Fig 1.0 Click on the LOGIN button to continue
Fig 1.1 Enter your User Name & Password and then click on the LOGIN button to continue
| CREATE A PAYPAL BUY NOW BUTTON |
In the previous section I showed you how to set up a PayPal Premier account. Hopefully all went well for you, with regards to the banking side of things, and you are now in a position to login to your paypal premier account. If so, begin by taking your web browser to http://www.paypal.co.uk (or your country's equivalent) and then login to your account by clicking on the LOGIN button. From there (Fig 1.1) enter your paypal premier account User Name and Password into the appropriate edit boxes before clicking on the LOGIN button.
Once logged in, click on the PRODUCTS & SERVICES menu-button/link (Fig 1.2) to take you to the Products & Services page. From there, click on the WEBSITE PAYMENTS STANDARD link to continue (Fig 1.3).
Clicking on the WEBSITE PAYMENTS STANDARD link takes you to the Button Options page (below) where you can decide which button you would like to create. For this example just click on the CREATE A BUY NOW BUTTON link to continue. Doing so will take you to the actual Button Creation page (Fig 1.5) where you can decide whether or not to use Postage & Packaging, name the Product Price and so on.
The button creation page is split up into three steps with the first step being about the Button Type and Payment Details. The first thing to notice on
this page is the ACCEPT PAYMENTS FOR drop-down menu. By default it is set to PRODUCTS, which is want you want for this example, but you can choose from
PRODUCTS, SERVICES, SUBSCRIPTIONS AND RECURRING BILLING, DONATIONS and GIFT VOUCHERS.....in the future, if you wish, once you know how to create a Buy
Now button of course. PRODUCTS and SERVICES are for selling Products and Services on your website. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND RECURRING BILLING allows you to bill
customers on a regular basis if you have a membership scheme for example. It is like direct debit. DONATIONS allows you to receive money (donations) and
GIFT VOUCHERS allows you to sell gift vouchers on your website. As said, in this example leave the drop-down menu set to PRODUCTS.
After the ACCEPT PAYMENTS FOR drop-down menu is the question DO YOU WANT YOUR CUSTOMERS TO BUY MULTIPLE PRODUCTS BEFORE THEY CHECK OUT? YES OR NO?
Clicking on the YES button will create an ADD TO CART button. This means when they order (add to their shopping cart) a £5 product for example, using
your ADD TO CART button, they can later order the same £5 product again using the same ADD TO CART button. The shopping cart is automatically updated to
£10 for example (Quantity: 2. Product £5. Total £10). If you have many ADD TO CART buttons on your website, for different products, clicking on each one
of them would update the shopping cart with those products/prices. Clicking on the NO button just creates a BUY NOW button, which is similar in
functionality to the ADD TO CART button but is intended for a one off purchase of a product. Clicking on a BUY NOW button more than once will itemise
each product separately for example. In this example click on NO to continue, because you want to create a BUY NOW button.
Next is the ITEM description and the ID description. The ITEM edit box needs to be filled with a description about the product (i.e. Book - 360 Pages)
and the ID edit box needs to be filled with a unique id (i.e. Book0001). Although these descriptions should be as just described there is nothing
stopping you from filling the edit boxes with your own unique descriptions. In this example I have given an ITEM description of FREE Video Lessons For
One Month with an ID description of VL001.
The PRICE edit box needs filling with a number that represents the price. For example. Put 5 in the edit box to denote £5, but do not put £5 because the
pound sign (£) will be removed. If you want £5.68 put 5.68 and not £5.68. The CURRENCY drop-down menu next to the PRICE edit box should be kept on its
default setting, which is normally the currency for your country (i.e. GBP for the UK).
