The checkout
What customers go through, and the parts of it that are fixed by law rather than by design.
Esta página aún no está traducida. Se muestra en inglés; todo lo que describe funciona igual en tu idioma.
What a customer goes through
Account or guest
Anonymous customers are asked to create an account or log in, with a continue as guest option.
Subscription products are the exception: they always need an account.
Delivery
The country dropdown offers only countries you deliver to, and the cheapest method is preselected — or the most expensive one once a free-shipping threshold is reached.
Choosing collection in person shows your pickup details right there.
On a shop that charges VAT, the summary shows the VAT contained in the total. A delivery between Switzerland and the EU, in either direction, is a VAT-free export: the prices drop to the amounts without the shop's VAT (unless the shop switched that off under Legal & Compliance), the summary says by how much, and it tells the customer that customs duties and import taxes may be charged on delivery. On a shop that rates its sales with Stripe Tax, a delivery to a country where the shop is registered is taxed at that country's rates instead, and the summary says that the prices include the delivery country's VAT.
The same shop offers two optional fields in the billing address: a company and a VAT ID. Both are printed on the invoice. On a shop seated in the EU delivering to another EU country, a VAT ID from that other country is checked against the EU register (VIES) while the customer types; once confirmed, the summary drops the VAT and says so, and the invoice carries the intra-Community-supply line. An ID the register does not know, or a register that is not reachable at the moment, leaves the VAT in place; the customer sees why. A shop that charges no VAT shows neither field.
Payment
The methods you switched on under Payment Methods.
Accepting the terms
Before placing the order, customers must tick a checkbox confirming they accept your Terms of Service (including the cancellation policy) and Privacy Policy. The order button stays disabled until it is ticked, and the checkbox links your legal pages.
The order button
Its wording is fixed legal wording in your shop's language — "Jetzt kaufen" / "Buy now", the accepted short form of the EU Button-Lösung — and cannot be customised.
Things the design cannot remove
Directly above the order button, the checkout names the seller — the same verified identity as the storefront's seller line, with a link to the legal notice — so nobody orders without seeing who the contract is with.
The same seller name and address appear as a footer on every customer email: order and shipping confirmations, review requests and credit notes.
The checkout also links your right of withdrawal page next to the order button. That is one of the five legal texts a shop needs before it can go online at all.
For subscription products, the same acceptance checkbox appears next to the Subscribe button before customers are redirected to Stripe, with the seller line above it there too.
After the order
- Inventory is reserved immediately.
- A PDF invoice in your shop's language is attached to the order confirmation email — with your logo, the shop name under it, the company name and address, and the VAT number — the tax number instead on a shop that charges no VAT. The attachment is on by default; switch With invoice off under Settings → Notifications to send the mail without it.
- Customers download the same document in their account under Orders; you find it on the order detail page.
Abandoned checkouts
A checkout a customer abandoned at the payment step — they never paid — is cancelled automatically: right away when they leave the page, and by a daily sweep for the rest.
Such orders are left out of the Orders list by default. Tick Cancelled in the payment filter to see them.
Customers never see abandoned checkouts in their account; their real orders are listed there whatever their status.
Saved carts and wishlists
Both are saved server-side for every visitor:
- guests through a random token kept in their browser, used for nothing else
- logged-in customers linked to their account, so cart and wishlist follow them across devices
A guest cart is merged into the account at login. A saved cart re-resolves prices and availability every time it loads, so it never shows outdated prices, and items whose product was unpublished disappear — and return with the product.
| What | Deleted after |
|---|---|
| Guest carts and wishlists | 90 days of inactivity |
| Customers' saved carts | 180 days of inactivity |
| Customers' wishlists | when the account is deleted |
None of this needs a cookie-consent banner — it is technically necessary storage — but your privacy policy should mention it. The AI legal-text generator includes it automatically.