Yahoo! Store March ‘07 Release: Payment Center, PayPal Website Payments Pro and Other New Features

March 22, 2007 | In News & Announcements |

Just a brief post to announce some new features and changes we will be rolling out late tomorrow night (3/22/07 PDT) to improve payment processing setup and management. Since some of these changes will happen automatically when you publish your order settings, I recommend that you preview these changes in Checkout Manager (for merchants on the latest version of checkout) prior to publishing your order settings. Here is a list of new features and changes:

  • PayPal Checkout Button: For merchants with PayPal Express Checkout enabled, PayPal has updated the PayPal checkout button appearing on the cart page. You can preview the change in Checkout Manager and you will need to publish your order settings to get the new button in your checkout pages. Learn more.


Figure 1: Shopping cart page showing new PayPal checkout button.

  • PayPal Website Payments Pro: Yahoo! Store now supports PayPal Website Payments Pro to use as a merchant account for online credit card processing and manual transactions. Merchants can sign up for or set up an existing PayPal account from the Payment Center. Learn more.
  • Payment Center: The Pay Methods section has been replaced by the Payment Center which provides a simplified more intuitive interface for displaying the payment processors, any associated card types, and the payment options currently displayed.
    • Reordering payment options: you can now choose in which order to display payment options in your checkout pages to put a certain card type at the top of the drop-down list. Learn more.
    • Automatic testing for payment processors and card types: When you set up a new payment processor, we will automatically perform a test authorization for the major card types and show any for which your merchant account is approved.


Figure 2: New Payment Center makes setting up and managing payment processing easier.

  • Checkout Manager
    • Hide the “Other” Billing Address: You can streamline the look of your checkout pages with the ability to hide the “Other” Billing address. Buyers can click to expand this section if specifying a Billing address other than the Shipping address. Learn more.
    • Hide Checkout field without errors when validating input: You can further streamline your checkout with the ability to hide entire sections in checkout that do not contain errors when a buyer misses a required field or enters invalid data into a field. Buyers can then focus only on the remaining fields which need to be corrected. Learn more.

Note: The Checkout Manager features will not be automatically enabled. You must go to Checkout Manager > Advanced Settings to enable these two features.

We would love to get your feedback on these changes and look forward to introducing more features in the upcoming months to make your stores easier to setup, manage, and grow.

Duncan Shen
Yahoo! Small Business

33 Comments »

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  1. Could you add a Check Box Default Value for “Would you like Yahoo! to send you an email asking you to rate this merchant?” Please?

    Thanks

    Comment by bobsc — March 22, 2007 #

  2. Hi Bob,

    That is something we likely would not do. The reason: Yahoo! has very strict policies (for very good reasons) around sending email. If we allowed the default value to be selected, we would be “opting in” buyers to receive an email. These buyers may or may not be aware they were “opting in” to get an email and consider it a violation of their privacy (something an entire group of Yahoos seeks to protect). Buyers would then need to read all fields in checkout and remove the selection to “opt out” of the rating email. So to protect the buyer’s privacy, we make sure buyers must “opt in” to the email by selecting the check box.

    What you can do in checkout is add some text close to the field asking buyers to select the field and rate your business. If you are looking for feedback, you can also create a survey and include the link in your order confirmation emails or set up and provide an email address at which to collect feedback such as feedback @ yourstorehere.com

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 22, 2007 #

  3. Thanks for the opportunity to reorder payment options. However, in our Yahoo! Store, Visa remains the default selection even though American Express is listed first. I thought the item listed first would be the default choice. Is that only available in Merchant Solutions or with new Checkout flow? It would be great to be able to set the default choice with old checkout flow as well. Thanks!

    Comment by Michael — March 23, 2007 #

  4. Question about Paypal… is there a place that really discusses in detail about the pros and cons of paypal for yahoo stores. Several years ago, I remember hearing about how Paypal was more apt to refund the Paypal user during any dispute, making it easy for Merchants to not get paid without a lot of headache. I just want to read up so that I know that if I start accepting Paypal, I’m not taking a huge risk, compared to the benefits of the Visa/Mastercard/AMEX/Discover.. In other words, I would love to take paypal, if they have changed their ways :). Is this discussed in detail somewhere on the yahoo merchant side of things ?

