# Paypal Shopping Cart Questions



## tribecat (Sep 21, 2005)

Hi, I have decided to intitailly use paypal for my t-shirt site. While it wasn't my first choice for a lot of reasons I choose to use it to save a little money up front. I've got a few questions for anyone using paypal to process shirt sales; Have you found it easy to use and have your customers been satisfied with it? 

Also, my web site designer said he needs full access to my paypal account to set up my site. I do have a merchant account with paypal and I am a bit hesitant to give someone I don't really know access to my paypal merchant site. I guess my question is, what kind of access does he need to set up the paypal cart on my site? I thought he could just link to it using the email address I use for that account. Could someone help me to understand this a bit more... I really appreciate it.

Thanks so much. This is a great place for t-shirt lovers!


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## rabid (Jan 10, 2006)

tribecat said:


> Hi, I have decided to intitailly use paypal for my t-shirt site. While it wasn't my first choice for a lot of reasons I choose to use it to save a little money up front. I've got a few questions for anyone using paypal to process shirt sales; Have you found it easy to use and have your customers been satisfied with it?
> 
> Also, my web site designer said he needs full access to my paypal account to set up my site. I do have a merchant account with paypal and I am a bit hesitant to give someone I don't really know access to my paypal merchant site. I guess my question is, what kind of access does he need to set up the paypal cart on my site? I thought he could just link to it using the email address I use for that account. Could someone help me to understand this a bit more... I really appreciate it.
> 
> Thanks so much. This is a great place for t-shirt lovers!


What cart are you using? And what kind of account do you have with Paypal, Website Payments Standard or Pro?


B.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Someone will need to login to your PayPal account and create the buy now/add to cart buttons for your shopping cart pages.

These are only generated through the PayPal interface once logged in. If you don't feel comfortable giving out that information to your developer, you can create the necessary buttons yourself and send him the resulting HTML code (or hire a developer you can trust )

With PayPal as the ONLY shopping option, you will find customers that don't mind it at all and are happy that you accept paypal and you will find customers that specifcally won't shop at your site because they don't like PayPal for their own reasons that may have nothing at all to do with your company.

I don't like the functionality of the PayPal cart (how it pops open a separate window when you add a product to the shopping cart), but it wouldn't stop me from buying a t-shirt I like when I see one. That's probably because I'm a t-shirt junkie though, I don't know if all customers will have the same patience.

You can accept PayPal and still use a free shopping cart option like oscommerce, zen-cart, cubecart. That way you'll still have a better shopping cart functionality (no popups) and be able to upgrade to other payment options easily later down the road. 

Also, If you use a shopping cart option like the ones I mentioned, you also wouldn't have to give your developer access to your PayPal account. Then all they would need is your paypal email address to plugin to the shopping cart application and the shopping cart would handle the rest.


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## tribecat (Sep 21, 2005)

Hi Brian, it's a regular merchant account, guess that would be standard.


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## tribecat (Sep 21, 2005)

Hi Rodney, I have to tell you that I am not a fan of paypal. Whenever I have sold items on ebay I simply won't accept paypal, only check or money order. They are a bit to avaricious and difficult to work with. This approach, however, just doesn't work for t-shirt sales which are often impulse purchases. 

Sadly, I am pretty much at the mercy of otheres when it comes to being conversant with programming and having a fluid understanding of what is involved. This is my first foray into ecommerce and I know I'm going to make mistakes but I'm sure hoping to keep that to a minimum in terms of time and expense. Can you give me a bit of direction insofar as exploring some of the other options you mentioned... or is it as simple as going on the appropriate web sites?

I am happily pleased to have discovered this site and its wealth of friendly and helpful kindred souls... it's really great.
Thanks,
Tribecat


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

tribecat said:


> Hi Rodney, I have to tell you that I am not a fan of paypal. Whenever I have sold items on ebay I simply won't accept paypal, only check or money order. They are a bit to avaricious and difficult to work with.


I haven't had the same experience, but what you just wrote is exactly what I was talking about  Some people just don't like PayPal, so if they see that as your *only* option, they may just choose not to buy. I don't think this is a "large" portion of buyers though.



