Whether or not using Pay-Pal is the route to go when it comes to connecting the dots between consumer and seller seems to be more of a subjective preference from what I've experienced.  I've heard horror stories and heavenly dreams transpiring from those who have chosen Pay-Pal as their creator of their "merchant account."

I did notice a few people touch upon the pro's and con's with using Pay-Pal as a company and for me I choose the companies I work with based on how responsive is their live customer service.  I need to know if someone compromises my client's information in some manner, I have the possible hope that another human being is but 10 mere digits away from helping me through such an event.

I think they have an awful lot of information to digest if you really want to become a proficient Pay-Pal user and once had to call their customer service because I couldn't find out if there were exporting capabilities with the list of purchasers to spreadsheet format.  We were using it for ticket sales and they have both wide-spread name recognition across the Internet as well as a decent level of credibility---despite the spoofing, phishing and hijacking of their identity for illegitimate purposes.

For me it always comes down to the people behind the snapshot of their offerings and whether or not they will be responsive if I do run into a problem and that they have good dispute resolution processes.

Hope this helps!

I wrote a detailed post about the Paypal Standard Shopping Cart and recently Paypal has changed in a way to make it much more negative.  In the shopping cart page, it used to say "Proceed to Checkout".  Paypal has recently changed this button to now appear as "Check Out With PayPal, the safer, easier way to pay".  This has definitely stopped sales.  Customers no longer think this is a regular check-out and most likely assume that if they don't have a Paypal account, they can't make a purchase (most customers pay by credit card than by Paypal).  This is actually not true since they can pay by credit card but Paypal is definitely and intentionally not making this clear.  It appears Paypal is more concerned about adding new members to their own website than helping you out with your small business and your check-out process.  Sales have been noticeably slower since this happened.

I guess the way around this would be to upgrade to the Paypal Website Payments Pro so you can have customers check-out on your own website rather than Paypal's.  It's possible that this was their intention - to get you to upgrade and thus pay a monthly fee.  Or I could possibly switch to another company altogether. 

I guess this is the problem with anything that claims to be "free".  There's always a catch.  It did work out for me a good 2 years though.  Judging by the advantages I wrote earlier, I think I'll probably stick to Paypal but upgrade to the paying version so that I have more control over the check-out process.

Does anyone else have any other recommendation besides Paypal as to good shopping cart software or check-out software?

Outlier wrote:

Does anyone else have any other recommendation besides Paypal as to good shopping cart software or check-out software?

Minor Topic Turn:  I saw someone else mention just slowing down the sales process slightly and not using an online financial transaction service.  And yet no matter on what document you read, this type of idea will probably never completely shake its Chicken Little Syndrome appearance.  But if the current statistics are so greatly elevated as to ring a bell because some violation reached the billion dollar mark for consumers, businesses or even governments, it certainly is worthy of a re-evaluation as to whether or not it will help or harm both the user and the community-at-large.

Hi,

anybody noticed PayPal has changed the checkout page?

Credit card customers now seem to be FORCED to sign up with PayPal to close a sale.

I don't know about you, but I have encountered dramatic drop in sales for more than 50% since this time.

Not very sensible.

Please post if you encounter / noticed the same change and problems?

Torsten

Torsten, it's very possible that this is a mistake on Paypal's part.  If you are using the PayPal Standard Shopping Cart, then on the shopping cart page, that button which says "Check out with PayPal" instead of the usual "Proceed to Checkout" button is very possibly a mistake.  That button is actually called the Paypal Express Checkout button and is meant to be used for websites who offer Paypal as an option and use who use that button to make it easier for Paypal users only.  It should NOT appear in the standard shopping cart check-out, which as we know accepts credit cards as well as Paypal. 

I called Paypal just now and the customer support rep appeared to agree with me.  He told me to call the Merchant Tech Support number directly, which is 1-800-852-1973.  They're closed on weekends so I will be calling them tomorrow.  If anyone else has this problem, it'd be a great idea to call them as well.  They'll listen more if more people are complaining about it. 