    Comment by Pat — March 23, 2007 #

  5. Michael,

    I will check into your question about reordering of payments in older versions of checkout. This would not be based on merchant package (legacy store vs. Merchant Solutions) but could be available only in Checkout Manager.

    Pat
    Our help has a comparison of PayPal Express Checkout vs. a merchant account, but I have not had any comments on the blog about PayPal to which I can refer you. Don Cole runs a forum for Yahoo! store merchants at Your Store Wizards.com which would likely have some archived threads, or perhaps current discussions, of the merits of PayPal.

    Other info I can refer to you is a case study for a merchant using PayPal available on our site. I cannot speak to the situation you describe without knowing of the particulars. PayPal does offer a Seller Protection policy so seemingly if you followed the requirements for that program you may not have an issue with chargebacks/fraud as without such a program. As with any major business decision, doing your homework, as you appear to be doing, is the wisest approach.

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 23, 2007 #

  6. I’m confused. I went to the new Payment Center and it’s blank. No processors. No payment methods. No nothing. Does this mean I have to start from scratch to put my settings in?

    Comment by Brian — March 23, 2007 #

  7. Brian–I can see payment processors in your Payment Center. Please try accessing again. May have just been a temporary glitch. Shout if you see it again.

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 23, 2007 #

  8. Weird. They weren’t there before. But, now they are there. My center was blank (on two different machines, Mac and PC). Guess it was a temporary glitch. Thanks.

    Comment by Brian — March 23, 2007 #

  9. New PayPal Graphic

    I use the single page checkout. I don’t seem to be able to use the new paypal graphic.

    Thanks,
    John

    Comment by John — March 23, 2007 #

  10. Hi John–
    Good catch. I should have been more specific; I will make sure the help link notes this explicitly. The new PayPal checkout button appears on the cart page, but not for single page checkout which you have. For single page checkout, PayPal appears in the payment methods section without any new graphic.

    Also, here’s a tip for your checkout. You can set the title in the browser bar in Checkout Manager. Your checkout page shows the default “single-page checkout”. It could say something more persuasive to potential buyers such as “Avalon Garden Safe & Secure Checkout–satisfaction guaranteed” or whatever you wish. Go to Checkout Manager > Page Configuration and set the Title field under Page Settings.

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 23, 2007 #

  11. Michael,
    The reordering of payment options in the Payment Center is reflected in checkout for merchants both in Checkout Manager and Order Forms–so reordering works for all. Your question however is slightly different. The options in the drop-down will appear in the order you set in the Payment Center, but there is not a feature at present to set the default selected method.
    That said, Yahoo! does have logic in place to set the selected method to Visa when that option is present based on the fact that Visa is so dominant in the credit card space with over 50% of the market and seemingly double of the next most popular card type, MasterCard. When Visa is not present, the first option in the list will be selected by default from what I can see in my tests.–Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 24, 2007 #

  12. Dear Paul:

    I agree that the header would be better with the text you recommend. The challenge is since I have been using Google Analytics, the conversion information is tied to the page header text. I’ll research this and see if it makes a difference.
    Thanks,
    John
    http://www.avalongarden.com

    Comment by John — March 24, 2007 #

  13. John,
    I am not overly familiar with Google Analytics, but I believe you should be able to redefine your conversion funnel to account for the change. Getting your conversion data is certainly critical and not something to be tinkered with lightly, but seeing as you are using the single-page checkout, you only have one chance (maybe two if Order Review is on) to turn shoppers into buyers by convincing them your site is secure, and trustworthy.

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 24, 2007 #

  14. How can I remove the upper/first PayPal phrase and buttons during checkout (see phrase below in quotes…I use the single-page checkout)? I like it lower on the page (beneath the new ‘OR’ button), but I think it’s confusing to have it in both places.

    “Get Shipping and Billing information from PayPal”

    “Pay with your bank account, credit card or balance without sharing your financial information.”