> Sadly, I am pretty much at the mercy of otheres when it comes to being conversant with programming and having a fluid understanding of what is involved.


You never have to be at the mercy of programmers. You always have a choice. And educating yourself (in places like this) as to what those choices are is a good way to take back some of that control 

Having a programmer do the work is not a bad thing, but being able to explain to them what you need and knowing what you don't need will help to make sure you aren't getting taken advantage of by the developer. Hopefully we can help you out with that 



> This is my first foray into ecommerce and I know I'm going to make mistakes but I'm sure hoping to keep that to a minimum in terms of time and expense.


I've made quite a few in my years doing this. I *try* to remind myself to think of them as "learning experiences" 



> Can you give me a bit of direction insofar as exploring some of the other options you mentioned... or is it as simple as going on the appropriate web sites?


The basics of it is: if you have a domain name and a web host, then that webhost most likely offers you to ability to use php/mysql scripts on your account.

Free shopping carts like zen-cart, oscommerce, cubecart, etc can just be installed on your web hosting account and then you can manage your products and orders through their online interface. Most t-shirt sites use a shopping cart of some type. I've seen many that use oscommerce, but the others can be equally as good.

To figure out which one you think will work best for you, you could just visit the different shopping cart product websites:

zen-cart: http://www.zen-cart.com
oscommerce: http://www.oscommerce.com/ (or http://creloaded.com/ is a nicely bundled version of oscommerce)
cubecart: http://www.cubecart.com/site/home/



> I am happily pleased to have discovered this site and its wealth of friendly and helpful kindred souls... it's really great.
> Thanks,
> Tribecat


Happy to have you and be able to help.

:welcome:


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## identityburn (Feb 24, 2006)

Doesn't standard paypal accept credit cards even without having a paypal account? I thought I read that on their site. You do still have the new window thing, but I didn't think they had to sign up for an account anymore.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

identityburn said:


> Doesn't standard paypal accept credit cards even without having a paypal account? I thought I read that on their site. You do still have the new window thing, but I didn't think they had to sign up for an account anymore.


Yes, that's true. But that's not what I was referencing above 

Some people just don't like PayPal (regardless of whether they have signup for an account or not when checking out). So if they see PayPal as their only option, they just won't buy.

The converse is sometimes true as well. Some people are more likely to buy if they see PayPal as an option during checkout. That means they don't have to pull out their credit card number or worry about a merchant that they don't know getting their cc details.


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## Comin'OutSwingin (Oct 28, 2005)

Rodney said:


> You can accept PayPal and still use a free shopping cart option like oscommerce, zen-cart, cubecart. That way you'll still have a better shopping cart functionality (no popups) and be able to upgrade to other payment options easily later down the road.


Rodney, are you saying that it's possible to use the standard Paypal as a payment option, but use a shopping cart such as oscommerce, and not have a new window pop up?


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Comin'OutSwingin said:


> Rodney, are you saying that it's possible to use the standard Paypal as a payment option, but use a shopping cart such as oscommerce, and not have a new window pop up?


That's correct 

Shopping carts like oscommerce,zen-cart, etc allow you to specify which payment methods you will accept (check, credit cards, paypal, 2checkout, etc)

You can turn each payment method on or off.

So you can set it up so that your only payment method is PayPal.

How it works then is that users would shop around your site using the oscommerce shopping cart with no popup windows, and when they are ready to checkout, they enter their billing/shipping address and then select a method of payment (PayPal). Then they are transferred to the PayPal website to complete their payment and after they pay via PayPal, they are then transferred back to your shopping cart and you get notification from your shopping cart and from PayPal of the order and payment.

Hope this helps  Any other questions, just let me know.


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## Comin'OutSwingin (Oct 28, 2005)

Thanks, Rodney.

What about when they are transferred to the Paypal site...are you able to put your logo and site colors there so it at least "looks" somewhat like they are connected to your site?


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Comin'OutSwingin said:


> Thanks, Rodney.
> 
> What about when they are transferred to the Paypal site...are you able to put your logo and site colors there so it at least "looks" somewhat like they are connected to your site?


