Have you ever waited so long in line at a store that you set your merchandise down and walked out the door? Have you seen a new cashier struggling with a problem with the customer five people in front of you and decided it wasn’t worth the wait? It happens online as well every day. In fact, one of the biggest problems these days for online retailers is shopping cart abandonment. Fortunately for Magento users, One Step Checkout (OSC) offers an extension that can help.

While we love Magento and think it’s one of the best open source platforms out there, without an extension offering this type of functionality, customers would have to go through up to six different screens to input information for shipping, billing, payment information and more, increasing the chance that a shopper may leave the process.

Lucky for us, Magento Connect – the Magento Extension Marketplace – had the answer. We reviewed a number of extensions, but One Step Checkout stood out from the rest. It was the most widely used (over 10,000 Magento users), it had the highest number of reviews and more importantly, the largest amount of positive reviews.

One Step Checkout, based out of Europe, focuses on e-commerce and shopping cart optimization. They are all about reducing customer abandonment and increasing customer conversions. The beauty of their extension is that the entire checkout process is viewable on one page. As you enter information, the totals and prices update dynamically when shipping and payment is selected. We have found it to be easy to install and the support they provide is great.

Key Features (click here for a full list of features)

Checkout on a single page

Easy installation

Ability to disable fields (fax, company, etc.)

Order preview/order confirmation window feature

Coupon code directly in the checkout page

Set a default shipping and payment method

Enable checkbox for newsletter subscription, terms and conditions

Customer comment field

Easily modify CSS / layout with regular Magento templates and CSS file

Auto-update for pricing, shipping & payment

Allow gift messages

Can hide shipping method section if only one available

With the competitive nature of on-line shopping, it’s our goal to do whatever we can to help our retailers be successful. We found One Step Checkout to be one easy way to help our Magento users. Because all of the checkout process occurs on one page, there’s less of an opportunity for people to “leave the line,” thereby increasing the odds that your product(s) are purchased and ultimately improving your bottom line.