In the meantime, I'm still looking for other shopping cart software.  The ideal shopping cart software is where you have control over it and where customers complete the entire check-out process on your website and not anywhere else.  I noticed that you have to be very wary though - some charge ridiculous monthly fees and some even want a percentage of your sales!  And then some hold on to your customer information and sell them to your competitors!  You have to look very closely, because there are some free ones out there too and who don't sell the information.  Wow, I never thought it'd take this long shopping for a shopping cart!  Anyone with any recommendations?

Outlier wrote:

In the meantime, I'm still looking for other shopping cart software.  The ideal shopping cart software is where you have control over it and where customers complete the entire check-out process on your website and not anywhere else.

Also, the ideal shopping cart will be well versed in the large variety of menu options available to those who wish to wrongfully interfere with the transaction...if they don't know what the word "spoof" means, then I'd be spooked and probably turn to another provider, if not perhaps giving up on the idea entirely...

Outlier wrote:

I wrote a detailed post about the Paypal Standard Shopping Cart and recently Paypal has changed in a way to make it much more negative.  In the shopping cart page, it used to say "Proceed to Checkout".  Paypal has recently changed this button to now appear as "Check Out With PayPal, the safer, easier way to pay".

I haven't tried it yet, but apparently, you can create your own custom buttons.

thebjer wrote:

Outlier wrote:

I wrote a detailed post about the Paypal Standard Shopping Cart and recently Paypal has changed in a way to make it much more negative.  In the shopping cart page, it used to say "Proceed to Checkout".  Paypal has recently changed this button to now appear as "Check Out With PayPal, the safer, easier way to pay".

I haven't tried it yet, but apparently, you can create your own custom buttons.

You've always been able to customize the Pay-Pal buttons.  The problem/challenge is that we're dealing with credibility issues here and we are just the medium who invites people to use their service. 

For example, I know some members of the forum are well-versed in the tactic known as "spam" and Pay-Pal is an attractive target.  Now McAfee put on a good demonstration this summer challenging people to test their detecting skills.  I guess they took the test down but you can still get the general idea of the test from reading their blog http://blog.siteadvisor.com/2007/07/phi … shin.shtml). 

So now let me fib a little to make a point.  I'm thinking about hooking up my great-grandmother's dearest grand-niece with a shopping cart.  If I screw up this site, I am out of the will and I'm unwilling to risk this because we're talking millions!  (told ya I was gonna lie a little...I treat all my clients as if they were family! LOL)!

Alice, her grand-niece, has just opened a restaurant and she wants to buy some special restaurant-dedicated proprietary software that would allow her to connect with the site I design and process orders.  Now, if I didn't like Alice at all, I might intentionally go find a severely flawed shopping cart program and then play dumb, but she wasn't mean to me when we were kids playing in the backyard together.  In fact, I happen to like Alice a lot and I don't want to see harm befall her, so I begin the research process and that's pretty much where the truth comes into my post.

There are always many factors that must always be included in the decision process when contemplating even the first step of taking your finances into the virtual community and this will always be a great question to debate and watch.  So far, my tipping factor towards the company remains the familiarity factor, plus no super-duper, supernova security issues, other than the same dilemmas everyone else copes with while using the Internet to conduct business.  I'm not going to stop taking some antibiotic because I keep receiving unwelcomed notices publishing their corporate identity, but I also won't click on any of the links either.

If there really is a better service out there, I'd be really interested in knowing about it because ultimately, my loyalties lie with those who ask me to project an idea of theirs onto this massive world-wide screening system.  People do ask my opinion and I always try to instead point them in the direction of quickly seeking the answers they are searching for.  Plus, Pay-Pal can never be everything to everyone and there are many circumstances where the economic perspective of who is charging what fees and how often leaves Pay-Pal in the dust.  Those fees can also just as easily be absorbed such as what happens during an E-Bay transaction and it becomes cloaked in the apathetic cloak labeled "cost of doing business."

