Create your online checkout

The online checkout is often where the guest experience begins. So it’s important to provide a smooth and easy buying process. With ROLLER's progressive checkouts, you can do exactly that!

This guide walks through how to prepare and set up the online checkout to suit your business needs, improve the guest experience and increase your online conversion rates.

Requirements

Progressive checkouts are available on all ROLLER subscription plans, but your venue must be using ROLLER Payments. If you’re not currently using ROLLER Payments and want to get started, contact your account manager or the support team.

Prepare for your checkout

Before getting started, a little bit of preparation can go a long way.

There are some best practice considerations you should think about before you dive in and create your checkout.

Best practice: Create one default checkout for booking management

When planning your checkout, it’s best practice to create one default checkout for booking management. This checkout should include all the products you intend to sell online.

Having one checkout is optimal because if guests have to edit or manage their bookings through the online accounts feature, they’ll be able to access a single checkout with all product options available to them.

Best practice: Overlay checkout

With online checkouts, you have the flexibility to choose how you want to share and present your checkout to guests. You can choose between an overlay checkout (recommended) or a full-page checkout.

Keep reading to learn more about each checkout option, but the differences between overlay and full-page checkout experiences primarily lie in their design, user interaction and integration with your website.

[Recommended] Overlay checkout

How does it work? Your guests select a button or other element on your website and the checkout appears over your website as an integrated panel, overlaying your website.

The overlay checkout is the best option if you want to give your guests the most seamless checkout experience. Using the overlay checkout can also increase guest spend because the shopping cart is visible as your guests open and close the checkout overlay while they browse your website.

With an overlay checkout, you have several options for effectively sharing your checkout from your website, making it easy to access and allowing guests to find what they want quickly and make a purchase.

• If you have a general checkout link on your website (for example, a “Buy tickets” button), you can overlay the list of all products within the checkout, leaving guests to browse your products at their leisure.
• Alternatively, if you’d like to send guests to a particular section in your checkout (for example, with a “Buy a membership” button) then you can configure a checkout link to direct guests to that specific section of your checkout. This avoids guests having to search for the memberships section of your checkout.
• Lastly, if you’d like to send guests to a specific product in your checkout (for example, with a “Purchase an elite membership” button) then you can also configure a checkout link to direct guests to that specific product, then all guests have to do is add that product to their basket!

Full-page checkout

Although we strongly recommend using our overlay checkout experience, if you choose not to, then you can use our dedicated checkout page option.

How does it work? Your guests select a “Book now” link on your website or social pages to open your progressive checkout in a new browser tab.

You can configure your full-page checkout to launch either a homepage as the starting point for your guests, or take guests directly to a list of products on offer. The checkout homepage acts as a curated feed showcasing your product offerings with homepage widgets. If you decide to configure a full-page checkout then best practice is to start with a homepage, as this drives conversion rates.

Mobile Desktop 1 Desktop 2

In this example, the guest first chooses a date from the homepage. The products page opens with products available for the date selected. The guest completes their purchases. 

In this example, the guest finds the product they want from the homepage. The product's details open and the guest completes their purchases.

Group your products

To optimize the usability of your checkout and allow your guests to quickly find the products they want, you can group similar products together using sections, product categories or product tags.

These can help to simplify the checkout process by allowing your guests to quickly browse for and find the products they want to buy.

For example, you can group your products by:

• Most popular / What's hot
• Activity type (eg Jump Sessions, Mini Golf, Roller Skating, Parties)
• Product type (eg memberships, gift cards, season or family passes)

Select the tabs to view grouped products in the checkout on mobile and desktop.

If you don’t want to group your products, you can add products to your checkout individually. See the Products tab section below for more information on how to group products for your checkout.

Add descriptions and images to your products

Adding descriptions and images to your products is a great way to attract your guests as they scroll through your products and increase conversion rates.

Keep your descriptions short and clear so your guests know at first glance what your products are. Also, spend time finding the right product images and optimizing them for your checkout. If your products look and sound fun and inviting, then you’re on your way to making a conversion!

