How to Create a WooCommerce Direct Checkout Link

Do you want to boost your conversion rates and improve your sales pages? The best option to achieve that is to create a WooCommerce direct checkout link. This way, you’ll have a more direct purchase process that avoids distractions and unnecessary steps for the shoppers.

Making it easier for your users to buy your products can be the difference between winning and losing a customer. It’s often the case with online stores that your shoppers have to access multiple pages to buy a product.

Given that most online stores have conversion rates of 2%-3%, it’s crucial to ensure that you don’t lose customers in the Website > Shop Page > Product Page > Cart > Checkout funnel.

Why not shorten the funnel and make it more direct instead?

You can easily achieve that with a simple WooCommerce Direct Checkout link. With a Direct Checkout Link, you can create custom links for your products that will take your customers directly from the product page to the checkout.

This way, you’ll avoid unnecessary steps and improve your customers’ experience.

Why Create a Direct Checkout Link in WooCommerce?

Creating a direct checkout link is all about convenience for your customers. Imagine a scenario where your customers have to go through your product page, add the product to the cart, and then go through the cart to buy your item.

Instead, why not make the process easier by providing customers with a customized link that directly takes them to the product’s checkout page?

There are numerous ways you can implement this on your website. You can choose to add this link to your Shop’s main page to feature a specific item and increase its sales.

You can choose to share this link in other content, such as blog posts, so your customers can directly buy items after reading about them.

Digital products, in particular, can benefit significantly from this because you can make the process of downloading your products so much easier by just adding a simple one-click path to your product’s checkout.

How to Create WooCommerce Direct Checkout Links

There are two main ways to create direct checkout links:

1. Manually
2. With a plugin

Let’s have a look at both of them and their pros and cons.

1. Create a Direct Checkout Link Manually

In this section, we’ll show you how to create direct checkout links in WooCommerce for:

1. Simple products
2. Variable products
3. Grouped products

Let’s have a look at how to do it for each of them.

1.1) Create a WooCommerce Direct Checkout Link for Simple Products

The simplest way to create a WooCommerce direct checkout link is to create it manually using your product ID. You can create a direct checkout link by using this link as a base:

https://www.yourwebsite.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=ID

Simply replace the URL with your domain and add your product ID to the ID section of the URL.

Find Product ID for Simple Products

Now, let’s check how you can find the product ID for your Single Products. First, open your WordPress Admin Dashboard and go to Products on the sidebar. Then, browse over whichever product you want to create a direct checkout link for.

Once you hover over it, you will be able to see the product ID under the product name. Take note of this for your direct checkout link.

For our demo product, the product ID is 47. So now, take the URL from above and replace the ID with the product ID of your product. For example, in our example, our URL is quadlayers-demo.com, and the product ID is 47. So the WooCommerce direct checkout link for our product ID is:

https://www.quadlayers-demo.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=47

Once your customers click on this link, they’ll go directly to this product’s checkout. Now you can use this link to make it easier for your customers to directly move to the checkout page without taking extra steps.

1.2) Create a WooCommerce Direct Checkout Link for Variable Products

You can also create a direct checkout link for Variable products. To do so, first, you need the variation product’s ID. So go ahead and open your Variable product’s customization page. Simply click Edit under the variable product’s name on your Products list. Then, scroll down and click on Variations under Product data.

Each Variation will have an ID next to it that you can use to find your variable product’s ID for specific variations.

With that ID, you can create a URL for your direct checkout link. For example, if the variable product ID is 239, the link for that variable product will be:

https://www.quadlayers-demo.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=239

As you can see, the URL is the same one that we used for simple products. The main difference is that instead of using the product ID, you have to use the specific ID for the variation you want to create the direct link for.

1.3) Create a WooCommerce Direct Checkout Link for Grouped Products

Similarly, you can also create a direct checkout link for Grouped Products. The process to do so is identical to creating a checkout link for single products. Grab your grouped product’s ID from the WooCommerce Products page and add the ID to the direct checkout URL.

For example, our grouped product’s ID is 241, as you can see from the screenshot. Now, we add this ID to our custom direct checkout link:

https://www.quadlayers-demo.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=241

And now, you have a custom checkout link that takes you to the checkout page for your entire grouped product. The direct checkout link examples that we’ve seen for simple, variable, and grouped products will take your shoppers directly to the checkout.

However, they will only add a single item of that product. What if you want to add quantities to the links?

How to Change the Quantity for Direct Checkout Links

You can also define a specific quantity on the checkout link, which adds a specified number of items to the cart and directly takes your customers to the checkout page. You can do this by adding &quantity=# at the end of your direct checkout link.

Simple products

To add a quantity of 3 to the cart and direct users to checkout, append & quantity =3 to the direct checkout link you’ve created with your product ID. For example, if your product ID is 47, the link to add a quantity of 3 of that product will be:

https://www.quadlayers-demo.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=47&quantity=3

Variable products

For variable products, you do the same. Following the example of our variable product (product ID=239), we simply add the quantity to the direct checkout link as follows:

https://www.quadlayers-demo.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=239&quantity=3

Grouped products

The process is slightly different for grouped products.

