Checkout is a logistics conversation, not a plugin

Pudo pickup, courier quotes, and in-store collection belong on the page—not in a WhatsApp thread

For many small South African retailers, “adding checkout” still means bolting on a payment button and hoping the rest sorts itself out on WhatsApp. That shortcut breaks quickly in a market where shoppers compare delivery tiers before they compare product photos, where a single cart can mix import lines and local supplier stock, and where the phone—not the desktop—is the default path to pay.

The better frame is simpler: checkout is where payment and logistics negotiate in public. Pudo locker pickup, door-to-door courier quotes, express tiers, free-delivery thresholds, and collect-in-store for a local dealer should appear as choices on the page, priced and timed before the card is charged—not as follow-up messages once the sale is already emotional.

What a working checkout looks like in practice

past-and-present.co.za—a hybrid resale and hardware storefront branded Past and Present—illustrates how that conversation can be structured for South African conditions. Its public shipping page separates fulfilment into two supplier groups: Courier Guy for imported and marketplace-sourced lines, and flat supplier delivery for South African wholesalers.

For Courier Guy-eligible goods, the site publishes four modes with starting prices: standard from R90, express from R130, Pudo pickup from R40, and free collect-in-store. For local supplier groups—Makro, Takealot, Game, and similar—the cart applies a flat delivery charge per supplier group until a free-delivery threshold is met, commonly R500, with the cart showing how much more a shopper must add to unlock free delivery. Delivery is calculated per supplier group inside one order, so mixed carts do not collapse into a single opaque fee.

Delivery timelines are stated upfront as well: imported lines generally ship in seven to fourteen business days; South African supplier stock usually arrives in two to five. Courier Guy parcels include tracking; supplier-handled deliveries are tracked where the upstream retailer provides it (Shipping Information — Past and Present).

That level of disclosure matters because The Courier Guy markets multiple fulfilment paths—door-to-door direct service, a locker network of more than 2,000 pickup points open around the clock in many locations, kiosks, and nationwide Points—each aimed at different shopper constraints (The Courier Guy homepage; Parcel Lockers — The Courier Guy). When those options stay off the checkout screen, the merchant absorbs the negotiation: “Can you do Pudo?” “What will express cost to Bloem?” “Is collection free?”

Payment integration: trust before the logistics question

Card acceptance on Past and Present runs through Yoco’s gateway, with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express listed on the store’s FAQ. That aligns with how Yoco positions its online product: merchants connect WooCommerce, Shopify, Wix, Shopstar, or custom builds; customers pay on-site with major cards and wallet options; pricing is transaction-based with no monthly platform fee on the standard tier (Yoco Payment Gateway; Online Payments — Yoco).

Yoco’s own marketing stresses that checkout should keep shoppers on the merchant domain with 3D Secure, fraud monitoring, and consolidated reporting alongside in-person sales (Online Payments — Yoco). For a reseller already using Yoco at a market stall or workshop, that continuity reduces the “who am I paying?” friction that sends buyers back to DM-based deposits.

The payment step is only half the handshake. The Courier Guy’s business integration guides describe WooCommerce, Shopify, and API paths where shipping rates, zones, and delivery options are configured in the store—not pasted into invoices after the fact—and where integrations can auto-generate waybills, print labels, and expose tracking (Business Shipping Solutions — The Courier Guy). Even when a merchant creates the final shipment record in admin after payment clears—a common pattern for mixed-supplier carts—the checkout must still capture the customer’s chosen service level and destination so fulfilment does not reopen the logistics debate.

Catalog patterns resellers actually need

Checkout behaviour starts in the catalogue. Past and Present’s product index exposes filters resellers in the vintage-and-tools lane rely on: New arrivals separated from featured listings; Vintage as a condition filter with graded descriptions on the FAQ (“Like New,” “Good,” “Fair,” and “Vintage”); Bundles with bundled buying rules; and Timed listings for limited windows with expiry countdowns (Bundles — Past and Present; Timed Products — Past and Present; New Arrivals — Past and Present).

Those patterns change what the logistics layer must know. A bundle of welding consumables and a machine carries different weight and lead-time signals than a single vintage piece with a one-off condition note. Timed listings compress the window between “add to cart” and dispatch. Category chips on the storefront explicitly omit bundles and condition tags where they would clutter hardware or consumables browsing—evidence that checkout totals should respect catalogue segmentation rather than treat every SKU as a generic parcel (Bundles — Past and Present).

Individual listings already carry delivery hints—“Delivery: 7–13 days” on import hardware, “Delivery: 3 weeks” on smaller tool lines—so the checkout quote should reconcile with what the product page promised, not contradict it on the final step.

Returns and shipping policy pages as conversion tools

Policy pages are often filed under legal and forgotten. On a resale storefront they are part of the sale.

Past and Present’s returns page publishes a fourteen-day return window, eligibility rules for new versus vintage stock, a four-step return process with authorization before dispatch, and refund timing of five to seven business days after inspection. Vintage returns are limited to cases where the item “significantly differs from its description”—matching the graded-condition disclosures on the FAQ. The shipping page links back to contact for delivery questions; the returns page links to the same channel for disputes.

Surfacing those rules before checkout answers the silent objections that otherwise surface as abandoned carts or post-sale chargebacks: Can I send this back if the drill kit is the wrong voltage? Who pays return courier on a heavy import? How long until the refund hits after a Pudo collection?

What to avoid

Three failure modes show up repeatedly among independent South African shops:

Desktop-only checkout. Yoco’s setup guides assume merchants will test payments from the same devices customers use; wallet pay and mobile card entry are central to its conversion story (Yoco Payment Gateway). A flow that breaks on a six-inch screen pushes buyers to payment links in chat—exactly the off-page negotiation checkout is meant to prevent.

Fees revealed on the last step. Past and Present’s shipping page and cart logic advertise thresholds and starting courier rates before payment (Shipping Information — Past and Present). Yoco likewise markets transparent per-transaction pricing without hidden platform fees on the standard tier (Online Payments — Yoco). Surprise delivery lines at confirmation train shoppers to abandon—and to ask for a manual quote on WhatsApp next time.

Treating logistics as after-sales admin. The Courier Guy’s integration pitch is explicit: from checkout to delivery, with rate configuration and tracking visible to the customer (Business Shipping Solutions — The Courier Guy). When Pudo pickup, express tiers, and collect-in-store are not selectable at checkout, the merchant becomes a manual freight desk—copying addresses, re-quoting lockers, and explaining why the website price did not include delivery.

The bottom line for independent retailers

Plugins make checkout easy to install; they do not make fulfilment easy to explain. In South Africa’s courier-rich, mobile-first market, the retailers who convert are the ones whose checkout screens read like a concise logistics briefing: how it ships, what it costs, how long it takes, how to bring it back, and how the card payment is secured—before anyone opens WhatsApp.

Past and Present’s public pages are not a universal template, but they demonstrate the minimum viable conversation: multiple delivery modes with published floor prices, supplier-group thresholds, Yoco card capture, and returns language that respects both new hardware and vintage condition grading. That is checkout as logistics—not checkout as a plugin with the hard parts deferred to inbox.