direction for WOO.. but it needs to include all the current features the current checkout has, otherwise you’re just limiting Woo to small-time mom & pop stores who only use Stripe and PP.

    Personally, I think it’s essential that payment plugins that work on the current setup, will work on the new blocks checkout. If they don’t work and this is the direction of WOO with this becoming a core checkout, I might as well jump back to Magento. As none of my stores use Stripe et al, as they are all just too expensive!. Example, Stripe = 1.4% + 20p, but I pay 0.1% + 6p via takepayments….

    You must be pig sick of telling people that this isn’t a fully-fledged plugin yet and it’s out there for test & feedback.

    It can be tiring ??, but honestly I realize that not everyone will be aware of the post or reads changelog notes before installing a plugin (or updating it). The best we can do is communicate where we can and have a place to point people to for more info. If anything, this feedback is super helpful because it helps us with where we prioritize development (considering all the feedback and opted-in, aggregated, data we get).

    I think the new layout is the right direction for WOO.. but it needs to include all the current features the current checkout has, otherwise you’re just limiting Woo to small-time mom & pop stores who only use Stripe and PP.

    I definitely agree with you there. That’s why the current blocks are a preview and not the final version. From our perspective, one of the main reasons we released the blocks this early as a preview is to help us learn what we need to prioritize our development time on. So we’re listening to all feedback!

    I also hear you on the payment methods ??

    It can be tiring ??, but honestly I realize that not everyone will be aware of the post or reads changelog notes before installing a plugin (or updating it).

    Hi Darren, I think you are the masters of your own undoing here. It’s not labeled as preview, you do not mention it’s preview software anywhere in the description and you use full version numbers.

    I agree not everyone reads changelogs but if I’m being harsh I’d go so far as to say unlabelled beta software at version 2.x.x is downright misleading.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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