How much does a crappy external Paypal checkout process hurt sales (vs. native checkout)?

"ghetto Paypal?" Talk about using a word out of context.

Why do you care so much about your friend's business? Get your own stuff together.


And yes, while being redirected to Paypal is annoying, I for one actually trust Paypal more than some random ecommerce site selling whatever, so I prefer being redirected to Paypal because I'm not giving my credit card info to a random website.

That said, Paypal also offers the option of remaining on site during checkout.

As far as "studies" go, you can google for that.

Ha, yes I can see how my OP may have come across as a little bit pompous, and invited the confrontational replies. Short answer is that he asked for my help, and the first thing I pointed out was the shopping cart redirect to an external Paypal page, when that strikes me as an outlier in today's online economy. It's entirely possible, as I acknowledged in the OP, that that isn't a material detriment to conversions. You two offer the perspective that, while perhaps annoying from a UX standpoint, you actually trust the Paypal checkout process moreso than giving your CC info to a 'random' website, certainly a valid consideration. I did do some googling to see if I could find data (one way or the other) on the merits of the native vs. paypal checkout processes, but found nothing and thought it might be a well-understood issue among e-commerce forum members, and hence posted here. (And you're correct that I probably should have used a more 'neutral' thread title and OP explanation, because at the end of the day I prioritize finding good data on the topic over being 'right', even if it points to there being no real conversion drawback -- or heck, even a positive effect for trust reasons you bring up).

I find it hard to believe that using Paypal in any form whether it be via a full integration or via simple processing is going to harm conversions in any way.

My businesses offer multiple payment processing solutions that put through a ton of transactions everyday and although there are solutions that specific market segments prefer I can tell you that many people both individuals and corporates prefer the security for both buyer and seller that Paypal provides.

As for errors and time-out that can occur when you are processing a transaction I find when I check the logs that the lowest errors are generated by Paypal processed transactions.

There are plenty of online merchant facilities that even with integration to secure sites still want to process through their own gateways.

The buyers rarely complain about the processing....

...they do complain however if they have problems and can't process...

...something that is rare when you use Paypal.

Doesn't bother me at all to be redirected to Paypal for payment, nor have I ever received any negative customer feedback for doing the same.