Yep, you can add your logo to the top header of the PayPal site when they are transferred to make their payment. You used to be able to edit the colors a bit, but I don't know if you still can.

That's one of the benefits of having a real merchant account though. The shopper never has to leave your site because the transaction is handled by your secure server and the payment gateway.

PayPal offers a "real" merchant account now (called PayPal Payments Pro), but there are some weird usage restrictions with it (like you can't use other payment options and you have to have their logo somewhere near or something like that).


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## Comin'OutSwingin (Oct 28, 2005)

I was thinking about going with a "true" merchant account, but I think I'm going to start out with the paypal until I'm able to drive some traffic to the site (hopefully, I will be done with it soon!).

Thanks, again.


P.S. This is my 300th post! I am now a T-SHIRT MASTER!!! 

I hope to fill this position well and continue to bring dignity and respect to the t-shirt masters all over the world.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Congrats T-Shirt Master! Remember to only use your powers for good and not evil


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## rabid (Jan 10, 2006)

Rodney said:


> Yep, you can add your logo to the top header of the PayPal site when they are transferred to make their payment. You used to be able to edit the colors a bit, but I don't know if you still can.
> 
> That's one of the benefits of having a real merchant account though. The shopper never has to leave your site because the transaction is handled by your secure server and the payment gateway.
> 
> PayPal offers a "real" merchant account now (called PayPal Payments Pro), but there are some weird usage restrictions with it (like you can't use other payment options and you have to have their logo somewhere near or something like that).


I use Website Payments Pro and I accept every form of payment through my cart: Discover, Amex, Visa, MC, money orders and Paypal. I don't need to include their logo anywhere. 

I looked at 2Checkout last night and Paypal is cheaper per transaction but carries a $20 a month charge. Still, my customers never leave the site.


B.


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## Comin'OutSwingin (Oct 28, 2005)

So, rabid, your customers don't have any idea that you are using paypal? 

What I would like is maybe use Paypal payments pro, if my customers don't know that paypal is processing the payment, then also have the option to just use paypal standard for customers that WANT to use paypal.

Is this possible?


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

rabid said:


> I use Website Payments Pro and I accept every form of payment through my cart: Discover, Amex, Visa, MC, money orders and Paypal. I don't need to include their logo anywhere.


This is the requirement that I was referring to:
https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_logo-positioning-guidelines-pro.html


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Comin'OutSwingin said:


> What I would like is maybe use Paypal payments pro, if my customers don't know that paypal is processing the payment, then also have the option to just use paypal standard for customers that WANT to use paypal.


If you're going to be paying the $20 monthly fee for PayPal Pro, you may as well get a "regular" merchant account instead of the PayPal pro (the monthly fees will be about the same).

Then you will be able to have 2 separate payment options and no requirement to let regular credit card customers know how you are processing their payment.


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## tribecat (Sep 21, 2005)

Wow, I have received a wealth of information in response to my original post. I am really pleased for all the great input. I am going to check out paypal pro and see what that's all about. 
Regarding giving my webdesigner access to my paypal account so he can match up the styles of shirts for checkout, it still seems a bit weird to me, after all, it is linked to my biz checking. Heck, I wouldn't even give my wife that info...
tribecat


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## rabid (Jan 10, 2006)

Rodney said:


> This is the requirement that I was referring to:
> https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_logo-positioning-guidelines-pro.html


My shopping cart already shows a button like that for customers who have a Paypal account and want to go that way. Since it's integrated, I didn't have to do anything to meet those requirements since they're already there.

Comin'OutSwingin,

No, my customers have no idea I'm using Paypal, but they can still pay that way if they want since it's an option at checkout. Paypal didn't start charging monthly fees until February I think, so I really haven't done the research yet to see if a regular merchant account would be cheaper in the long run. I'm not in a rush though since I'm earning almost 5% on the money that sits there.


B.