    “Get PayPal Info”
    ———————-
    I’m very excited that you now offer Payments Pro…any chance for Google Checkout in the future :)

    Thx

    Matt

    Comment by Matt Jones — March 25, 2007 #

  15. Hi Paul,

    We are using the same Paypal account for multiple Yahoo stores. Even though we use a unique email address for each individual store when we set up the Paypal account in Yahoo store, the Paypal transaction still defaults to the primary email address used in our business Paypal account. This means it is not possible to run reports for each website/unique email address in Paypal to obtain sales information. This makes reporting Paypal transactions very difficult on our end (next to impossible). For this reason, we are going to remove the Paypal option from our sites (except one) unless we find a solution for this problem. Does the recent enhancement (PayPal Website Payments Pro) make it possible to pass in a unique email address in Paypal and actually be able to report on the sales?

    Ideally, we would like to pass an item name, which would be the URL for each site (like http://www. joggingstroller. com is currently doing). Our parent company would then be listed at the top of the page.

    Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide on this matter.

    Regards,
    Randy

    Comment by Randy — March 25, 2007 #

  16. The Cancel button on Single-Page Checkout is still dysfunctional.

    Comment by Rick — March 25, 2007 #

  17. When “Enable PayPal above Shipping” is selected there is a button that says: “Go to Paypal”. Why does it not show when I have PayPal enabled in Payment Methods?

    This web site’s checkout shows PayPal graphic (with button) located in Payment Methods. Try an order: http://hq4sports.com/louisville-slug…tball-bat.html Why can I not show the button (Go to PayPal) instead of the text: “Click continue to pay with PayPal”? If a customer just wants info about PayPal, the button is much better, but I do not want it located at the top of the page.

    Comment by Irene — March 25, 2007 #

  18. Matt–
    You should be able to turn off PayPal appearing above the Shipping/Billing section in Checkout Manager. Go to Checkout Manager > Page Configuration and clear the check box for Display PayPal above Shipping/Billing. Then publish your order settings. You can also use CSS to hide anything that has a unique ID or class. Glad to hear you like PayPal Website Payments Pro. Google Checkout is not on our road map.

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 25, 2007 #

  19. Randy,
    I’m going to pass along your question to Duncan who was the product manager for the PayPal release. I’m not sure if what you describe is a constraint of our implementation (don’t think so) or a constraint at PayPal or something that can be configured at PayPal.
    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 25, 2007 #

  20. Irene,
    Your site (very nice by the way) and the other site you mention are not using the same checkout flow. Your site uses single-page checkout with the Order Review shown. The site you referenced has multi-page (cart, combined shipping and billing) with Order Review hidden. The Go to PayPal button for the payment method section is available on sites where the Order Review is hidden since buyers using that method must go to PayPal and return to the same page before checkout. When Order Review is shown, buyers can just click “continue” and with the PayPal option selected they will go to PayPal and be returned to the Order Review page before completing checkout.
    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 25, 2007 #

  21. Paul, thank you for the compliment, and thank you for the explanation. I just wanted customers to know they could open a PayPal account from our checkout if they did not have one.

    Irene

    Comment by Irene — March 26, 2007 #

  22. Hi Paul,

    I was very excited to hear about the PayPal Payments Pro integration and started using it immediately. However, I am experiencing some problems: all the orders that I have received through PayPal Payments Pro are Ineligible for the PayPal Seller Protection Policy. The reason? Every transaction in PayPal says that the Shipping Address was not entered so that they could not verify it. However, the shipping address was indeed entered in every case (as it is a requirement in the Yahoo Store Checkout), and the transaction details in my Store Manager show no problems with the cards authorization. I just called PayPal about this and they said to contact Yahoo because it seems that the shipping address is not going through for some reason. Could you guys check into this? I wonder if I am the only one experiencing this problem. In the meantime I will unable PayPal Pro in my store because I am getting No protection at all if someone decides to file a chargeback.

