Iconic has relaunched its Flux Checkout plugin with a new, modern checkout theme. The plugin was created to minimize customers abandoning their carts due to checkout complexity. It breaks the checkout experience into steps to make the process feel faster and simpler with a distraction-free design.

Flux Checkout 2.0.0 adds a new “Modern” theme in addition to the plugin’s previous “Classic” theme that offers a more app-like checkout experience. Modern has a more minimalist black and grey design.

“The default Woo checkout is not optimized at all,” Iconic founder Jame Kemp said. “It presents you with the required fields, in a pretty unfriendly and overpowering way. If there are too many fields, the user is less likely to checkout.”

Comparing the default Woo checkout experience to Flux is a bit jarring, and it’s easy to see how customers may feel overwhelmed with the default. Fortunately, WooCommerce is extensible. The space could use more varied checkout plugins so store owners have more options to customize the experience.

“Flux reduces this friction by splitting the fields into steps and reducing the number of fields required to fill in,” Kemp said. “It also integrates an address auto complete to make filling in your address into a single field. We also cache the fields so if you accidentally refresh or navigate away, you don’t lose your info.”

Iconic acquired Flux Checkout in 2020, just as the pandemic was kicking off. Its chief competitor is CheckoutWC, which offers a similarly modern design, auto-populated fields, and additional templates at a higher price point. More than 3,900 WooCommerce sites are using CheckoutWC, but Kemp says Flux Checkout “wins on ease of use and simplified checkout.” In a few months, the company plans to release FluxPay, which will make it possible to “buy now” from product pages and will add other time-saving features for checking out.

Kemp reports Iconic’s WooCommerce products are active on more than 21,000 sites. The company is part of StellarWP and the Iconic team includes four developers, 2-3 support agents, a content writer, and a designer.

“Our most popular product is WooThumbs, but Flux, Delivery Slots, Orderable, Attribute Swatches, and our All Access bundle are the most popular/profitable,” he said.

Kemp first launched WooThumbs on CodeCanyon in 2011. The Iconic brand was formed in 2018 as a means to consolidate all of his WooCommerce offerings and move off of CodeCanyon to become an independent brand.

“We’re fortunate enough to have been in the WooCommerce space for many years and have a well-established customer base and set of products,” Kemp said. “Right now, and particularly throughout the pandemic, the Woo space has been booming. We’ve consistently seen growth as a WooCommerce product company. It is becoming a very competitive space and it’s important to stay on top of the features you’re offering. You can quickly fall behind.”