Why Add PayPal to Your Website?

John Mignano

Are you marketing online?

Web marketing is all about conversions, so are you missing out on higher conversions?

Well, iIf you think PayPal is just for eBay sales, you’re leaving revenue on the table.

Allow me to explain… 

What if you’re not already selling products from your website?

It’s surprisingly easy to add a “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons to your web site.

In fact, PayPal Shopping Cart is the easiest way to turn a marketing site into an e-commerce site.

If you’re already accepting credit card payments, then offering PayPal as an additional payment option widens your customer base because people who don’t want to use a credit card can still make purchases.

PayPal is the easiest way to add ecommerce to your existing website…

If you don’t know how to code, maybe you’re comfortable with using tools like Dreamweaver or FrontPage to create a website, you can quickly integrate e-commerce with PayPal’s free tools.

These tools let you Add to Cart (a Shopping Cart) or Buy Now buttons, or set up subscriptions and recurring payments while designing with Dreamweaver or FrontPage.

The best part is you don’t need to apply for a merchant license in order to sell and accept credit cards online.

See, you normally need to work with a credit card processing company or bank.

The role of the processor is to validate buyer’s credit cards at the time of purchase.

Credit card processors help prevent you from fraud by checking whether the buyer’s credit card is valid and blocking IP addresses, e-mail addresses, or names of known problem buyers.

And the credit card processor can block a payment that sends the user over their credit limit.

You get a lot of peace of mind when working with a reliable processor, yet the application process can be a pain.

Typically you need to provide a lot of  information about your company, have an existing or established business bank account, and so on…

After the processing company approves you, you need to set up your Web site to accept secure payments and to configure your e-commerce software to send payment data to your processor’s payment gateway.

To work with a credit card processor, you spend a lot of time and resources before actually selling your first item.

PayPal also lets you accept secure payments, even credit card purchases, yet the application process is as easy as providing your country, name, address, home telephone number, and e-mail address, and accepting the PayPal User Agreement.

You can decide to open an e-commerce shop in the morning and start accepting payments in the afternoon.

You can specify payment preferences if you accept PayPal payments, so you can set up your payment receiving preferences to block certain types of buyers.

You can decide not to sell internationally or to block purchases from buyers who have not confirmed their address.

This adds another layer of protection for you as the seller.

You can accept payments only if they’re made in a specific currency, you can block buyers who try to purchase with a credit card when a bank account is linked to their credit account.

You’ve the flexibility to decide whether to block certain types of buyers, or easily change your credit card company name (the one that is shown on the buyer’s credit card statement).

The Pay Pal buttons are free, yet most credit card companies charge you a monthly fee, even if you don’t receive any payments.

Adding PayPal e-commerce buttons to your website makes a lot of sense and costs you nothing,  even if you don’t sell anything for a period of time, you don’t pay.

When you do sell an item, you pay $0.30 for each transaction, plus 2.9 percent of the selling price.

The percentage can drop as low as 1.9 percent, depending upon your monthly volume of sales.

When you want to set up your secure e-commerce website, there are a number of steps you must take:

First, you need to apply for an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) license. SSL is a protocol used to send secure data over the Internet.

SSL encrypts data that is sent from the browser; the data is decrypted when it gets to the server.

After you apply SSL, you need to build an e-commerce web site that works with SSL to transmit data securely (usually to a credit card processor).

Compare this to the ease of encrypting buttons with PayPal!

When creating a button with the Pay Pal Button Factory, all you do is click the Yes option to have your button’s code encrypted.

When you copy the encrypted code to your website page, snooping eyes won’t be able to see any personalized information by viewing the source code for the web page.

Setting up subscription based payments is easy with PayPal, that means subscriptions and recurring payments frees you from the hassle of sending out periodic invoices.

You can set up your subscriptions simply by specifying two trial periods for example:

The subscriber can be billed $0.00 for the first month, and $20 for every month after the trial period has ended.

You can set your billing cycle to be days, weeks, months, or even years.

You have the option of setting up recurring payments and the buyer pays the specified amount every month, without end.

You can also set up payment installments; for example:  you can charge the buyer $20 for five installments to purchase a $100 product.

Finally, PayPal can generate unique username and password combinations if you want to give buyers access to members-only content, stored in a special folder of your website.

Usually setting up an online store involves some type of setup fee, either you pay for the price of the e-commerce software, a setup fee if you’re using an online service, or you pay a developer to write custom code.

No setup fees with PayPal…

There are no upfront fees to open an online store if you use the PayPal Buy Now buttons or the Paypal Shopping Cart.

Marketing online is made easy with PayPal, you don’t pay a thing until you actually sell something!

If you use PayPal for e-commerce transactions, you can use PayPal History Reporting Tools to download and analyze detailed information about every sale made.

You’ve got the option of including Shopping Cart details in the report.

You can also do an advanced search to find transactions linked to an e-mail address, transaction ID, buyer’s name, receipt ID, or item number.

You can import the downloaded file into Excel, Quicken, or QuickBooks for additional tracking and analysis.

Detailed transaction data at your finger tips so you can look at all relevant and summary information available from the Merchant Sales Report.

If you accept PayPal payments on your web site, you can promote your online store in PayPal Shops, a directory of web sites that accept PayPal.

After you promote or enroll, PayPal members can search for the products and services you sell.

There is no cost to list your site with PayPal Shops, you just need a Premier or Business PayPal account.

Oh yeah, you need a bank account and credit card linked to your PayPal account and you need to invest in the PayPal Money Market Fund.

To enroll in the fund, simply provide a social security number or employer identification number and you’re web marketing is up and running fast.

If you’re thinking of adding PayPal to your online marketing, it’s made easy!