How to Add a 2014 PayPal Buy Now Button to WordPress (How-to Video)

Add a PayPal Buy Now Button to Your Website

Welcome to this video lesson, ‘How To Add A Paypal Buy Now Button To WordPress’.

In this video I’m going to show you how to create a PayPal Buy Now button in less than 5 minutes.

Once we have the button code from PayPal I’ll show you a very simple way of pasting it into your WordPress website.

Before you begin to create a buy now button you will need a PayPal Business or Premier account. As these accounts are FREE that shouldn’t pose any problems. If you’ve sold anything on eBay then you already have the necessary account.

 

 

So, once you have your account, login and navigate to, Merchant Services, on the top menu bar. Click on it and the Merchant Services page will appear.

Before we begin let me warn you. PayPal are continually changing their screen layouts so if the screen you see when you login is different to the ones you see here, don’t worry about it, the information is still valid.

As you can see on their (current) merchant page, PayPals payment methods are quite comprehensive and should suit most business. You can:

• Create payment buttons for your website.
• Connect PayPal to your shopping cart.
• Send invoices online.
• They also have a new app. Which allows you to accept card payment anywhere using a card reader.

As we will be creating a payment button for a website, when you’ve finished exploring, click the Buy Now button.

Scroll down the page to, Step1: Choosing a button type, and click the, Create a Buy Now Button link. This will open the, Create a PayPal payment button, page.

In the, Choose a button type, drop down menu you can select sevel button types such as, Shopping cart, Donations, Gift certificates, Subscriptions, etc. But in this case we just want the Buy Now, botton.

• For an explanation of the button types just click on the, Which button should I choose?, link.

For this example I’m going to sell the book, Call Apple In Depth, all about Applewriter IIe by Don Lancaster. This is just one of several old books I have from my days with the Apple IIe computer. But of course you can sell anything.

So in the, Item name field, enter the item name, Call Apple In Depth, all about Applewriter IIe by Don Lancaster, in this case. You can also give an, Item ID, number if you wish to make tracking easier, but this is optional, so I’m not going to bother.

If you have a single fixed price then go ahead and enter a price in the, Price field, and make sure the correct currency is selected.

If you need a multiple price structure then leave this field blank and click the, Add drop-down menu with prices and options, Selection box. You would use this option if you were selling items with selection permutations, for example, shirts. They could be white, red, green, etc. or different sizes. Just enter a title for the drop down menu, followed by your option parameters and prices. Again don’t forget to select the correct currency.

Click the, Done button when your finished.

You can see your customers view of the menu in the panel on the right.

I’m just selling the one item so the multiple option isn’t required.

Next enter any shipping charges in the box provided.

To accept payments, if you don’t have a PayPal Merchant Account, just use your PayPal primary email address.

Step 2: Tracking Inventory, profit and loss is optional and we will not be using it. This is where you would track your items if you provided an, Item ID number with your Item name.

Step 3: Customise advanced features, is also optional, but does have a few nice features we can use.

You can let your customers order more than one item and lets face it, why wouldn’t you want to do this.

You can allow your customers to send you special instructions.

And of course you want your customers shipping adress.

The next two fields are quite important, don’t forget them. These fields give you the opportunity to continue interacting with your customer.

In the first field enter a URL for the page you want the customer to go to if they decide to cancel their order. Sending them back to the home or sales page would be a good idea!

In the second field enter a URL for the page you want the customer to go to after they have placed their order.

• This could be a thank you page, an acknoledgement page or simply back to the sales page to let them continue shopping.
• If you were selling a downloadable digital product then this would be the page where they can either download the product or get details on how to download the product.

In this exercise we can forget about the advanced variables. If you want to know more about this just click the, Learn more, link.

With your entrys made, just click the, Create Button. This will take you to the next page where you can see the button code ready for pasting onto your website.

There are two sets of code to choose from, your website code and an email code, both of which can be encrypted to prevent fraudulant use.

We’re only interested in the website code, so select and copy the code to the clipboard. You can press the Ctrl+C key to copy the code.

Now you obviously need a page or post where you can paste the code so for this demonstration I’ve prepared a test page where I can paste the PayPal button code.

This would normally be your sales or squeeze page containing some pictures and a discription of the item for sale.

Notice I’ve placed a text marker, ‘—– INSERT PAYPAL BUTTON’ where I want the button to appear. This will help me locate the button code placement in HTML view.

So, I’m ready to insert the PayPal code. As I said, this has to be done in the HTML view. If you try pasting it into the page in the Visual view all of the special characters in the code will be lost and the code will simply not work.

Switch to HTML view and find the text marker, delete the marker and paste the PayPal code. This is where the button will appear.

If we switch back to the visual view, we should see our PayPal button, and there it is.

Lets save the page, and preview the results in the browser. And there’s our, Buy Now, button.

If we click the button, we will be redirected to PayPal where we will be presented with our order form.

Changing the quantity and clicking the, Update, link will test the operation of the form form for us.

And there it is. The form has been updated and is working as expected.

If a customer has a PayPal account they would simply enter their details on the right or if they don’t have a PayPal account they would click the, Don’t have a PayPal account?, link and be presented with the alternate payment method page (credit/debit cards).

• Before you begin to create a buy now button you will need a PayPal Business or Premier account. As these accounts are FREE that shouldn’t pose any problems.

• If you need information on the best online payment systems, payment processor and payment gateways then click here.