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## Jehozadak (Feb 4, 2006)

tribecat said:


> Wow, I have received a wealth of information in response to my original post. I am really pleased for all the great input. I am going to check out paypal pro and see what that's all about.
> Regarding giving my webdesigner access to my paypal account so he can match up the styles of shirts for checkout, it still seems a bit weird to me, after all, it is linked to my biz checking. Heck, I wouldn't even give my wife that info...
> tribecat


I recall that If you have a Business Account with Paypal you can add users and restrict their access to certain elements of your account. Log in, go to profile, then Multi-User Access and see what it gives you. I haven't really used it much myself but thought it might help.

Adrian


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## honeyflip (Nov 1, 2005)

Great thread. Thanks for all the info, folks. You should be charging consultant fees for some of this stuff. Er, forget I said that.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

I use paypal vertual terminal on one of my sites (wholesale) and the party filling in the info does not know this. when I get the information I just enter the information that I receive through my shopping cart service and go to my vertual paypal account and walla, done deal. it cost me $20. a month.


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## skulltshirts (Mar 30, 2006)

I use the paypal shopping cart. So i understand what it would be like to give your account info to a web publisher you dont know. 
You could give him access to your account so he can create the html code for the shopping cart, or you can attempt this yourself. It really isnt to hard to do. If you give him access, just remember to reset your account with a new password when your done. If this person is designing your whole site, you should trust him somewhat right. I know, not enough to give him access to your bank account. So I suggest you attempt to create the code yourself. Dont forget to set your shipping options while your at it.

Thomas


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## mint274 (Apr 29, 2006)

To make paypal buttons for your site, the web site designer just needs your paypal email address and what you are selling. Paypal buttons are quite easy to do if you use a program like dreamweaver.


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## bgreaterthan (Jul 15, 2007)

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the t-shirt biz and I'm currently working on my website. I'm going to use paypal for payment but I'm confused about what exactly I need. Do I just link my website with paypal? Do I also need a shopping cart? If I have paypal, don't I automatically have shopping cart or is that something separate I need to get? Thanks for any help you can offer. I know these are rookie questions.

Kelly


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> If I have paypal, don't I automatically have shopping cart or is that something separate I need to get?


Yes, but it is very limited.



> Do I also need a shopping cart?


If you want to be able to manage products, orders, shipping, customers ,j product options, more effectively and have a more user friendly shopping process, yes. 

There are free shopping carts that you can install like zencart, oscommerce, cubecart that can integrate with PayPal for the payment processing.


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## skulltshirts (Mar 30, 2006)

For a paypal cart all you do is login to your account at paypal and look for the add to cart buttons. That generates the code and then you copy the code to your web pages.


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## RescueShirts (Jun 24, 2007)

FYI...

I followed some very easy instructions that were on Paypal... and "hacked" the code to do exactly what I needed for selling shirts via the free Paypal shopping cart.

It's fairly simple for my purposes... all I needed is choice of sizes, with additional amount of $$$ for 3XL and 4XL... and a choice of shirt colors...
http://www.rescueshirts.com/test.htm

 Brett


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## mint274 (Apr 29, 2006)

bgreaterthan said:


> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I'm new to the t-shirt biz and I'm currently working on my website. I'm going to use paypal for payment but I'm confused about what exactly I need. Do I just link my website with paypal? Do I also need a shopping cart? If I have paypal, don't I automatically have shopping cart or is that something separate I need to get? Thanks for any help you can offer. I know these are rookie questions.
> 
> Kelly


Hi Kelly, 

To make paypal buttons you have to log into your paypal account then go to
merchant services > buy now buttons. That page will ask you about 3 questions and it will then make the html code you need. You have to copy that code and paste it onto your website. 

If you want to sell hundreds of t-shirts, I think it would be better to use a free shopping cart system like oscommerce. With oscommerce I can put up 100 t-shirts in about 2 hours. Using the paypal website it would take me about 24 hours to put up 100 t-shirts. Oscommerce does have problems. Customers have to log in to use your website (no one likes to log in to a website). OSC. is a very very complex system and if you tweek it wrong, the whole website will disappear. I put an example of my Oscommerce paypal site in my signature. Hope this information helps.


