So you’ve decided to create a ROLLER Progressive Checkout? Before getting started, a little bit of preparation can go a long way.
These three steps will help you make the best configuration choices to manage your checkout long-term, improve your guest experience and increase your conversion rates.
Step 1: Full-page or overlay checkout experience
The first step is to decide whether you want a full-page or overlay checkout experience.
Here's a video from our Academy to help you decide: Full-page or overlay experience?
Full-page checkout experience
For this experience, you simply add a direct link to the checkout from your website or social media sites. Guests click your 'Book now' links on your website or social pages to launch a full-screen standalone experience.
Click each tab to view the full-page checkout experience with a home page on mobile or desktop.
Is the full-page experience right for you?
The full-page experience is a great option if any of the following are true for you:
- You want to easily showcase and update your products and offerings on a checkout home page
- You drive most of your traffic from social media
- You want to use and link to multiple different checkouts
- You don’t have much control over your website or access to in-house web developers, or
- You’re already using direct links to legacy checkouts
To see how you link to the full-page checkout experience, refer to the guide Share your Progressive Checkout.
Overlay checkout experience
For this experience, guests click a button or other element on your website and the checkout opens as a right-side panel over your website page.
If guests are accessing the checkout on a mobile device it takes up the full screen. Guests can navigate through it like they do for the full-page checkout experience on mobile.
Is the overlay experience right for you?
The overlay experience is a great choice if any of the following are true for you:
- You want guests to stay on your website while purchasing
- You’re already using an embedded legacy checkout
- You have control over your website and access to a website developer who can help you set it up, or
- You only want or have one checkout as you can't have more than one overlay experience
To see how you link to the overlay checkout experience, refer to the guide Share your Progressive Checkout.
Full-page + overlay experiences
You could also use both experiences. For example, you can use the overlay experience on your website but then link to the full-page experience from your social media sites.
Step 2: Group & set up your product categories
The progressive checkout allows you to control how your products display to guests including grouping your products into categories.
Watch this Academy video to learn more: Group & set up your product categories
If you want to group your products by categories:
- Plan out the best way to group them and then set them up before you start creating your checkout.
- Create your product categories in the product categories area in Venue Manager.
For example, you can group your products by:
- Most popular / What's hot
- Activity type (eg Jump Sessions, Mini Golf, Roller Skating, Parties)
- Memberships
- Gift cards
- Season or family passes
Once your product categories are set up, you can add these categories to the checkout rather than adding individual products. All products within each category are automatically pulled in. And when you add a new product to a category, the product automatically shows up in the checkout.
If you don't want to group products by categories on your products page, you can select individual products when creating your products page, and your products display as one list. This may be suitable for venues who don't have a lot of products.
Click the tabs to view products grouped by categories on mobile and desktop.
Refer to the guides:
- Manage your product categories to see how to create your product categories in Venue Manager.
- Create your Progressive Checkout to see how to group your products by categories.
Step 3: Find and optimize images
Spending some time finding the right images and preparing them for your checkout is important. There are two key areas you need to find and prepare images for:
- Your product images
- The checkout background image & logo that appears at the top of your checkout (hero image).
Learn more about the options you have to build your brand and showcase your products using images in this Academy video.
Product images
Product images can play a pivotal role in helping you sell your products. If your guests can clearly envision the experience you’re selling, they’ll be more likely to buy.
Checkout background image & logo
The checkout uses the default logo and background image in your venue for your checkout's hero image, but you have the option to override these when creating the checkout.
The hero image is the the first photo, graphic or illustration your guests see at the top of your checkout.
You may want to change the default background image to one that more accurately represents what you're selling and your brand.
Optimizing your images
Before you can add images to your products and checkout, you need to make sure that they are properly prepared. This means optimizing images for web use, which can involve:
- Using the right file format (eg JPG, PNG)
- Reducing the file size for web use
- Resizing the image's width & height or image ratio (eg 2:1)
Guidelines:
- File format: GIF, JPG & PNG
- File dimensions: 640 x 390 pixels (width x height)
- Resize or crop your product images to 640 x 390 pixels before uploading the thumbnail image in its product's settings.
Guidelines:
- File format: Transparent PNG
- Maximum width: 640 pixels
- It doesn't matter what the height of the logo is, as height is dictated by the dimensions of the logo
- File size: Must not exceed 1 MB
Guidelines:
- File format: JPG, PNG or GIF
- Recommended width: 1920 pixels
- Minimum width: 320 pixels
- File size: Must not exceed 5 MB
You can add an image to the call-to-action home page widget to make it stand out. A call-to-action widget allows you to link to a product in your checkout or an external URL.
Guidelines:
- File format: JPG, PNG or GIF
- Image ratio: 2:1
- Maximum file size: 1 MB
How do I get started?
Once ready to start creating your checkout, refer to the guide Create your Progressive Checkout.
And watch the Academy videos to learn more about how to prepare for, create and share your Progressive Checkout.