Accepting Online Payments

[Catlover]

I have finally built my simple little website (yea!), and now am looking at the various ways of accepting payments. Daunting, to say the least.

Bottom line--I'm asking all of you who have this down: Do I need to have ALL of the following: Store/Shopping Cart (i.e. ShopSite), PayPal (or other pymt processor) and a Merchant Account (i.e. iPayment)?

My inexpensive website is getting pricier the more I look into all this! BTW, I only have 2 sizes of candles right now, in various fragrances--that's it. An online "store" seems like overkill.

I have been all over the forum and have seen a lot of helpful info, but I'm trying to boil it down to what I actually HAVE to have (and I do want to accept cc's, which I thought I could do through PayPay, but.....no?...).

[countrylane]

I think you need to look around paypal as it's been awhile since i did that, but you just copy and paste their link and set up your business account with them. It was pretty easy.

Ok- i just went to paypal and clicked on the business tab, and they have a tutorial there on what they offer. HTH

Edited September 16, 2010 by countrylane

[Catlover]

Thanks~~ I'm also on the PayPal site right now. The thing I was trying to pin down was if I needed a shopping cart (apparently, yes) even with only two items (but multiple fragrances, so I get it), and a separate merchant account along with a payment processor like PayPal. The Big Three, to be able to sell online. Inexpensive websites start to add up quickly when you get into this stuff. :smiley2:

Edited September 16, 2010 by Catlover

[Catlover]

Apologies for posting a question that has been answered before in various ways--I was trying to sort of "gel" everything into a one-stop answer shop, which really doesn't seem possible with all the alternatives. I'll just muddle around the PayPal site, the ShopSite site (!), etc. and try to find the cheapest and simplest option. If anyone has something enlightening on the topic, please shed your light!

[lindanelson]

I have a business account with paypal. My shopping cart is paypal's. No need for a separate merchant account. Doesn't cost me a thing, except the fee they take out of each transaction. It's not much.

I've looked at other free carts...this was the only one that I could understand.

[Catlover]

Linda, thanks so much! I was just looking at the PayPal site and it seemed like this would work, so it was good to hear from you that it does...they have so much info on there I was afraid I might be missing something. So basically a PayPal business account and "Website Pymts Standard" does the job? I don't mind the per transaction fee...I just wasn't thrilled with $30/month for a merchant acct. I'm glad to know that's not a necessity.

Do you have shipping and sales tax automatically calculated at checkout? Do you use the shipping label feature? That looked kind of cool~~ I'm all for one-stop-shopping! :smiley2:

[lindanelson]

Sales tax and shipping are set. I'm re-thinking my shipping. A website is always a work in progress.

[Catlover]

True. I change some minor thing on my site at least every other day. Not that anyone notices! I haven't tried to really get it out there until I get this payment thing worked out.

I wanted to try to do shipping by weight, so it's pretty accurate, and use the PayPal shipping labels. I assume sales tax only in my state, but wondered if PayPal can do either of these automatically. I'll keep looking!

Edited September 17, 2010 by Catlover

[Alpha1477]

You may want to look into the ZENcart -it's free and works with PayPal

[Tizimarezie]

Mal's ecommerce is also free and works well with PayPal.

[Jeana]

I use paypal too, at least for now. It takes a while to start getting sales on your site anyway so why waste money on a cart that isn't doing anything.

In my opinion paypal is a better merchant account too because you get charged their fee and that's it. No monthly amounts to pay and you don't get hit at the end of the month with additional "reward" card fees. Those things are unbelievable! Nothing rewarding about them just a way for the credit card companies to squeeze more money from the businesses that take them. I quit my regular merchant account and just use paypal now.

Tax does get charged automatically on paypal, but you have to set it up on the paypal site.

The shipping can be tricky. You have to include the weight of the item in the button when you are creating it. Then you have to consider who you want to use to ship the order. For me USPS is the cheapest. Get your shippers rates and set up your chart in paypal's shipping calculations section.

Set up an international shipping too. I got an order from Canada and it didn't charge shipping.

This cart is limited but it is the cheapest and easiest to use for me.

HTH:smiley2:

True. I change some minor thing on my site at least every other day. Not that anyone notices! I haven't tried to really get it out there until I get this payment thing worked out.

I wanted to try to do shipping by weight, so it's pretty accurate, and use the PayPal shipping labels. I assume sales tax only in my state, but wondered if PayPal can do either of these automatically. I'll keep looking!

Edited September 18, 2010 by Jeana

[Catlover]

Thanks! I just printed out a USPS rate sheet and am about to weigh my candles, so I can go on from there just putting the info in...I assume. I want to offer free delivery in my LOCAL area (my idea of local, not someone 20 miles away's idea of local) too, so hopefully I can stick that in there somewhere.

For some reason, I keep hesitating to pull the trigger and just sign up for something already! Jeana, do you have the $30/month paypal merchant account? It looked as if I could do the business acct. and the "Website Pymts Standard" thing and only pay the transaction fee?

Thanks again everyone for the info!

[Jeana]

I'm enrolled with the free cart. No monthly and you only pay if you make a sale. I feel the rates are very reasonable.

