Posted by WooCommerce > Settings > Payments
This is the part where we deal with payment. We’re going to be using PayPal as our payment method for our store. Other options are available and can be easily configured with additional plugins.
If you haven’t already set up a PayPal account do this now. If you’d like walking through the process check out our handy guide to getting started with PayPal, although it’s pretty straightforward.
Let’s have a look at our options on WooCommerce. If you go to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments you will see a number of options provided by default by WooCommerce…
- Direct Bank Transfer – You can use this if you’d like your customers to manually transfer money into your bank account. If some customers really don’t want to use PayPal they can use this to transfer money to you. You may find that some countries (including your valuable customers in Belarus, Iraq, Nigeria and Zimbabwe) cannot use PayPal, so they may wish to transfer money into your account directly.
- Check Payments – This is getting old school now, but customers may wish to pay by cheque. Using this payment method your customers select this option at checkout and then send you a cheque to cash before you send the goods, just like mail order in the 1970’s!
- Cash on Delivery – Are you going to sell goods that are delivered in person? Maybe you’d then consider this an option. Customers select this as an option, you collect the cash on delivery.
- PayPal – The first of two PayPal options. This method uses PayPal but transfers the customers to PayPal to make a payment before returning them to your website after payment is confirmed. A little cumbersome but it works.
- PayPal Checkout – This is the most effective way that PayPal works with WooCommerce and the one that we’re focussing on. The customer can simply make payment using PayPal within your site without being directed to the PayPal website. They don’t need a PayPal account either so it’s pretty much universal.
You may recall that earlier we installed WooCommerce Services as part of our WooCommerce setup. This utilises the WordPress / Jetpack connection within our site to smoothly allow payment processing, including providing us with PayPal Checkout. W simply need to add the correct PayPal email address to our site as shown in the screenshot below.
We can configure the text shown for PayPal if we wish. We can also configure the branding / logos that appear on PayPal payment pages. Should it be necessary you can also ask for customer billing addresses and phone numbers by checking the relevant box.
Sometimes a customer will not have the funds available immediately, so the transaction will take the form of an ‘eCheck’, with funds available later. You can disable this using the Instant Payments checkbox to only allow instant funds.
There’s also the option to experiment with the payment buttons that are displayed as part of the checkout process, with colours, shape and layout available for editing.
Most of these setting will work ‘out of the box’ but you may wish to tweak a few of these to get the layout and process you desire.
WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts & Privacy
OK, let’s look at the Accounts & Privacy tab. This is where we can set when a customer can create a user account, and what happens to a customer’s data on your site.
The first half of the setting page here allows you to edit settings regarding account creation. I’m going to enable the second Guest checkout option, to ‘Allow customers to log in to an existing account during checkout‘. Within the second set of options, Account creation, I’ll be enabling ‘Allow customers to create an account during checkout‘.
For the moment I’m leaving the data retention options as they are for the moment, so I can keep a record online of my user data and transactions. The complete settings for this tab are as follows:
WooCommerce > Settings > Emails
So here is where we can edit the communications that are sent to customers (and admin) as part of the order process. If you don’t wish to change anything here we can leave it as it is and it will work for you with no problems but you may wish to use the opportunity to add further details to the emails that go to your customers. You may wish to add links to your social media channels to encourage sign-up. You may also want to remind your customers about your email mailing list, to allow them to sign up if they haven’t already.
Editing these emails is very straightforward, essentially you simply click on the name of the email you wish to send, such as ‘Processing Order‘, and then edit the fields on the page. You may wish to change the ‘Additional Content‘ field for example. Instead of simply:
Thanks for using {site_address}!
You may wish to change it to:
Thanks for using {site_address}! Your order has been recieved and will be processed immediately.
Whilst your waiting for your order to may wish to visit our Instagram Page or check out our Facebook Page for the latest news from {site_address}.
If you haven't already don't forget to sign-up for our mailing list for special offers and discounts not available anywhere else!
On the main Emails setting page, you can configure the colours used in the emails, as well as including a link to a Header image to match the branding of your company. You also can edit the footer of the email template to also include links to your social media channels.
It’s worth spending the time getting these options set up well as they’ll be the main communication with your customers after they’ve ordered and will be fundamental in how your customers assess your brand. It may make the difference for future repeat purchases, recommendations to others and reviews.
