Paypal and order emails

[smiffy]

I've recently begun to offer PayPal as a payment method on a couple of my sites. What seems to be happening is that the order confirmation email is not being sent.

I suspect that this is because the customer is not clicking the return to site button within the PayPal screens.

Presumably this will also be affecting the google stats too as the receipt page is not being displayed.

Is there anything I can do about this? Can the email be sent before the payment is received?

[Bruce]

Gary,

You will have to make the 'return to merchant website' link more prominent as clicking on the 'Done' button on the receipt page is required for the email to be sent.

Kind regards,

[TraceyHand]

I've recently begun to offer PayPal as a payment method on a couple of my sites. What seems to be happening is that the order confirmation email is not being sent.

I suspect that this is because the customer is not clicking the return to site button within the PayPal screens.

This is quite common actually.
95% of my Paypal orders don't get an Actinic email (and I don't get a copy) probably for that same exact reason.

Bruce..where do we edit the "return to merchant" bit?

[Bruce]

You should be able to edit that bit on your PayPal merchant area.

Kind regards,

[Bob Isaac]

I have the same issue so I contacted PayPal to see if they would change the 'insignificant' looking link to a 'Continue' button, or something more meaningful. I got this back

The verbiage of this link can be changed but the size location or type of link cannot be. The variable to change this is "cbt" and should have a value set tot the verbiage you would like to change the link into. However, the link you mentioned is designed to be used for dynamic thank you pages and is not the best choice for receiving information back for some of the same reasons you have mentioned.

When receiving information back through PayPal standard your best option would be to use IPN instead of the return or PDT which is what it appears to currently use. You may also want to consider using APIs instead however integrating this can be more difficult. Here is some more information on IPN though that may help:

IPN allows the seller to integrate PayPal payments with their back-end operations, so that they can receive immediate notification and authentication of any PayPal payments and disputes they may receive. When a customer sends a payment to the seller, PayPal will post a notification to the seller's server at a URL they specify. Included in this notification will be all of the customer's payment information (e.g. customer name, amount). When the seller's server receives a notification, it will post the information back to a secure PayPal URL. PayPal will authenticate the transaction and send confirmation of its validity back to the seller's server. When the information is received and the order validated the script can use this information to automate a webpage or update a database that is recording/tracking the payment information

To activate IPN, seller will need to enter the URL to receive the notification in their profile. Business and Premier sellers will also be notified when a chargeback or dispute has been filed.

The problem I have is that the PayPal account is used by two Actinic sites. If ProtX can make this work why can't PayPal.

Bob