Interesting research on PayPal

[Handster]

We added PayPal payment as an option to our website.
Website sells Windows Mobile software

Before, we used just credit cards processing, using Payflow Pro. With addition of PayPal sales increased by 30%!

Another interesting thing is that when we added "PayPal seal" on every page - sales dropped by 20%.
Just magic - we kept it for a week and whole week sales were 20% lower.
After removing "PayPal seal" sales climbed again to 130% from "before paypal" level.
The reason could be, that people without PayPal account were simply leaving website, when they saw "PayPal seal".

Now thinking about adding "Google checkout" - is it popular among consumers? Anybody has experience, how it can increase sales?

[edited by: bakedjake at 4:00 pm (utc) on Mar. 19, 2009]
[edit reason] no URLs, but welcome to WebmasterWorld [/edit]

[piatkow]

I guess people who don't use paypal think that they will be forced into opening an account.

[sun818]

Maybe you can more clear that you accept credit cards directly. Paypal logo screams "amateur" if other logos are not included such as AuthorizeNet. Anyone can get a Paypal account, but not everyone can get a merchant account.

[MrHard]

Word association for PayPal for me:

PayPal = Cheap, Ebay, fraud, chargeback, account hacks, small, auction, used.

[sun818]

The perception you mention will start to shift as Paypal's growth is driven less by eBay transactions every day. Paypal also bought VeriSign Payflow, so you may not even know that a direct credit card purchase you made was processed by a business unit owned by Paypal.

[MrHard]

That's good for PayPal, but if my business were at stake I would get a legit sounding processor rather then playing martyr.

...unless I had some weird loyalty to them for some reason.

[Essex_boy]

PayPal = Cheap, Ebay, fraud, chargeback, account hacks, small, auction, used.- I agree, do you find that the people who buy through PP also have an auction mentallity when they have a complaint ?

[sun818]

> ...unless I had some weird loyalty to them for some reason.

You can like or dislike Paypal, it doesn't matter to me either way. But please do not discredit using Paypal with as "some weird loyalty". For me, I've lost more money to fraud via direct credit card processing than Paypal. Your experience may vary. I've been accepting PayPal for over 10 years and credit cards for almost as long.

[woop01]

Agreed, Paypal is for amateurs.

Related question...

Does anybody know how I can upgrade my account on Webmasterworld?

;)

[MrHard]

You are probably losing business that never occurred at all by offering PayPal. You should consider not accepting PayPal if you have a real processor.

[sun818]

> You should consider not accepting
> PayPal if you have a real processor.

If you don't accept Paypal, that's just more business for me. Please keep spreading that opinion around. It'll only helps us that accept credit card and Paypal. :) I hope you don't take Paypal either since that is your opinion.

[homeless]

Handster,

I use PayPal, Google Checkout and a CC processor. It won't hurt to add Google. Most of my sales come thru Google. On a per sale basis, Google pull the larger sales.

I believe this is because Google is more like a cc processor (PaymentTech). Whereas PayPal is more like a bank (as it used to be) and many times their customers are looking for a way to spend the money in their accounts.

As you stated, PayPal increased your sales. Google will increase them more. Also, there are customers that will opt for one service over another. More reason to have all 3.

[piatkow]

The original post was not on accepting PP, but on the over emphasis on its availability.

Clearly some people perceive PP as a "good thing" while for others it is a turn off.

Answer: accept PP but don't be so "in your face" about its availability as the ones who don't like it won't look far enough to see a cc alternative. Remember this is all about perception not about what PP and other processers actually do.

[wyweb]

I use PayPal, Google Checkout and a CC processor...

So do I. The more payment options you have, the better your chances for making a sale.

I assumed that went without saying...

[Handster]

thank you for the feedback.
May be I wrote something not quite clear.

1) Adding PayPal increased sales very much. But we kept CC processor, for those without PayPal.

2) Adding "PayPal Seal" on all pages descreased website sales - because people thought paypal is the only option.

Our conclusion: it definitly makes sence to add PayPal as additional option, but better without "PayPal Seal".

[Wlauzon]

..Word association for PayPal for me:
PayPal = Cheap, Ebay, fraud, chargeback, account hacks, small, auction, used...

Our cheap amateur ecommerce site sold $964,000+ in the last 12 months on PayPaly orders. In Feb it passed AMEX and is now #3 for online sales revenue, behind VISA and MC.

In 6 years with PayPal we have only had one chargeback, which we won. For "real" credit cards we average about 3-8 fraudulent chargebacks a year, most of which we lose.

Our average order month to date with PayPal is $175'ish per order. Largest PP order ever was $19,000.

So, while that might be YOUR perception, it certainly is not the perception of most online shoppers.

[pageoneresults]

Agreed, PayPal is for amateurs.

I hate to see these topics. We've had great success with PayPal now for over 5 years and they've continually made improvements in the process. While not the perfect solution for some, it works very well for many.

We use PayPal Pro and the API. If you work through the backend, the sky is the limit.

All it takes it for the OP to mention something bad about PayPal and then everyone comes out of the woodwork to get a few jabs in. Same thing happens to Microsoft topics around here. :)

Agreed, PayPal is for amateurs.

I'm sure WebmasterWorld Staff will appreciate you calling them amateurs along with thousands of other Professional Webmasters who use PayPal.

Agreed, PayPal is for amateurs.

What else you gonna use? Go for it. Do they have PayPal's solid history in online payment processing? How about all the research and development that PayPal have put into their platform? I don't see many taking their payment processing platforms to the level PayPal has and is.

[Bewenched]

Just a side note, but we have used the payflow pro credit card processing for many years now and are NOT happy with it at all .. it used to be Verisign until paypal bought them for their code.. now they are still trying to merge the two sets of software.. we use the api and about 5 out of 100 have errors.. basically the api does not send information back to us that a sale was made, recently we werent able to process any authorizations because they were dittling with the code. We are switching over to Authorize.net for our credit card processing.

We will still accept paypal payments since it does bring in some orders .. maybe 10%.

We also offer google checkout, but it brings in very very little.

[esllou]

there are people in this thread who are leaving money on the table. And they might be happy with that.

<sidles up to table>

"I'll be having that, thank you!"

[pageoneresults]

We will still accept PayPal payments since it does bring in some orders. Maybe 10%.

One of these days I'll do a case study on one of me clients. We started off with the PayPal basics e.g. Add to Cart, Subscribe, etc years ago. We've since morphed into a full blown payment processing machine using 100% PayPal. You take the PayPal API and you build it into your platform. The user doesn't even know that PayPal is processing most of the time.

All of our PayPal transactions come through to us as Direct Pay. We then take the information and do our thing from there. Our Subscription System would make PayPal cry. :) < That's why we went the API route. We have thousands of subscriptions to process and the PayPal sub process wasn't cutting it, sorry to say. Right now I believe we're running at about 99.5% no fail rate. I'm happy with our PayPal experience so far.

Maybe its how you are using it that is causing the challenges?

[walrus]

That is an interseting test. I think most people would view them as a trusted processor and if anything, you need to use a banner or bold text to inform the visitor they dont need a Paypal account.
I actually installed Google Checkout in OScom and then found out it wasnt available in Canada yet. I'm hoping i hav'nt since cut some of the code out, as ive got a bad habit of editing php and not making comments or chopping comments i figure i dont need as i pop in some new code.

[Digmen1]

I have no experience of Paypal (aside from paying for a few things with it).
But I am looking at adding it to my on-line store to cater for overseas sales (we are in New Zealand).
If you read what Wikepedia says about Paypal and who started it and what they do and what they have done, you will surely not think they are amateur !
It looks very easy to set up a cart using Paypal which will be great for me as I am not a webmaster geek.
And I imagine it would be hard to get and set up a cart using say Visa.
Also Paypals fees seem quite reasonable to me.
How do they compare to Credit Card companies ?

[jake66]

Paypal angers me significantly from time to time, but I will not buy from a website if they do not accept it unless I've purchased from them before.

If I do not visibly see a PayPal seal somewhere, I will dig through the FAQ before even adding an item to my cart. I've been buying online since 1998.

With the amount of credit card fraud nowadays, it astounds me how willing people are to give their credit card to any random site.
At least, if the site I buy from via PayPal turns out to be fraudulent, I'm most likely only out of my purchase cost -- they don't have my CC#.

As a buyer, I've only been ripped off via PayPal once. I purchased from a seller off of a trade forum for DVDs (he wasn't a store). He closed his bank account after he got my $10 and a bunch of others'.
Never been stung by a company.

[MrHard]

You take the PayPal API and you build it into your platform. The user doesn't even know that PayPal is processing most of the time.

Many posts in favor of PayPal have mentioned this. I would agree that if the customer does not know it's PayPal there is no negative effect on sales.

Just remove their banner and name from everything and you should be alright. PayPal knew the reputation issue and is fixing it, smart move.

[SmartHID]

Hey guys, i actually just found this forum and topic by searching google for reviews about PayPal's payflow gateway (as im considering it).. However, im not sure its exactly what im looking for. Basically, heres my situation:

- I already have my website set up to accept payments using Authorize, and CartManager as my cart... Everything works fine, but it seems like it takes forever for my merchant to send me my money... For example, lets say i get a few orders, and capture them the same day - i sometimes dont see that money go into my bank account for a week or more! So because of this, ive been thinking of a way to more quickly receive my payments.

Now heres why i thought of PayPal:
I dont carry actual stock of the products i sell. When i get an order, i have the company i buy my products from dropship them directly to my customer. And i use PayPal to place these orders with the company i buy from... So i was trying to find a way to accept credit cards and whatnot on my website, and have the money drop directly into my paypal account instead of my bank account - that way, i could simply collect my payments, and send my payments, all from one place: PayPal...

Now, heres where im confused, so please correct me if im wrong... If im using PayFlow, and an order is placed on my website, does the money go into my PayPal account? Or my bank? Because thats what im looking for, is a way to accept credit cards directly from my website just as i do now, but have the money go into my PayPal account instead of my bank account.

Sorry for the long post.
Thanks ahead of time guys! Hope i picked a good place to ask this.

-Bryce

[Handster]

In our case the money from PayFlow go to bank account, not to PayPal account.

But I think you can call them and merge accounts into one. Try calling PayPal support.

//We had historically first PayFlow, then added PayPal. But if you have PayPal, you can also just use PayPal API to process credit cards on website.

[SmartHID]

What do you mean by "our" case? Ive heard that its different in the UK and USA, but im also getting mixed answers about Payflow and/or Web Payments from PayPal... I live in the USA, and i want a service that allows me to accept credit cards on my website (just as i would using Authorize), only instead of the money going into my bank account, i want it to drop directly into my paypal account.. And i dont want it to just forward the customer to paypal to make payment - i want the entire checkout process to look just like it would using a regular merchant like Authorize.

So with all that in mind, (and keeping in mind that i live in the USA), which service do i need?

[TowerOfPower]

If you don't want the customer to leave your site in the payment process then you use PayPal Pro with the Direct Payment API...
[paypal.com...]

The funds go into your PayPal account.

[edited by: TowerOfPower at 2:29 pm (utc) on April 24, 2009]

[SmartHID]

Ok, so i went to that link you sent me, and it all sounds like what i want.. But im a bit confused.. Do i need to use express checkout, or website payments pro? It wasnt exactly clear as to what services i need to use or subscibe to.. Can you give me a more detailed rundown on exactly what i need to do? (EG: Subscribe to what? Implement what? How to implement this API? What services do i need?)... Thanks! Youre a big help!

[SmartHID]

PS. Im reading the integration instructions page, and the "express checkout" flow page, and it sounds to me like the buyer would need a paypal account to checkout... Am i wrong?

I want to be able to just accept credit cards and have it drop into my paypal account - not accept from the buyers paypal account. So put bluntly, i DO NOT want the buyer to need a paypal account...

So is this still what i want? Or what DO i want?

Thanks!