Times have really changed. It used to be that PayPal lacked a certain credibility. It was often associated with homemade websites, and thought of as the Band-Aid way to get money from customers online when you couldn’t do it the “real” way.
But PayPal is all grown up now, and while PayPal still fits its early niche as a payment option that can be easily adapted for sites (often in the business-to-consumer space) that need a quick e-commerce solution, it also has gained enough credibility to be used as a trusted business-to-business payment method as well.
It’s from that backdrop that we can now say that PayPal is a supported payment option on Websites For Printers websites! If you’d like to offer PayPal as a payment method to your customers, here’s how you do it:
Connect PayPal to Your Website
You’ll first need to make sure your website is set up to use the Ecommerce Suite. Once that has been activated, all you need to do is follow these simple steps:
- If you haven’t already done so, set up an account at PayPal.com
- Once you have a PayPal account, go to your website’s Control Center and click “My Website” from the top menu
- Next, choose “E-Commerce Settings” from the sidebar menu
- Then, select “Payment Options” from the E-Commerce Settings submenu
- Locate the “PayPal” payment option and click “Add”
- Enter your PayPal merchant email address and click “Update”
If you followed those steps, your PayPal account is connected to your website, and PayPal can be made available as a payment option to customers doing business with you on your website.
Make PayPal a Payment Option
- Next, to activate it as an available payment option, click “Accounts” from the top menu
- Next, choose “Account Settings” from the sidebar menu
- Then, select “Payment Options” from the Account Settings submenu
- Locate the “PayPal” payment option, click the checkbox to activate the PayPal option, and click the green “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page
That’s it…but don’t forget to check your PayPal account now and then so you can watch the money roll in!
Quora.com (a site that provides answers to all kinds of “in the trenches” questions) has an interesting discussion on the topic: Does using PayPal on your website reduce its credibility? On which side of the discussion do you fall? Do you feel PayPal enhances or detracts from your credibility?
