Order failure in WooCommerce stores is one of the phenomena that many store owners suffer from, especially if it happens repeatedly, as this leads to a decrease in sales within the store without knowing the reason and is considered an annoying matter for both the store owner and the customer, who often does not prefer to deal with these technical problems.
Before we begin to discuss the technical reasons behind the order failure problem, we can note here that there is a simple but common reason for the order failure problem, which is that the store address that you entered on the WooCommerce settings page does not match the store address on the payment gateway that you registered with. :
Therefore, the first thing you check is that the store address matches the address that you registered with in the payment gateway, as this procedure can solve the problem of failed orders on WooCommerce without having to go through all the other solutions and methods.
In this article, we present all the possible reasons why the problem of failed orders occurs in WooCommerce stores and how you can search for the real reason behind any failed order in your store to avoid this problem and provide a distinctive and unobtrusive browsing and shopping experience for your store customers.
Reasons for (order failure) in the WooCommerce store and practical solutions
Order failure occurs in a WooCommerce store for many reasons. You can review the order notes field when entering the order editing page to find many notes related to the order status in which you may find the reason for the order failure in most cases:
One of the most common reasons for order failure on WooCommerce is that the store address does not match the address in the payment gateway that we talked about in the introduction to the article, and solving this problem can eliminate the phenomenon of failed orders.
But if the problem persists, continue with the article, as we present to you in the following paragraphs most of the possibilities for request failure to occur on WooCommerce and how to solve the problem with practical steps.
1. The request failed because the authentication process could not be done
Unable to authenticate is one of the reasons for student failure on WooCommerce. Of course, the text of the Unable to authenticate message varies depending on the type of payment gateway you use to receive payments within your online store.
Unable to authenticate means that the communication data between the store and the payment gateway is incorrect or has not been verified, or perhaps a technical problem has occurred on the part of the payment gateway itself.
In this case, you can access the payment gateway settings within your store and verify the username and password to enter, as well as verify the API code for the payment gateway.
In this case, you can also perform additional procedures, which is to delete the connection to the payment gateway and then reconnect with it again from within your store account on the official website of the payment gateway, and in most cases the problem will be solved.
In most cases, it is a technical problem on the part of the payment gateway, and you can wait a little while and you will notice that the problem is resolved in most cases. However, if the problem of payment failure persists due to inability to authenticate, you can contact the technical support of the payment gateway to work on solving the problem radically.
Note : One of the reasons for lack of authentication that also causes the request to fail is the expiration of the API code responsible for linking the online store to the payment gateway, so make sure that the linking code is correct, as provided to you by the company that owns the payment gateway, so that you do not encounter technical problems while completing payment operations. Inside the store.
2. The order failed due to the rejection of the payment method within the store
Rejection of the payment method used to complete the order is considered one of the most common reasons for order failure in WooCommerce stores. This problem is due to many reasons, most of which are from the methods of the customer who owns the payment method, and the reason may be on the part of the payment gateway itself, which does not accept the type of payment method used.
The customer’s payment method is rejected for many reasons, including, for example, incorrectly entering the card data, an error in entering the payment card’s CVV number, or incorrectly entering the expiry date of the card, or perhaps the reason for rejecting the payment method is that it is expired and unusable.
You can review the policies related to rejecting the payment method of the company that owns the payment gateway that you use within your online store to identify all the possibilities due to which the payment method may be rejected, and thus you can help your customers complete the purchase without a problem.
3. The order failed due to (duplicate payment process)
Repeating the payment process does not mean that the customer has paid for the product or service twice in a row. He may not have paid in the first place, but often this message means that there are repeated attempts to pay and all of these attempts end in failure.
There are many possibilities that cause the problem of a duplicate payment process to appear. One of the most common reasons is the occurrence of a technical problem that causes a disconnection when completing the order. When you call back and try to complete the payment, an error message may appear: Order failed due to repeated payment process.
Also, when the order is transferred to the status ( Failed ) within WooCommerce and the customer enters the order and tries to pay again using another effective payment method, this error message may appear to him, and the stated reason is the repetition of the payment process.
The solution to this problem may be very simple, as the customer can delete the order completely and create a new order. In this case, if he ignores the failed order and completes a new order using a valid payment method, the order will be completed successfully and without any problems.
4. Payment failed due to a technical problem on the website
The text of the error message varies from one site to another depending on the templates and add-ons it uses, but in most cases the error message is close to ( a technical problem with the site ).
In this case, there is a technical problem within your website or online store that causes the payment process to fail even though the payment data is correct on the customer’s side.
The most common reason for this problem is that the payment gateway add-on needs to be updated:
Therefore, always make sure to update WordPress , templates, and your site’s plugins periodically so that you do not face many technical problems related to not applying the necessary updates to the system.
We always advise you to make a backup copy of your entire site before applying any updates to the site in case there is any error or technical problem that may cause some site data to be lost or damaged.
You can also check the technical status of the WooCommerce plugin in your online store by entering the ( Status ) tab from within the WordPress control panel toolbar, which tells you a lot of information about the technical status of your site or online store, as this information can provide you with reasons for some technical problems. What your site is suffering from:
We also advise you to verify the health of the entire site through the Site Health tab within the WordPress control panel, where you will find important and useful information about the technical status of the site and whether there are any problems that must be resolved:
Recommended procedures to reduce the problem (request failure)
After you learned about the most common reasons that lead to the problem of failed orders, in the following paragraphs we provide you with some practical advice that you can do inside the store in order to avoid this problem and reduce the number of failed orders to the lowest possible percentage.
1. Make it easy for new customers to create an in-store account
When the customer has an account within the store, it is easy to manage payment processes and control and manage orders in a very easy way, as he can access and control failed orders, as he can delete them and create new orders. Also, a customer registered in the store can deal with failed payment cases by logging into Account control panel and adding alternative payment methods.
As a store owner, you can help customers create an account within the store automatically when they complete an order. You can activate the option to create an account for the customer based on the data he entered on the order completion page:
2. Send an email notification to the customer when the order fails
When a customer encounters an order failure problem while shopping in the store, he is likely to leave the store if he cannot identify the cause of the problem, so it will be useful to send him an email telling him the cause of the problem, how to solve it, and to pay properly.
By default, WooCommerce sends an e-mail message to the store manager when there are failed orders, but it does not send a message to the customer himself, so you will need one of the WordPress plugins through which you can create e-mail campaigns that are sent only when the customer experiences a failed order within the store.
WooCommerce provides the AutomateWoo add-on that specializes in this matter, through which you can create custom mailing templates for customers who face the problem of order failure within the store and send them automatically when faced with the problem:
