Which PayPal system to use?

Hi –

So, I'm ready (finally) to tackle payment processing. I've read the information about the various choices of PayPal services. Now I'm trying to decide whether Standard or Express would result in a better user experience for my customers.

My site is a bit unusual in the respect that I've modified step 2 of the checkout process. Depending on the shipping method, I may automatically apply an insurance cost to the order. If I use Express (which gets invoked in step 1), I don't see this working correctly.

Any opinions or ideas on this? Before I get to debugging, I figure I should first choose the PayPal method that's best for me.

Thanks.

Express is going to give you completed orders and payments immediately and without relying on waiting for PayPal's servers to postback a background IPN notification to your store which has to get matched up to pending orders before the orders can show in your database. Thus, Express is much more preferable for you as a merchant.

I can see that it's preferable as a merchant. I guess the question is, how objectionable to a user is it going to be to go through PayPal before he knows the exact total of his order? Granted, shipping and insurance isn't a big number, but I can still see some people being reluctant to go through PayPal prior to knowing their total.

I don't suppose there's any way to move the Express PayPal button to step 2 of the checkout process?

One other thing: am I correct in assuming that Express and Website Payments Standard are mutually exclusive? I should have one or the other, but not both, right?

Thanks.

mzimmers:

I don't suppose there's any way to move the Express PayPal button to step 2 of the checkout process?With Express Checkout, PayPal is offered to the customer in 2 places:
a) before giving personal info (ie: shopping cart page and login page)
and
b) on step 2 of checkout, as another option alongside any other options you may have available

Both are required according to PayPal's TOS.

mzimmers:

One other thing: am I correct in assuming that Express and Website Payments Standard are mutually exclusive? I should have one or the other, but not both, right?
It would be pointless to enable both, since "Standard" shows up on the step-2-of-checkout alongside other payment options, just like Express does. Having multiple PayPal options on the same page next to each other just runs the risk of confusion and therefore delays the customer in choosing whether to proceed.
As far as the customer is concerned, their experience will be basically the same regardless which PayPal module is chosen on the checkout_payment page, although Express is a little more efficient in how it can be configured.

OK, I can see that. It looks like it's working correctly now, too. Looks like I'll be using Express.

Thanks for the help.