PayPal

Introduction

Although PhD Interactive Ltd does not provide eCommerce facilities directly, several clients have done this very effectively using PayPal. An account is created in PayPal, and then instructions are placed into your webpages which cause payment buttons to be displayed. The payments are handled securely by PayPal and funds accumulate in a PayPal account which you can transfer when you wish to your bank.

This facility allows you to have single payments, full shopping basket and even periodic scheduled subscription payments.

The notes below provide some guidance on how to do this, however please understand that as this service is provided by PayPal, not by PhD Interactive, it is not something we offer support on.

Setting Up

1. Go to www.paypal.com and create a free account – Choose “Business Account”. You'll be asked how you'd like to get paid as part of the account setup - tick the "On your website" box...


 

2. Once logged in with your account, you'll see a menu at the top of your page, including the option you want - "Tools". 

3. Click this option and scroll down to the "PayPal Buttons" option. Click this:-

4. The screen that comes up will probably look something like this - you may need to click "Create a New Button" to see this screen :-

There are quite a few options available, so choose what you want on this screen, and at the bottom click "Create Button". It will automatically generate a box containing the HTML code you need for your button, something like this:-

Using the Paypal instructions on this page, copy and paste this code into your website where you would like the button to go, making sure that it's in its own Storyboard Paragraph. If you're not familiar with adding new Storyboard Paragraphs, our guide to the Paragraph Control Tool shows you the way.

The final simple step is to insert <span></span> at the start as below...

as per the advice in our guide Adding Code To Your Website. 

That’s it, visit the PayPal help section for answers to your questions

Examples

Here are some examples:

• www.karenneale.co.uk An artist selling prints online
• www.sandranathancounselling.co.uk a counsellor, with PayPal options

Caution

Please note that you will need to read up on your legal responsibilities when selling services online and taking online payment. Unfortunately, we are not able to advise on these, however you could start by visiting http://www.businesslink.gov.uk . If you do a search on this site for "online and distance selling" there is a section which has information about the rules.