WooCommerce checkout not working: where it stops

Checkout is a short chain: the contact and address fields, a shipping choice, a payment box and the place-order button. The shopper only sees the step in front of them. When no shipping method covers their address, the shipping section is empty and the total never settles. When the payment box loads blank, the button stays grey and the shopper cannot tell whether the problem is the card or the store. Your own test order can pass every step, because your address and your settings are the ones that work. The gap sits in the address the shopper types, not in the cart.

• Enter a delivery address in a country you ship to, then one you do not. Compare the shipping choices.
• Check that the payment box shows at least one method before you press place order.
• Try checkout as a guest with no account. Does the form still ask for a password?
• Confirm the items in the cart are in stock and can ship to the same address.
• Open the console on the checkout page and look for a red error when the shipping or payment box loads.

Most owners test checkout with their own address, their own saved details and a product they already know works. That is the easy path through the store. A shopper arrives with a different country, a different postal format, a coupon, or a cart whose items are out of stock for that destination. Each of those can change what the store offers at the shipping step, and the owner's test never reaches that branch.

Guest checkout adds another difference. If the store asks for an account before checkout, a shopper who only wants one item may leave at that form rather than create one. Check the store's account setting, then run one guest visit in a private window, so the test begins where a stranger begins, at the same form and with the same choice of whether to sign up.

An empty shipping section means no zone or method covers the address, so the total never settles. An empty payment section means no enabled method is available for the shopper's country or cart, which is a settings gap rather than a shipping one. A button that stays grey with both sections filled usually points at a required field that is still invalid, often one the shopper cannot see on a phone. Each symptom has a different fix, so reading the empty section tells you which setting to open first.

A simulated shopper walks the cart into checkout with a delivery address, reads the shipping choices and the payment box, and records the step where it stopped. It stops at the payment step. It does not enter a real card or place an order, so the final step still needs a test order from you. The walk tells you whether a shopper can reach payment at all, which is the question the owner's own test cannot answer for a different address.

Shipping zones are edited by hand, so a rule added for one country can leave a neighboring country with no shipping choice. After each change, run the same simulated shoppers with a delivery address in every country you sell to, and compare the step where each one stopped. Protected previews, such as a staging store behind a site password, need that password in the run, which comes with paid credits. A saved run shows which country lost its option.