I'm gonna go searching this afternoon to see what I can find, but this is a moment where my particular skill set becomes a glaring barrier to fast, clear answers.  I'm a little slower than some of these young pups out there and I know nothing about money other than it has green and black printing all over it and you are not allowed to deface it in any manner...!  LOL!

Anyone have any leads or am I to be left alone with my search engines and a mind that seems to have taken a vacation day after all...?

P.S. I started a new thread asking for help in identifying what shopping carts are available at http://forums.site-reference.com/viewto … 393#p44393.  I did find a directory listing in the open-source directory system (i.e. Google in this instance) and linked to it, but I don't have the time right now to sift through the whole list and I wouldn't recognize the name of a quality shopping cart system even if its wheels were repetitively rolled across my toes...

Outlier wrote:

I wrote a detailed post about the Paypal Standard Shopping Cart and recently Paypal has changed in a way to make it much more negative.  In the shopping cart page, it used to say "Proceed to Checkout".  Paypal has recently changed this button to now appear as "Check Out With PayPal, the safer, easier way to pay".

I fully agree on what you say, and as it seems it's even worth. The new paypal checkout seem to be obligatory in many countries now, thus driving vendors and affiliates insane because it is leading to huge sales losses with credit card customers.

Read here, there's a hot discussion going on:

http://paydotcom.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2246

Torsten

thebjer wrote:

Outlier wrote:

I wrote a detailed post about the Paypal Standard Shopping Cart and recently Paypal has changed in a way to make it much more negative.  In the shopping cart page, it used to say "Proceed to Checkout".  Paypal has recently changed this button to now appear as "Check Out With PayPal, the safer, easier way to pay".

I haven't tried it yet, but apparently, you can create your own custom buttons.

You can create your own custom buttons but only on your own website:  the "Add to Cart", "Buy Now", or "View Cart" buttons.  These buttons can be modified to anything you want because they are on your url.  However, the actual shopping cart page (when using PayPal's free Standard Shopping Cart) is on PayPal's url where you have very little control.  Whenever a customer adds an item to the cart or tries to view the cart, the customer leaves your url and is always directed to PayPal's url for the shopping cart details.  Note that this will happen for all "hosted" shopping carts. 

I wanted to add the option for Google Check-out as well in the shopping cart page but I cannot do it with PayPal's check-out.  There is no way to modify that shopping cart page except for the top banner and background color. 

As of this date there is also another problem with the PayPal shopping cart:  In my website shipping is calculated by a flat fee based on the cart sub-total.  Prior to last week, the shipping fee used to always display the correct amount on the shopping cart page before entering the check-out page.  However, PayPal is working on new shipping so that customers can now enter a zip code to calculate shipping on the check-out page.  That is fine and well intentioned but on the shopping cart page prior to reaching the check-out page, the shipping and handling portion always reads $0 in the shopping cart (no matter what the subtotal is) so customers at first think they will get free shipping.  However, in the following check-out page they are asked to enter a zip code and find that shipping is not free - this could be confusing or they may think the website is not working properly and lead to shopping cart abandonment.  I've called about this issue one week ago and still nothing done about it.

If you want the entire check-out process to occur on your url where you have complete control, you'd have to either find a new shopping cart or upgrade to PayPal's Website Payments Pro which at this time is $30 per month (used to be $20) plus a higher merchant transaction fee.  Note that if you upgrade to this, you still need to find a compatible shopping cart, which I have discovered is not easy to do if you have an existing website.

This is probably another forum topic and I'll probably continue it there, but alot of shopping cart software re-designs your entire website for you.  You basically enter your products with the product #, description, category, etc. and they organize it for you in various templates that you choose.  This is not bad for people with no website but if you have an existing one, you're going to have to change it entirely.  In addition, you won't have complete control over the look and experience.  Your website will basically look like everyone else's out there.  I'm basically looking for shopping cart software that I can install myself and incorporate into my own website without them having to re-design the entire website with simple templates.  I guess you'd call this "open source" software. 

By the way, I've called PayPal Merchant Tech Support at 800-852-1973 and they tell me that they are currently experimenting with that "Check-out" button - it sometimes changes back to the "Proceed to Check-out" and sometimes goes to the new PayPal check-out logo.  The people there say that our feedback is definitely helping them so if you have an issue with their check-out, please let them know about it.  I don't know if they are trained to just say that so that you go away or if they are really listening to our feedback.  But it's worth a try to complain and let them know...

Outlier: “I'm basically looking for shopping cart software that I can install myself and incorporate into my own website without them having to re-design the entire website with simple templates.”

Unless I did not read something that will contradict me, have you thought enough about what your websites current and future needs are? In example are you planning on delivery of electronic soft goods, issue discount codes, do you need live shipping calculations, do you need a customizable back end so you can decrement an inventory in a database?

I think that there are plenty of plug and play cart options available but you need to look further down the road. And at what point are going to think about your customers needs? They do have needs that must be satisfied if you expect to complete a conversion.

My website is actually very simple.  I just sell products which are shipped to the customer (nothing electronic or downloadable).  I prefer to keep it simple for the customers' sake.  The simpler it is, the more chance of a conversion.  And this includes having fewer steps involved in making the transaction - I prefer not to have customers sign up or log-in just to make a purchase (alot of shopping cart software forces customers to log-in or sign up for an account).  That's why I liked PayPal's shopping cart originally (it's now less clear whether they have to sign up).  As for discount codes, that's why I prefer to have my own pages because I occasionally add package specials.  I'm sure this is all possible with shopping cart software and after what PayPal is doing it is quite possible that I may switch over to some shopping cart software which re-designs my site.  I just don't want to start something completely new just prior to the busy Christmas season. 

If you have any recommendations for good, customizable shopping cart software, please share the wealth!

Do you have some money budgeted for a cart? There are some that have a small monthly fee that you will more than make up with a sale or 2. The Wave Shoppe cart has some decent options in the control panel, its very simple set up; it integrates with PP as well as accepts major credit cards.

Probably what I like the most about it is that it comes with free and very personalized support. Personalized meaning when I asked for a solution that would allow 2 completely independent sites to decrement a central product database, the reply from Mark L. was “sure, just let me know when you are ready and I will make it happen”.

I don’t know what your monthly sales average is but if you have the payments pro account can also apply for a lower than advertised transaction fee. That’s a decent savings for sites doing volume transactions.

Any how you can get more info at https://www.asecurecart.net/main/default.aspx P.S. tell Mark I sent you so I can get my kickback.

The site that you're recommending appears to be a "hosted" shopping cart.  Shopping carts which charge a monthly fee are usually hosted which means the check-out takes place on their url, not yours.  This is just like PayPal, except Paypal's Standard shopping cart is free (no monthly charges) - that's what I liked about it.  But then you could run into the same problem - you don't have full control over the check-out page. 

By the way, there are alot of good hosted shopping carts out there that charge much less per month.  The site you're recommending charges $15.95 per month.  The cheapest I saw is $5 per month and it was a good one too.  Again, I prefer paying a one-time fee and having the the software installed on my own url where I will have more control over the check-out.  But even these are difficult to find especially if you already have a website and don't want to change much of it.  But they would probably be ideal if you're just starting up a website from scratch.

"If you have any recommendations for good, customizable shopping cart software, please share the wealth!"

I gave you what you asked for, a recommendation. Franky we dont worry about a few extra dollars, we tend to focus on the customers needs. Buy the $5 solution if you think it will do the job, it really dont matter to me.

Hey, don't take it personally.  I think our websites are completely different.  Mine is completely product based, there's no blogs, articles, etc.  It's purely retail products, like a store, nothing more nothing less.  Yours appears to be different - your site probably needs to be more reliant on the customers' "needs" to convert to a transaction.  Mine is less reliant - everyone knows what the products are and they simply compare it with other retail websites.  My customers' "needs" are more the product and the price rather than how fancy the website looks.  Other websites may be different and there is nothing wrong with that.   