After filling in the top part of the form in step 1 (Fig 1.5 above) scroll down the page and you will see other options you can use (above). Options such
as whether or not have a Drop-Down Menu with Product Names on it, w/out Prices, next to the ADD TO CART button (if you choose to use an ADD TO CART button
of course). You can also specify whether or not you want to include a Postage & Packaging price and so on. In this example though I am showing you the
bare minimum button. If you require these other features feel free to use them. The beauty of the paypal button is that it can be edited later, because it
(its code) is automatically saved for you by paypal on your account, therefore you can afford to experiment.
One important setting to leave as default on step 1 is the MERCHANT ID setting. Leave it set on SECURE MERCHANT ACCOUNT ID so that your button code
contains encrypted data about your paypal account email address. SECURE MERCHANT ACCOUNT ID encrypts and uses your primary paypal account email address
for shopping cart transactions, which helps prevent spamming of that email address because it is encrypted. The PLAIN TEXT EMAIL ADDRESS setting using the
email address you select from its drop-down menu which will not be encrypted in the button code.
Scroll down the page a little and you will see two collapsable/expandable headings for steps 2 and 3. Ignore step 2 and click on step 3 instead. Doing so
will give you options for customising the shopping cart's Checkout page.
The questions/settings on the customise page are quite straight forward. For example. If you want your customers to be able to order more than one of the
same product click on the YES radio (circle) button of question 1. And if you only want them to order one product, perhaps because you have limited stock
or a limited offer of "One Per Customer", click on the NO radio button. NO is the default setting, I clicked on YES in this example.
Question 2 wants to know if your customers can leave you a message (i.e. a comment or some instructions) when they reach the payments web page. Clicking
on the YES radio button allows you to enter a Title for the MESSAGE edit box that appears on the payments web page. It is a wise move to select YES
because it assures your customers that you are a trustworthy website (shopping cart).
The last part of step 3 allows you to take your customers to a specific web page depending if they cancel the transaction or complete it - You can enter
the URL of a Thank You web page (i.e. http://www.yourwebsite.com/thanks.html) and the URL of a Cancellation web page (i.e. http://www.yourwebsite.com/cancelled.html).
This is one of those features that make you look more professional, because those web pages have nothing to do with paypal so you can customise them with
your own content/messages. Saying this! I have not ticked those options myself purely because of this example. One thing to bare in mind if you do not
use these options is that your customer will stay on the receipt web page of paypal when the transaction has been completed. Therefore. If you want your
customer to come back to a specific web page on your website you should go to your paypal account, click on the PROFILE heading/link and from there click
on the WEBSITE PAYMENTS PREFERENCES link. That will allow you to switch on the AUTO-RETURN feature and allow you to enter a Redirection URL
(i.e. http://www.yourwebsite.com/index.html). Going back to the above form. Ignore the ADVANCED VARIABLE edit box. It is meant for programmers.
When you have completed the form simply click on the CREATE BUTTON button to generate the button code.
In Fig 1.10 above the button code has been generated. All you need to do now is COPY & PASTE that code into a text editor for safe keeping. From there you then paste that code into your shopping/products web page. So first click on the SELECT CODE button to select all of the code and then right over that selected code, to bring up the context (options) menu, and left click on the COPY menu-item. Once the button code has been copied into memory PASTE it into a text editor (i.e. Notepad) for safe keeping - Save the notepad file as ButtonCode.txt for example or as ProductName.txt.
In Fig 1.11 above I have saved the button code as paypal video lessons button.txt, together with some standard html web page code, just as a reminder of what button that code is for. Adding the html web page code means you can now save the html button code as a web page (i.e. product.html) and therefore open it with a web browser to see how the button works/looks. From there you would customise that product web page accordingly.
Do not worry if you lose or mess up your button code (text/html file) that you saved on your computer because paypal automatically saves your button codes for you. To retreive a button's code simply login to your paypal account and then click on the MY ACCOUNT link. From there, click on the PROFILE link and then on the MY SAVED BUTTONS link. Now you will be able to Edit, Delete and View the code for a saved button.
All HTM, CSS, PHP and MySQL files in the websitecreationhelp.com folder and its sub-folders are (c) John White, 2009. All Rights Reserved. Email: John