I tried to set up a will call payment as well as shipping charges for the non-locals. I don't know if I was doing something wrong but it defaulted to the will call, so it registered free shipping all the time. I gave up and just went back to leaving the charges for the shipping. I figure if it is someone local they can go one of my markets or come into my shop to get what they want.

This cart really is limited keep that in mind.

[Catlover]

I don't mind limited...my knowledge of setting this stuff up is less than limited! If the will-call or free delivery thing doesn't work, I'm not going to worry about it. I don't have a shop or do shows (yet), but if someone is ordering from my local area, they can just call or email me and go about it that way. (Although I have no other way to accept cc's, so they'll have to pay me with cash or check. Hmm.)

I realize that I'm never "done" with any of this! Once I trudged through the candle testing, packaging, building a website......now it's the "how & where to sell" phase and all it entails! Of course, I've only sold a few to friends at this point, so it will be nice when things begin to pay off to at least cover what we've spent thus far. :rolleyes2

Thanks again~~

Terri

[brudil18]

Using the standard Paypal business account (not the merchant services) has limited capabilities for doing different shipping options. I am the same way and do not charge "local" orders for shipping. If you want to get around that then you need to use one of the free carts (I use Mal's now) and you can set it up with multiple options for your shipping needs.

Another way to do this is let people now on your website that local orders have "free shipping" or whatever wording you want to use. I did this and provided a list of the zipcodes I considered "local" and if the customer's zip code was one of those I asked that they email me any order and I would respond with an order total.

The tricky part of this is that you don't have money in hand before you fill the order. However I didn't run in to any problems this way until I got my cart set up. This way you can still accept credit cards via the paypal business account with only the transactions fees and still take care of those "local" customers who appreciate not spending a fortune on shipping.

Hope this helps, as I too look for the most economical way to run my business, but still provide some great options on the service side.

[Catlover]

That's a good idea, to note on the website about the local options. Did you just accept cash or checks with those orders, since they didn't go through the PayPal account? And let them pay when they got their order, rather than at the time of order? I'd hope the risk would be minimal, since most "local" people would not be likely to float you a bad check! Especially since a lot of the ones I know work at a bank, where I used to work and my husband now works...

I know I need to look at the Mal's & Zen carts--it just seems that the risk of things not working well together goes up when you have different components from different places, you know? PayPay should always work with PayPal, but if I have a website done with Weebly, hosted by Fat Cow, a PayPal account, and a Mal's or Zen shopping cart....wonder if they will all play nicely together? I have zero programming skills or HTML knowledge, so the Shopping Cart for Dummies is what I need. Oh, with lots of options too. Where's Santa when I need him??

[Catlover]

I meant, PayPal....I keep typing PayPay instead.

[Jeana]

Don't you have to know some html for Mals and Zen carts?

[Catlover]

Do you? Great. I haven't looked at their sites yet as supper is waiting to be cooked....

As long as it's some cut & paste HTML, I can put in onto my site; if I have to know what on earth to type, forget it. Just as when I was trying to figure out where to start with building a website, I'm sure I'm making it more complicated than it has to be.

As long as I can allow customers to choose which fragrance in which size, and they can pay for the dang things, I'll be happy. I don't think the PayPal cart will allow me to have a drop-down menu for 30 fragrances, but maybe I can have a place where, after they order however many candles, they can just type in which scents they want? Seems like that would work, if PP has a place for notes, etc. Maybe?

[lindanelson]

Take a look at my melt page (for example). I have 5 drop down boxes. Three of them are for scents.

I have 27 scents listed, so you should be able to get your 30 listed.

I have my website through weebly also. Hosted at Godaddy with a paypal cart.

[brudil18]

That's a good idea, to note on the website about the local options. Did you just accept cash or checks with those orders, since they didn't go through the PayPal account? And let them pay when they got their order, rather than at the time of order? I'd hope the risk would be minimal, since most "local" people would not be likely to float you a bad check! Especially since a lot of the ones I know work at a bank, where I used to work and my husband now works...

That is exactly what I did. I would just collect cash or check on delivery. I know that there is a chance to get burned on the check thing, but honestly I did not have a single problem and still don't on the occasion that I do take a check. I realize its a risk to take, but it has never been a problem.

The one thing I would do is deposit those checks same day or the next day if it was after hours. Never let them sit for a few days

[Catlover]

OK, so it allows you to do as many drop-down boxes as you want, just limited to 10 per box? One thing: how can someone select just one fragrance, since there has to be a choice in each box?

[lindanelson]

You would need to either leave the first slot blank with ----- or choose scent in it. I know I need to do this. No wonder people are having trouble.

[Catlover]

Hot D**m!! It's all working! PayPal Website Payments Standard w/shopping cart and it is using the product weights I put in with the shipping charges I put in. Thank you for all your help. Jeana, all my fragrances are on the drop-down list, all thanks to you!

I did have the same problem with the "pickup" shipping--I put in Priority Mail and Pickup options, and it defaulted to the no charge for shipping. So barring finding a solution to this problem, I will probably just do the note on the website for the local yokels to sidestep the whole PayPal thing.

It is time for a celebratory cocktail!:whoohoo:

[Jeana]

Great glad it is working.

A little FYI if you don't already know, you can send the locals an invoice where they can still pay with their CC too without going through the shopping cart. But it is about $4 to send the invoice.