I think everyone would agree that for any website to work, efficiency should be maximized, including cost efficiency.  Although my site brings in 5 digit sales per month, I still would rather have a free shopping cart than a $16 or $30 per month shopping cart.  But as we've discussed and is the topic of this thread,  there are disadvantages to the free PP cart.  In the end, I think you're right that everyone should get a shopping cart which suits their own website's needs.

I am certainly not taking anything personally. But we look forward into the future and PCI DSS Compliance could require the use of 3rd party validated applications. We certainly do differ in how we view our business because we rarely look at XXX digit sales per month; we look at true profit margins.

If you were truly looking at true profit margins you certainly would re-consider paying your $16 per month shopping cart for a $8 per month cart like www.mals-e.com or cheaper ones elsewhere.  If you take a look there's not a significant difference in the check-outs.  Looks like for someone looking at true profit margins you've been paying double what you should have.  The point is, it's worth while to shop around for shopping cart software.  Why pay $16 or $30 when you can pay much less or nothing at all?

By the way, we're going off topic a little bit.  It appears another topic was started for shopping carts alone.  I think we should post to that topic if we talk solely about shopping carts in general.

Outlier wrote:

If you were truly looking at true profit margins you certainly would re-consider paying your $16 per month shopping cart for a $8 per month cart like www.mals-e.com or $5 per month cart like www.e-junkie.com.

If you take a look there's not a significant difference in the check-outs.  Looks like for someone looking at true profit margins you've been paying more than double what you should have.  The point is, it's worth while to shop around for shopping cart software.  Why pay $16 or $30 when you can pay much less or nothing at all?

By the way, we're going off topic a little bit.  It appears another topic was started for shopping carts alone.  I think we should post to that topic if we talk solely about shopping carts in general.

My oh my, discussing paypal does include discussion of carts and PCI Compliance $8 a month may look like a deal but make sure you add the yearly PCI Compliance fee. The current advertised cost is just $149 per year, do the math.

As far as I know there is no other charge but the $8 per month.   If you ask the average customer if he/she knows what PCI Compliance is, chances are they will tell you "no".  I've been using PayPal's FREE shopping cart for 3 years and I haven't paid anything for PCI Compliance.  This could be another topic as well.  The customer will purchase from you if he/she trusts you, that is the bottom line.  I've had customers give me credit card numbers over the telephone.  Look, I'm not here to endorse anyone's shopping cart or to criticize anyone's method of business.  This entire topic was to talk about using PayPal in a website. 

Getting back to the topic of PayPal, it's an advantage because they are established and people in general know or have heard about it (and you don't pay any extra PCI compliance for it).  But it's a double edged sword because of the phishing schemes, some customers might try to avoid it or think you are one of them.  There are other disadvantages that we've mentioned throughout this topic.  So far it hasn't affected me to the point where I will definitely switch shopping carts (the "true profit" is still there). 

But I'll make it clear to you that I'm beginning to become unsatisfied with it and am looking elsewhere.  I've been doing alot of looking around and even that $8 shopping cart has its advantages and disadvantages.  I'd preferably like to have a shopping cart installed on my own server and pay a one time fee but if I have to use a hosted shopping cart with a monthly fee, then I'd do it as well.  I may have to pay $8 or whatever (maybe even $16 like you).  By the way I was mistaken in the $5 per month fee with e-junkie.  The $5 is for only 10 products.  It gets more expensive the more products you have (I edited my post and took off that reference). 

Anyway, the point of this topic is to discuss all of this and not make it personal.  You got to understand and put yourself in my shoes - I've been paying nothing for 3 years on a shopping cart and then all of a sudden I'm looking around and there are monthly fees everywhere.  Heck, even $5 a month is too much for someone coming from where I'm coming from!