Webshop using PayPal

After having considered Ebay I came to the (for me) obvious conclusion: I'll have to make my own. Of course this wasn't easy so I started out with the most important task: how do I collect the money?

I looked at some of the professional money collectors like Ogone and soon came to the conclusion that that was out of the question. The fees are just too high. Thousands of Euro's per year. So I rethought matters and came back to Ebay. At least, to something related to Ebay: PayPal. PayPal will collect money from everyone and will do it in a friendly way. Plus it has some buyers assurances like money-back on dispute.

While browsing the web and searching PayPal I ran into the PayPal shopping system. Now, this was the solution I was looking for. A flexible shopping concept with minimal investing in money and new skills.

PayPal buttons

PayPal offer a unique webshop concept:

  1. You need a PayPal account in the first place
  2. Log in, goto 'My Account' -> Profile
  3. Press 'Create button'
  4. Follow the guide lines to make the button of your desire
  5. Copy the generated HTML code to your webpage
  6. Create a 'My shopping cart' button and paste it to the webpage as well
  7. Done
PayPal store the information you enter on their local server (where-ever that is) and assign a button number to your "Buy now" button. If the button is pressed, some action is taken via the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and your shopping cart is filled in, Los Angelos (or Moscow, or anywhere else the PayPal server is located).
You just follow the buttons to choose between 'continue shopping' or 'goto checkout'. Your website does nothing. All the work is done in a remote place on a secure server, until the deal is concluded (either by a finished transaction or by an emptied basket.

If the customer enters materials in his basket, shuts down his browser and a few days laters checks back, his basket still contains the things he collected last time... With zero coding overhead on your side.

Create a button, step 1


I assume you have a PayPal account and are logged in to it.

You get something on screen resembling the picture on the left. Click on the 'Profile' link. You end up with something resembling the picture on the right.

Now click on 'Create button' or 'My saved buttons', depending on whether you already have stored buttons or not.

Create a button, step 2

Now, this is a large screen, but filling in is easy, keep that in mind.

First choose what kind of payment this is. Just click the drop down list and choose from the following options:

Depending on your choice, the rest of the page is built up to suit it. We will cater with 'Products' only here.

Now enter an item name, for example, when selling an item called 'PLX-1298 v2' just enter this very text in the text box. This will serve as the name of the button, nothing else. Customers will never see this name.

Next, enter the amount of money you want to receive from your customer. The price should be without sales taxes (in Europe: VAT, BTW, MwSt). You will set the VAT rate in another section.

Determine if you need either of

or customize the appearance. Play with these options until you see what they do. PayPal are very graphic.

I always leave the 'Shipping charges' open. One of my products is 'Ship this item in a box with tracking'.

Fill in the tax preference and keep it secure: do not publish your paypal identity.

Done.

Just click the button called 'Create Button'.


What it looks like

And this is what you get when the button is created. Just select the text and copy/paste it into your HTML source. Below is an example for a button code.

The code ONLY contains the internal PayPal button serial number, which I obscured for obvious reasons.


Source code for a button

Here is the source code for the button, created by the PayPal wizzard. As you see, this is pure HTML and does not contain ANY information about price or commodity. 

<form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="56***634">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_cart_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" 
 alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>
The customer gets this source code in his browser. And he cannot change a bit about it. He could change the button ID number, but that would just mean that he might be ending up buying a used nuclear warhead, instead of the 'PLX-1298 v2' you intended to sell him.

On the other hand, I assume PayPal have built a CRC checksum in each button code so changing one or two digits will most probably end up with an invalid button code.

Page created on 23 May 2009 and

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