There are two key areas you need to find and prepare images for:

• Your product images. These can be added when you create your products.
• The checkout background image and logo that appears at the top of your checkout (hero image).

Once you’ve completed the preparation work, you can create your checkout!

The checkout setup area

To create your checkout, follow the steps below.

1. From Venue Manager, go to Apps > Progressive checkouts > Create checkout > Online checkout.
2. Enter your checkout name. This is used at the end of your checkout URL and cannot be changed.
3. Select Done.
4. The checkout setup area opens at the Basics tab. There are three tabs to configure:
   
   

   Basics	Customize the appearance of your checkout.
   Products	Add your products to the checkout and control how your products and any add-ons display.
   Options	Configure if your checkout settings.

See below for further details on how to configure each tab.

Basics tab

From the Basics tab, you can start customizing your checkout appearance.

If you've decided to use a full-page checkout experience with a homepage, rather than the recommended overlay checkout, you create your homepage widgets here.

Appearance

Here you can set the look and feel of your checkout.

Watch this video from our Academy to see how to set up your checkout appearance.

Homepage widgets

Showcase your product offerings and drive sales by configuring homepage widgets.

From here, you can control what products and widgets display on your checkout homepage. You don't need to complete this section if you're not using a homepage or using the recommended overlay checkout.  

To add a widget:

1. Select Add widget.
2. Select the type of widget you'd like to add to your homepage.

There are three types of widgets to choose from: product carousel, call-to-action and featured carousel.

Here's a video from our Academy to help you understand the difference between the three types of widgets and how to set them up. 

Product carousel

With the product carousel widget, you can showcase groups of products and offerings on your homepage. The product carousel can show up to 8 products and looks best when showing 4 or 8 products.

To add a product carousel widget:

1. Enter the Carousel title.
2. Select the products to showcase. You can select:
   
   
   • A specific category from product categories you've already set up. All products within the category are automatically pulled into the widget.
   • Specific products. Search for and add each of your products individually.
     
     
3. Select Apply.

Creating product categories before you set up product carousel widgets makes it easy for you to configure and update these widgets.

• Create one category for each product group you want to showcase on the homepage using the product carousel widget (eg What's hot).
• Then any new products assigned to this category automatically show up in the product carousel group on the homepage (up to a maximum of 8).

Call-to-action

With the call-to-action widget, you can link to a product in your checkout, such as a pass, membership or gift card, or an external URL such as a promotion or special event on one of your website pages.

1. Enter your Headline and Description.
2. Add your Button text (eg Show me).
3. For the Button link you can paste a link to an external URL or select a product (eg membership) you’re currently selling. If pasting a link, you'll be asked to confirm the link.
4. Add an Image file (optional):
   
   
   • Recommended 2:1 image ratio
   • Maximum file size 1MB (JPG, PNG)
     
     
5. Change the Background color for the widget and your Text color (optional).
6. Change the Button color and Text color to match your branding (optional).
7. Select Apply.

Featured product carousel

Similar to the product carousel, you can use this widget to showcase a group of products, but in a larger carousel. It gives you the ability to add more context to the product you are showcasing by describing it.

This widget looks best with 2 or 3 products, with a maximum of 3 products.

To add a call-to-action widget:

1. Enter your Carousel title and Description.
2. Change the Background color for the widget and your Text color (optional).
3. Search for and select individual products.
4. Select Apply.

Products tab

From the Products tab, you can structure your products page for easy navigation and choose which products and add-ons are available for guests to purchase.

For example, you may want to sell session passes, memberships and gift cards in your online checkout. Rather than add these products to your checkout as one long list for your guests to scroll through, ROLLER allows you to divide your checkout into sections for easy navigation and then add the appropriate products to each section.

To create your checkout sections and add your products, follow the steps below.