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## bgreaterthan (Jul 15, 2007)

Thanks for the info everyone! Very helpful.

Hey Brett or Rodney,

In paypal, how did you offer choices for sizes or colors without adding a separate "Add to Cart" button. I've successfully added the buttons but I'm having trouble figuring that part out.

Thanks again! Kelly


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

On the PayPal shopping cart page, instead of clicking the Create Button Now button, you click the Add More Options button and you'll see a page where you get to choose your own options.

My suggestion would be to NOT use the PayPal shopping cart though. You should use a dedicated cart that will allow you more flexibility and a better shopping experience for your customers.


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## RescueShirts (Jun 24, 2007)

To make my test paypal shopping cart required some additional techniques I found here:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/sc-techniques

You must be logged in to paypal to view this page.

Basically... the additional code was to be able to charge additional amounts for shirts larger than XL... which I did without problems.

I didn't use ALL of the techniques listed on these pages... however, they are not too difficult.


I really don't want to get into the paypal shopping cart versus other shopping cart debate.

This is my first t-shirt website... but I have sucessfully sold many other items online using paypal without problems after $1000's upon $1000's worth of transactions.


On the other hand... I am pretty proficient at web design... and I do a lot with templates.

For instance... Yesturday... it took me about an hour to add the modified paypal shopping cart code to about 88 pages of my site (that version is not online).

Once I got the code right for one product... I just pasted the code onto the other pages, then changed the item description... piece of cake.

Also... since my products are on their own pages... and not included in a shopping cart program... my site is very search engine friendly.

Heck... I am already in the top 3 to 8 for many of my keywords/phrases! Not bad for a site that isn't selling anything yet... (and yes... people are finding me... I track all traffic and referring sites/search engine pages.)


If you are not that website savvy... a self-contained shopping cart program that let's you add products easily may be the way to go.

Since I have been doing this web stuff since 1998... my ways are really easy for me... but don't always translate to other people's websites.

As always... your mileage may vary!

 Brett


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> Also... since my products are on their own pages... and not included in a shopping cart program... my site is very search engine friendly.


Having your products in a shopping program doesn't stop them from being search engine friendly. A new page is created for all of your products just like if you did it manually.



> If you are not that website savvy... a self-contained shopping cart program that let's you add products easily may be the way to go.
> 
> Since I have been doing this web stuff since 1998... my ways are really easy for me... but don't always translate to other people's websites.


I think even if you are web savvy, having a shopping cart is a smart move.

It lets you manage products much more easily, it doesn't give you the popup windows that paypal does, it gives shopper a standard shopping process that they are used to, it can help you manage customers and orders. Also, it will help you manage payment options as you grow. Some customers won't want to pay with paypal (for whatever reasons), so when you can add more payment options, you can reach more customers.

I've been selling t-shirts online since 1996 and it's definitely something I would recommend for anybody that is wanting to sell t-shirts.

I think a paypal shopping cart is good if you are just starting out and you only have 1-2 products to manage. 

But once you start processing your own transactions through your own merchant account and you get several t-shirt designs to sell, you will really appreciate how much time a shopping cart program will save you.

It makes it very easy to add a product, and add attributes like +$2 for XXL or different shipping options or coupon codes for marketing purposes or additional checkout fields.


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## kyoru (Aug 10, 2007)

Hello, just skimming through the site. I'm not sure if you are aware of this but there is a way to use Paypal at the end of your transaction and manual load the Paypal shopping cart. Search up "IPN" and "PDN". Basically your website stores the info about the purchases, say the customer wants design a and design b. the customer then decides to check out, your website then sends the information about the purchases to paypal (for example you can send variables for each item, including description, size, cost, weight, etc). paypal will display everything in its cart and the customer finishes a transaction there and then will be returned to your site. paypal will then send a transaction report to your website and you can do whatever from there (update inventory etc.)

this is not something you should look into if you are not web savy because it requires one to know a combination of perl/php and mysql, and it took me numerous hours for it to work properly. i would post my site but i beleive it is against rules.

in any case, yes your programmer needs access to your paypal account.


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