    Thank you so much,

    Liliana

    Comment by Liliana — March 26, 2007 #

  23. Liliana–I think there may be some confusion between the names of the PayPal products. PayPal Express Checkout offers the ability to pay through PayPal (or with a credit card at PayPal with PayPal Account Optional). PayPal Website Payments Pro functions the same as a merchant account and buyers checkout entirely on your website. PayPal Seller Protection only applies to PayPal Express Checkout and you can decide whether or not you allow buyers to provide a shipping address other than the confirmed address for PayPal. If you are seeing something other than what is outlined above, please contact our customer care group to investigate this issue.
    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 27, 2007 #

  24. Randy,
    It appears that the issue you describe is not a constraint with our implementation, but rather a constraint of PayPal. To get around the issue you would need to create multiple PayPal accounts and use a unique one for each store. Only this approach will give you the ability to get reports on a per store basis as PayPal does not currently have the ability to manage multiple stores within a single account.

    That said, there are many Yahoo! merchants with multiple stores that are in your exact situation. We will work with PayPal to see if there are any workarounds that can allow for a single account but with unique reporting for individual stores.
    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 27, 2007 #

  25. Hi Paul,

    Thank you for the information. I contacted Paypal, but unfortunately I cannot use the same bank account for multiple Paypal accounts. I am curious to know how other stores such as http://www. joggingstroller .com get around this problem. It appears they may pass the URL for the store for the “item_name” value in Paypal, but I am not 100% sure. Is it possible to pass a value for this variable in Yahoo store?

    One other item worth mentioning is that you can filter by secondary email addresses in Paypal, but all Yahoo Store transactions default to the primary email address for our business account, which makes the filter completely useless. This is where I am wandering if there is anything Yahoo can do in terms of passing in the secondary email address, so we can filter by secondary email addresses in Paypal.

    Thanks again for your assistance. I really appreciate it.

    Regards,
    Randy

    Comment by Randy — March 29, 2007 #

  26. Hi Randy,

    I don’t know the specifics around the API calls we are using and which may be available with our implementation with PayPal. The site you mentioned is not on our platform and is not using PayPal Express Checkout because you actually finish the order completely and then go to PayPal to pay. Presumably though if this ability exists on PayPal’s side, then we would just need to make sure our calls to PayPal include this info. I will pass your comments (including using the secondary email address) along to the product manager that ran this project so he can follow up with PayPal on these enhancements. Thanks for the feedback–let’s us know how we can keep improving the product to solve real problems for merchants.

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — March 29, 2007 #

  27. Hi,
    I signed up for paypal pro after I published my store and had paypal express as my choice. I selected paypal pro, but the rep at paypal told me that I would now have the option to not have the pay pal logo even appear in my check out process.
    I checked, and it is still appearing there.

    How do I remove it? I am giving customers the option to use pay pal, but I want it to remain hidden (as the paypal rep told it me would be) if they just elect to check out and stay on my site.

    Thanks in advance for any advice!

    Comment by Beth — October 18, 2007 #

  28. Beth–You will need to change the display setting as this cannot be done from the PayPal side. To hide PayPal Express checkout, go to the Payment Center under Order Processing, select PayPal Express and click edit, and then choose the “none” option for Display in Checkout and click OK. After publishing your order settings, PayPal Express Checkout buttons should not be displayed in checkout.

    Paul

    Comment by pboisver — October 18, 2007 #

  29. We wanted to hide paypal payment button from shopping cart page only so we selected “none” from the pay center paypal express checkout settings. Now we want to show it as a payment option in all other pages except shopping cart page but when we go in Checkout Manager > Page Configuration we do not see paypal option to display there. Please suggest!

    Comment by Shubie — November 14, 2007 #

  30. Shubie,

    There is a way to control this. Select the All radio button instead for Display Options in the Payment Center, and then within Checkout Manager > Page Configuration in the Shopping Cart tab, remove the check mark for enable shopper to pay with PayPal. Then save and publish your order settings.

    Paul

    Comment by pboisver — November 14, 2007 #

  31. Hi Paul,

    Thanks, it worked!

    :) Shubie

    Comment by Shubie — November 14, 2007 #

  32. Hi Paul,

    How do we change the paypal button in billing/shipping page to our own paypal button?

    Thanks, I appreciate your help!

    Comment by Shubie — November 15, 2007 #

  33. Shubie,

    Checkout Manager does not have a feature for changing the PayPal button. This is a matter or branding for PayPal so not something that can be switched through Checkout Manager.

    Paul

    Comment by Administrator — November 15, 2007 #

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