1. From the Products tab, select Add section.
2. Add a Section title. Name your sections for the types of products you’ll be adding. For example, session passes or memberships.
3. Next, choose how you would like to select your products for the section. You have two options. You can:

Select specific products

By selecting specific products, you choose the individual products you want to add to this section. This may be suitable if you don't have a lot of products. To do so, follow the steps below.

1. Select Specific products.
2. Search for and select your products.
3. Select Apply and then Apply again.
4. Select Save.

Select specific categories

By selecting specific categories, you're adding all products grouped within that category to your checkout section. You do not have to select each product individually. To do this, you must first set up your product categories. 

Watch this Academy video to learn more about how to group your products using product categories: Group & set up your product categories. Then read the guide Create your product categories for a step-by-step guide.

To add products by category to your checkout section, follow the steps below.

1. Select Specific categories.
2. Search for and select the categories to add.
3. Select Apply and then Apply again.
4. Select Save.

Whenever you add a new product to a category, it's also automatically added to your checkout. 

Select specific tags

By selecting specific tags, you're adding all products with that tag to your checkout section. You do not have to select each product individually. To do this, you must first add your product tags to the individual products you wish to sell online.

To add products by tag to your checkout section, follow the steps below.

1. Select Specific tags.
2. Search for and select the tags to add.
3. Select Apply and then Apply again.
4. Select Save.

When you add products to your checkout sections by tag, any new products with this tag will automatically be added to your checkout.

If you're a HQ-managed venue, you cannot use HQ tags to add products to your checkout. You need to create your own venue-specific tags to do so. To learn more about HQ tags, read the guide Create and manage HQ product tags.

Once saved, you do have the option to edit your checkout sections and the order in which your products are displayed within those sections. To do so, follow the steps below.

1. Select Edit on the section card.
2. To change or edit the Section title, type your changes over the current section title.
3. To reorganize the order your products will display in, select a product card and drag and drop it up or down depending on the order you want.
4. Select Apply and then select Save.

You also have the flexibility to rearrange and reorganize the order that your checkout sections appear. Simply select the section you want to move and drag and drop it up or down depending on the order you want.

Add-ons

Add-ons are a great way to encourage cross-selling or upselling opportunities and increase your guests average order value. 

If you linked any upsell items as add-ons to products when setting your products up, they appear in the Add-on section. You can choose any product to upsell, excluding party packages, as upsell items. From here, you can configure where the add-ons appear in your checkout.

Watch this video on our Academy to see how to set up your add-ons.

You can show your add-ons in two positions in your checkout:

On a product's details page

Your add-ons appear within the context of the product they have been linked to. Guests can select the add-ons they want after selecting their tickets.

Showing your add-ons within the context of your checkout means guests have one less step to complete!

On a dedicated add-ons page

Your add-ons appear on a dedicated page before the checkout page. This is a great option if you want to showcase high-value upsells, like memberships.

To toggle add-ons on or off for each checkout position:

1. From the Products tab, scroll down to view any add-ons based on your product selections.
2. Select Edit next to the add-on you want to change.
3. Toggle the positions on or off
4. Select Apply and then Save.

You also have the ability to re-order your add ons and upsell tickets. To increase your average order value, move higher-value add ons to the top so that they’re the first options your guests will see.

Simply drag and drop your add ons into the order you want.

Preview your checkout

Once saved, you can preview your checkout and run through the checkout flow like a guest would. Select View checkout in the top right of the page to preview how your checkout looks.

The checkout opens in a new browser tab. You can move between the homepage and the Products page to preview each page.

Options tab

From the Options tab, you’ll find several options to customize your checkout pages further. 

Take a look at this video on our Academy for some of the key options here. 

Check out our Academy to learn more about how to prepare for, create and share your progressive checkout. 

What's next?

Once you’ve created your checkout, there are a number of features you can configure to enhance the guest experience including:

• Online accounts and booking management
• Digital wallet memberships and passes

When you’re ready to share your checkout with guests, read the guide Share your online checkout to see the options you have available.