How To Create A PayPal BUY NOW Button

BUY NOW Buttons Take Care Of Product Payments And Shopping Cart For You

In the previous section I showed you how to create 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.

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

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).

Fig 1.2  Click on the PRODUCTS & SERVICES menu-button/link to continue




Fig 1.3  Click on the WEBSITE PAYMENTS STANDARD link to continue

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.

Fig 1.4  Click on the CREATE A BUY NOW BUTTON link to continue




Fig 1.5  The Button Creation page - Step 1

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 what you want for this example, but you can choose from the PRODUCTS, SERVICES, SUBSCRIPTIONS AND RECURRING BILLING, DONATIONS and GIFT VOUCHERS options.....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.

ADD TO CART

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.

An ADD TO CART button means your buyer can order (add to their shopping cart) a £5 product for example, using the ADD TO CART button, which they can later order again (the same £5 product) using the same ADD TO CART button. In this case the shopping cart is then automatically updated to £10 (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.

BUY NOW

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.

Identity  Your  Product

Next is the ITEM description and the ID description. The ITEM NAME edit box needs to be filled with a description about the product (i.e. Book - 360 Pages) and the ITEM 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 these edit boxes with your own unique descriptions. In this example I have given an ITEM description of Website Creation E-Book with an ID description of WCBook001.

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).

Fig 1.6  Use the SECURE MERCHANT ACCOUNT ID setting for better protection of your paypal account

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 customizing the shopping cart's Checkout page.

Fig 1.7  If you want your customers to be able to order more, make sure YES is set in question 1

The questions/settings on the customize 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, such as 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).

Fig 1.8  You can redirect visitors to a Thank You, or Cancel, page by filling in the URL edit boxes

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 customize 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).

Fig 1.9  Click on the CREATE BUTTON button to generate the button code

When you have completed the form simply click on the CREATE BUTTON button to generate the button code. Ignore the ADVANCED VARIABLE edit box. It is meant for programmers.

Fig 1.10  Click the SELECT CODE button. Right click on selected code. Click on COPY menu-item.

In Fig 1.10 above the button code has been generated. All I need to do now is COPY & PASTE that code into a text editor for safe keeping - When I am ready to use the code I will insert it into a shopping web page or products web page.

To copy your generated code 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, such as Notepad, for safe keeping - Save the notepad file as ButtonCode.txt for example or as ProductName.txt.

Fig 1.11  PASTE your Button Code into a text editor and then save that text file for safe keeping

In Fig 1.11 above I have saved the button code as wch_ebook_paypal_code.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 customize 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.

Fig 1.12  To edit a button go to MY ACCOUNT >> PROFILE >> MY SAVED BUTTONS

To retrieve 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.