Coworking Resources

At Coworking Tech Week, Matty, Product Designer at Nexudus shared an important perspective on coworking checkout optimisation and something every coworking operator deals with, but few stop to rethink: the checkout experience.

While operators often focus on community building, occupancy, and member retention, the reality is that your digital checkout flow is one of the most important conversion points in your business. It’s where interest becomes revenue or where potential members quietly drop off.

Unlike traditional online retail, coworking operators sell a wide range of products and services through a single digital experience: meeting room bookings, hot desks, memberships, private offices, event tickets, day passes, tours, and more.

Each of these products and services comes with different customer expectations, levels of commitment, and operational complexity.

This creates a challenge that many operators underestimate: your checkout experience can either drive conversions or quietly create friction that pushes customers away.

Why coworking checkouts are uniquely complex

In retail, ecommerce is relatively straightforward. If someone is buying a pair of shoes online, they know what to expect: browse, add to cart, pay, receive confirmation.

Coworking doesn’t work like that.

A single workspace operator may offer:

  • Hourly meeting room bookings
  • Event tickets
  • Hot desk memberships
  • Part-time memberships
  • Private offices with contracts and onboarding requirements

These are fundamentally different purchasing journeys.

Booking a phone booth for 30 minutes is not the same as signing a 12-month private office agreement. Yet many coworking websites still treat these transactions similarly, applying the same checkout logic across all products.

That’s where friction starts.

Audit your product flows before changing your tools

Before redesigning your checkout experience, operators should step back and audit their existing product journeys.

Ask:

  • What products do we offer?
  • What information is genuinely essential for each transaction?
  • Where are we adding unnecessary friction?

For example, a meeting room booking may only require:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Payment details

A private office enquiry may require:

  • Company information
  • Team size
  • Move-in date
  • Tour request

Treating both flows identically is inefficient and costly.

Common conversion killers include:

  • Too many required fields
  • Forced account creation
  • Overwhelming product options
  • Complicated payment flows
  • Irrelevant upsells or distractions

Every extra step introduces another opportunity for abandonment.

Flexible checkout experiences should be configurable

Because coworking businesses vary so much, there is no universal checkout template.

A music studio, innovation hub, and traditional flex office all have different operational needs.

This is why Nexudus is focused on flexibility rather than forcing operators into rigid workflows.

One of the improvements highlighted during the session is a new custom form feature inside Nexudus.

This allows operators to customise purchase flows based on product type and complexity.

For example:

Default forms for account creation

Operators can define baseline information required whenever an account is necessary, such as:

  • Company type
  • Name
  • Email

Enhanced forms for memberships

For higher-friction products like memberships or office plans, operators can request additional information such as:

  • Billing details
  • Contact information
  • Personal details

Post-signup data collection

Not all information needs to be collected upfront.

Community-focused details like member directory profiles or optional business information can instead be requested after signup, keeping the checkout experience cleaner and faster.

This simple shift reduces friction while still capturing useful data.

Different memberships need different journeys

A major challenge in coworking is that “memberships” are often treated as a single category when they shouldn’t be.

Hot desk memberships and private offices may technically both be memberships, but operationally they are completely different products. In fact, up to 90% of revenue for a coworking space comes from private offices. This reinforces the idea that not all memberships should follow the same acquisition path.

For lower-tier memberships, operators can benefit from enabling self-service signups where customers can:

  • Browse plans
  • Select dates
  • Pay online
  • Access services immediately

For higher-value memberships like private offices, Nexudus is introducing a more structured enquiry flow.

Instead of immediate checkout, customers can:

  • Submit an enquiry
  • Request a tour
  • Provide preferred move-in details

This automatically generates a draft proposal inside Nexudus, allowing operators to seamlessly continue the sales conversation with key details already captured.

This bridges the gap between ecommerce and sales CRM workflows.

Rather than losing inbound leads or managing them manually, operators can move directly from enquiry to proposal to contract.

Bringing ecommerce directly into your website

Another upcoming feature previewed during the session is embeddable ecommerce widgets.

Many operators invest heavily in custom marketing websites but still redirect customers elsewhere to complete transactions.

This creates friction and often breaks the user journey.

Nexudus is building widgets that allow operators to embed booking functionality directly into their own websites, including:

  • Meeting rooms
  • Events
  • Other workspace products

This means customers can browse, select, and complete bookings without ever leaving the operator’s website.

For guests, this can also support guest checkout flows, reducing barriers even further.

The result is a smoother, more branded experience with fewer drop-off points.

Checkout design is a conversion strategy

Checkout isn’t just an operational workflow – it’s a conversion engine.

In coworking, where customer journeys vary dramatically by product, operators need checkout experiences that reflect those realities.

The best coworking ecommerce strategies are not about making every flow identical.

They are about making every flow intentional.

That means:

  • Reducing friction where speed matters
  • Adding structure where complexity is expected
  • Capturing leads without slowing users down
  • Giving operators flexibility to adapt flows to their business model

As coworking continues evolving, operators who optimise these experiences will be better positioned to convert traffic, reduce abandonment, and create smoother customer journeys.

At Nexudus, we’re continuing to build tools that help operators do exactly that.