You need to specify the quantity for the other linked products. You can also choose to define different amounts for a single product and not define any for another. So, to create a direct checkout link with quantities for grouped products, add the product ID of the linked product as &quantity[id]=#.

And you can add multiple quantity attributes to the link as well. For example, if we had a grouped product linked with two different single products (IDs 47 and 48) and we want to add x3 of product 47 and x4 of product 48, our custom direct checkout link will be:

https://www.quadlayers-demo.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=241&quantity[47]=3&quantity[48]=4

Remember only to use the product ID of your linked products when you’re specifying quantity for your grouped products.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Creating Direct Checkout Links Manually

Advantages	Disadvantages
No need for extra plugins or tools	It can be time-consuming for multiple products
Completely free to implement	Complete control over the link structure
Full control over the link structure	Errors in the link may cause checkout failures
Works with any WooCommerce setup	Difficult to manage or update links at scale

2) Create WooCommerce Direct Checkout Links with a Plugin

An excellent alternative to creating a custom link for each of your products manually is to use Direct Checkout for WooCommerce. This plugin is one of the best checkout plugins, providing the same convenience while streamlining the process.

Direct Checkout allows you to shorten and simplify the checkout process by redirecting customers from the product page to the checkout.

On top of that, you can add direct checkout buttons to all your products. You can enable direct purchases by adding a direct purchase button to product pages and removing fields from the checkout page, making the buying process much faster.

2.1) How to Add Direct Checkout Links with WooCommerce Direct Checkout

Before enabling the direct checkout links, you need to install the Direct Checkout plugin. So, go ahead, open your WordPress Admin Dashboard, and go to Plugins > Add New. Then, use the search bar on the top right to search for Direct Checkout for WooCommerce.

Click Install on the Direct Checkout for WooCommerce card, and once the plugin is installed, press Activate.

Next, open the Direct Checkout for WooCommerce settings by clicking WooCommerce > Direct Checkout on your Dashboard sidebar.

Now, it’s time to enable the direct checkout links on your WooCommerce products. To do that, go to the General tab and enable the Added to Cart Redirect option. Then, use the Added to Cart redirect to the drop-down option and choose Checkout. After that, save the changes.

Then, move to the Products tab and enable the option that says Redirect to the Cart page after successful addition. Click Save Changes, and you’re done!

With this, your Direct Checkout plugin should be set up. Now, your customers will skip the cart page and go from the product page directly to the checkout.

This way, you’ll shorten the purchase process, improving the shoppers’ experience and boosting your sales.

Of course, you’re free to customize more elements such as your direct checkout text, cart redirect links, and much more. To know more about all the options that this tool offers, have a look at the full documentation.

Pricing (free and Paid Versions)

If you’re looking to make your checkout process much easier and improve your conversion rates, then we highly recommend you check out this plugin. This plugin has a free version with basic features and 3 pro plans with more advanced functionalities.

• Free version
• Personal (1 site): 49 USD a year
• Agency (5 sites): 99 USD a year
• Developer (unlimited sites): 149 USD a year

   The premium version adds some cool features, such as:

• Multiple websites activation
• Featured Quick Purchase buttons
• One-Page checkout
• Featured AJAX Add to cart alert

Best Practices for Using WooCommerce Direct Checkout Links

Using direct checkout links can speed up the buying process and boost conversions, but they need to be implemented carefully. Follow these best practices:

• Use them for targeted campaigns – Direct checkout links are best for email campaigns, social media promotions, or special landing pages where you want customers to purchase quickly.
• Test your links before sharing – Always test the link on different devices and browsers to ensure it loads the correct products and directs users to the checkout page.
• Include product details in your messaging – Since customers skip the cart page, clearly mention what products and quantities they’re purchasing in the email or ad.
• Track conversions with UTM parameters – Add UTM tags to your URLs so you can monitor performance in Google Analytics or WooCommerce reports.
• Keep links updated – If a product is out of stock or its ID changes, update the direct checkout link to avoid errors.
• Offer options – Some customers prefer reviewing their cart, so give them a regular product page option when possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

Now, let’s take a look at some of the frequently asked questions regarding this topic.

Conclusion

All in all, creating a WooCommerce Direct Checkout link will help you shorten the buying process and increase conversion rates. To do that, there are two options:

1. Create the links manually
2. Use a plugin

Creating the links manually is simple and effective. However, you need to create customized direct checkout links for each product, which can be time-consuming if you have many products.

If you’re a beginner or you don’t want to go through that hassle, we’d highly recommend you check out Direct Checkout for WooCommerce instead for easier results. Additionally, the plugin comes with many other great features and it has a free version.

Finally, you can customize your checkout process further to make it more convenient. To improve your checkout, we recommend our guide on customizing the WooCommerce checkout page and exploring tools that let you add a quick buy button to your site.

Which method have you used? Have you had a hard time creating your checkout links? Let us know in the comments section below!