PayPal has over one hundred MILLION folks that have an account with them, that is a lot of people that wouldn't have to enter all their details. I don't know how many account customers Google Checkout have, probably nothing near that amount.

I guess it comes down to folks feel safer dealing with a known payment provider and entering the details on the payment providers site, rather than on a small unkown site. I'd certainly never enter my CC details directly on someone's site, unless they were a mainstream enterprise. At least mainstream operations have security protocols in place, including who has access to those details and how it is stored. A lot of folks are also paranoid about identity theft nowadays and with some sites even requiring DOB's to process non age related orders, it's hardly any surprise potential customers vacate the cart..

Even though my current carts have shipping estimators built in, I would say that the majority of ecommerce offerings don't offer that facility. Well certainly not 'out of the box' anyway.

I have always liked the USPS shipping module. You enter product weights and the module calculates the rate based on shipping method chosen. Very simple to use. Is there a comparable solution in the UK?

The weight based shipping module in the pro version can be user defined to work with any shipping system, anywhere in the world. Most shipping usually works on own county, countries nearby and countries further afield. For the UK that equates to UK destinations, Europe and outside Europe.

Some of the smaller Jiffy bag sized packages can also be influenced by the physical size of the packaging. All you do is ensure that the weight you assign relates to the relevant shipping weight band for that item AND the packaging size. You simply hide the shipping weight from the customer and they get a shipping price for the item they have selected, based on the figures you have put in your shipping charts for the different destinations within that weight band.

I've abandoned dozens of carts because they wouldn't tell me the shipping until I entered my CC details. Nope, that's not how I roll . . .

PayPal came in and occupied the field in the days before it was owned by eBay. I remember when it was free and they gave you $5.00 every time you convinced someone to join up. It was clunky, junky, and not all that secure. But, it was new and slick . . .

That's usually how it works. The company that came in and innovated scooped up all the easy accounts and became ingrained in the system. Everyone else is playing catch up.

The only intelligent business move eBay has made in the last ten years was to snap up PayPal.

In my neck of the woods, however, if a website only accepts PayPal, it is considered amateur. That's why I can't wait to get the new SCC Pro integrated with my new authorize.net account.

Terri

Personally, I don't care if PayPal is the only payment gateway. I prefer to pay using PayPal than using my Visa directly.

I guess I feel the same way Terri feels, a site with PayPal is considered amateur around here also as it's easy to incorporate into any website page. But this brings up a question - what if a customer wants to use PayPal and not his credit card as Tom just said. Can we do that? I am using authorize.net right now and it's hooked into my existing merchant services account but do we have the ability to use both PayPal and authorize.net? If not with Creator, with Creator Pro?

Lynn

Me too. As a buyers I much prefer PayPal.

hiya Lynn,

I'm pretty sure you can set up any and all payment options so your customers can choose to use whichever ones you have available in your cart. Right now that's only a few ways, but a few more will be added with the Pro version and I'm sure they are all usable, don't think you have to choose to go with only one.

A lot of the mainstream sites on the net have now also started to accept PayPal amongst their payment methods, so they must see positive value in doing that. If you have a presence on the net, then your site and its contents will be available anywhere in the world, so there is no 'local area' as such.

I have always used PayPal and never really had any problems with selling my products to an international audience using that method. Some of the other payment processors do not have the global presence of PayPal and are not available to buyers in so many countries.