[Easy Guide] How To Create a PAYPAL Button and Replace it with Your Order Button

Hey warriors!

i know some people may use paypal to take payment and be fully conversant with how to set up a paypal button.

But here's an easy to follow guide for those that don't know how.

First of all you need to logon to your paypal account or create one if you've not already got one.

Then on your 'home' page, click on the 'merchant services' tab.
On the screen that tab takes you to you will see a written called 'Tools for existing Paypal Merchants'.

You will see,under this 'Tools for existing Paypal Merchants',four icons,
"Buy Now Button","Add to Cart Button","Send Invoice" and "Virtual Button".

Now you have to click on the first icon "Buy Now Button" and are ready to create your first paypal button.

Now,you will see 3 steps.

Step 1

You can then input the name of the item you are selling e.g. Sneakers, and give it an item ID (this is not required and is more suited to when you have multiple items for sale)

You can then set your price and your currency

You can then customise the button (note: Do not add a text field it just confuses the buyer as it leaves them an empty box to fill in with no idea why)

The other two dropdown menu options for customising the button are obvious.

You can then add in your postal costs.
You can then choose a merchant account id to use, and I would recommend adding an email address that is linked to your website e.g. sales@yourwebsite.com inspires more confidence than sales@yahoo.com

Step 2 - Ignore as this is your first button

Step 3 - click on the arrow next to it to open up step 3
In step 3 you can customise the checkout pages that you send your customer to and it is vital to tick the box 'take customers to this URL when they finish checkout' - It is vital you fill in this box and tick this option, if not when your customer has paid they will get sent...nowwhere!

The other options in step 3 area self explanatory and you may or may not need to tick them as it depends on what you are selling.

Then (drum roll please!) click the "Create Button" at the very bottom of your page and you will be take to the next page where you will be given the paypal code to cut and paste into your website to create your very first paypal button.


How To Replace the Standard Paypal Button with your Own Order Button (you will need an HTML editor,i use Dreamweaver 8)

However you may want to replace the paypal buy now button with an image of your own.To do that you will need to make a small change to the code:

This below is the standard Paypal Button Code(i attach also an image of the paypal code to let you understand better):

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="DT3UCRFTL3CWU">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>

Inside the paypal code is this part below that specifies the image to use:

<input src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" name="submit" alt="PayPal -
The safer, easier way to pay online!" type="image" border="0">

What you need to do is to change the "https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" to the name or URL of your own button. For example myorderbutton.jpg or http:// mydomain.com/myorderbutton.jpg.

Be sure not to change any other part of the code as that could break your order link.

So there you have it your first paypal button customised with your own sales button if you need it.

Hope this helps!
Let me know how it goes,
Devid