Back and forth between PayPal & Zen Cart

I asked a friend of mine to test purchase an item from my shop. She came back with the following issue:-

One thing that seemed odd (but I’ve never used Paypal before) was the fact that after confirming my order and going to paypal, I was returned to Elly Books again had to confirm the order again once or twice before I got the done and dusted screen. Is that right?

Any idea why it does this? Can the process be streamlined?

Many thanks

There are 2 ways to go thru PayPal checkout: either you use the "Check out with PayPal" button from the shopping cart page, which takes you to the PayPal site to select your funding source, and then back to your store to choose shipping method, enter any coupons and calculate taxes, and then finally choose Confirm to get the "done and dusted screen."
Or you use the "Continue to Checkout" button on the shopping cart page, which will ask you to login or create an account, then select shipping, then coupons/taxes and indicate that you wish to pay with PayPal, and then choose Confirm before being redirected to PayPal to ask for all the payment details, and then come back to the "done and dusted screen".

Same number of steps each way. How exactly do you envision "streamlining" it? Which information do you think you can cut out? You need the shipping address to calculate taxes and offer shipping choices. You need to allow entry of coupons if you use them in your store. Your customer has to confirm the payment amount. And they have to do their thing on the Paypal side. Not much to "streamline" there.

Thanks for your explanation, Dr Byte. That makes a lot of sense.

I think it seems a bit daft from the customers point of view in that all the information is already in the shopping cart, then they go off to pay, then they have to come back to Zen Cart for no apparent reason. There are no shipping options, just the one which already shows in the shopping cart and there are no taxes to pay. The delivery address has to be entered, I agree (I think this is done in paypal?).

In other words, when they choose to pay by Paypal, everything bar the delivery address has already been confirmed.

It's a shame they can't just hit "pay with Paypal", pay their money, add their address and it all be done.

But then, if the cart is supposed to work this way, then I'm happy to leave it. I thought it was interesting to read her response. (How has she made it through to 2011 without using Paypal before?)

You can turn off the "PayPal" shortcut button on your shopping cart page if you find that method confusing. It's the "Express Checkout Shortcut Button" in your EC payment module settings in your store's admin.

Thanks again. Good to know.