With the innumerable shopping options before customers now, it is imperative to give them a hassle-free shopping experience. Today we introduce a plugin for your WooCommerce-built store, that will help your customers share their exact location easily for products/services to be delivered instead of typing out their full address or driving the delivery person crazy – the Location Picker at Checkout for WooCommerce Plugin.
Location Picker at Checkout for WooCommerce
Theoretically, delivering a product to a customer at their address is simple. Collect the payment and get the product to its selected destination. But imagine a situation where most houses do not have numbers or the streets are not named (Yes, there are such places!) Then finding the customer’s location can turn into a nightmare. In such situations, an option to get the exact location from Google maps will be a great relief.
Location Picker at Checkout for WooCommerce is a simple plugin that helps customers share their exact location on Google Maps while ordering a product. This plugin is excellent for stores with delivery personnel that ship products to customers within a moderate geographical area. It enables store owners to get more precise location details without having to contact customers via other means for location information or directions.
Having a customer’s exact location also helps you calculate the correct shipping/delivery charges, as the accurate location is shared on WooCommerce checkout map and confirmed by the customer and hence there is no room for error in the address.
This plugin will be perfect for time-sensitive deliveries like perishable items and gifts where the delivery agents cannot afford to waste time looking for the correct address and location. The customer does not have to continuously bother the delivery agents or vice-versa. It enables you to save precious time that can be used to focus on core aspects of the business.
Interesting Features
1. Allow customers to share their exact location using Google Maps
As we mentioned earlier, this plugin detects the precise location of the customer and helps to share it, doing away with any confusion regarding location and numerous phone calls/emails/text messages trying to understand the site for delivery purposes. They can also see the previous delivery locations they have chosen for past orders.
2. Autofill checkout fields with information pulled from Google Maps
This feature makes the purchase process easy for the customers, sparing them the need to type out the details. As a website owner, it is imperative that you get all the information to make the product delivery possible. But if the process becomes too cumbersome, then some customers may leave the cart and search for other options, making you lose valuable sales.
3. Option to show/hide maps as necessary
This is what we liked the most about this plugin. There are several customizable options here. For example, you can hide the map for those who have not logged in or hide/show the map based on shipping method or shipping class or even have the map only show for selected coupon codes. You can also create the map visibility rules using a table provided (just drag & drop them). The final visibility state of the map depends on the last rule in the table. It’s also possible to force customers to select their delivery location on the map before they can complete their order.
4. “View on map” button for admin to view the exact delivery location
This button sure helps the admin to view the delivery location precisely and take any decisions accordingly. There is also a built-in map view that shows on the order screen in the WordPress admin dashboard.
5. Customizable Map container
You can choose the background color of the map container, the map’s height and width and its position on the checkout page.
6. Places Autocomplete Feature
Though the plugin’s primary usecase is for allowing customers to choose their location on a map, there is an option now for admins to allow customers to use the Places Autocomplete Feature from the Google Maps API to get address locations as they type. Thus the plugin can fulfill both the needs of stores that want a map and stores that don’t want the map and just want the auto complete address feature.
What does it cost?
The plugin is free to download from the repository but it uses the Google Maps APIs – namely the Maps JavaScript API and the Geocoding API. To use the Geocoding API, you will need to set up billing for the account on which you created the project. But you really do not have to worry about it. Google provides $200USD free credit every month. You would only be billed by Google if the API usage goes above this $200USD limit.
Simply put, if you’re receiving less than ~15,000 pageviews a month on your WooCommerce checkout page, then you have not reached the threshold at which Google will start billing. So you don’t need to pay a dime to have users set their delivery location. This means you can grow your store without worry until you get to the point where you’d be more than equipped in your business earnings to be able to pay Google for usage over $200USD.
Final verdict
Location Picker is a simple but power-packed plugin that you can use in your WooCommerce websites. It is sure to be helpful for both the website owners and the customers in finding/sharing the delivery locations. Since this plugin stores geolocation, shipping charges can be calculated precisely too. Currently, the plugin is translated into English, Arabic, and Spanish.
If you have an online store, be sure to check this WooCommerce checkout location picker plugin and also share your experience in the comments below. We are sure that you won’t be disappointed.