How to Create a PayPal Sandbox Account
July 18, 2008
I’ve been using PayPal for the last couple of years for buying, invoicing and receiving payments from customers. As websites and web site design and development continue to increase PayPal has become the way to accept payment for a lot of businesses, possibly yours as well. It has also become very customizable to meet the growing and changing demands of its customer base to the point where you can customize it in any fashion you’d like. And with this ability comes the PayPal Sandbox account.
What does “Sandbox” mean?
Sandbox refers to a term used in development that allows developers or users to test their PayPal system and greatly customize it. You can see why this is a great idea if you’ve ever tried to test a third party application like PayPal.
Why should I get a PayPal Sandbox Account?
If you work with PayPal, have an ecommerce site that uses PayPal or you are interested in testing PayPal then getting a PayPal Sandbox Account is a good idea because it allows you to test transactions, understand the flow of how a transaction process occurs and figure out difficult bugs with your ecommerce platform.
Where can I get a PayPal Sandbox account?
You can get a PayPal Sandbox account by clicking here…
With more then 100,000,000 people using PayPal it makes sense that businesses want to offer this as a payment option to their customers and as a way to run their business.
Luc
Using Google’s Website Optimizer for the First Time
July 11, 2008
I must say that I am an avid lover of Google’s tools from Google Analytics to Google Trends and even iGoogle. Recently I had a chance to play around with Google’s Website Optimizer tool which allows you to run “experiments” on your website to see which page has a higher conversion rate and then you have more “actionable” data to base your company’s decision making on rather then just guessing blindly in the dark.
In order to use Google Website Optimizer you will need to first sign up for an account by clicking here (http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer). Once you login you your Google Website Optimizer account you will see that you have the option of running an A/B Split test or a Multivariate Testing on your web site or landing page. For those of you who are unsure of what A/B split testing is please read the article.
How do I create an experiment using Google’s Website Optimizer?
- Login to Google Website Optimizer
- Click on the “Create another Experiment” link
- Select the option of creating an A/B Experiment or a Multivariate Experiment (The difference as Google defines it is that A/B Experiments are for few then 1000 views a week and Multivariate Experiments are for web pages that receive greater than 1000 views per week)
- For the purposes of this article we select “A/B Experiment” and click the “create >>” button
- Click the check box on the A/B Experiment Checklist and click continue once you have everything mentioned on that list ready to go (The page you want to test, created alternate versions of the page and identify the conversion page)
- On this next page you will need to name your experiment, Identify the original and variation web page URL s and enter the URL for the conversion web page and click “Continue >>” button at the bottom of the page.
- Lastly you will need to add the JavaScript code to the pages (Original web page, Variation web page and Conversion web page) and click “Preview” to see how your experiment will look like when it runs.
Google’s Website Optimizer is an awesome tool in providing actionable information about the design of a web page and how visitors user it. I hope you enjoyed the article as it has been a little while since i’ve written on the PureWebAnalytics blog.
Luc
New “Our Work” section on PureWebAnalytics.com
June 7, 2008
I decided it was about time to showcase some of the work that we do at PureWebAnalytics.com so I added an “Our Work” section to the site. Lately I’ve been simplifying the look and feel of PureWebAnalytics.com to avoid any confusion that people may have in coming to the site but with that being said showcasing some of the projects we’ve been working was one of those things at the top of my to do list for a while now and now it’s up and available, finally! It’s a pretty important feature to the site and it will be updated in the coming months as we become involved in more websites so stay tuned for more updates. Well it’s time to get back to work!
Luc Arnold
President of PureWebAnalytics.com
Web Usability Project: cTravel Flight Booking On-page Optimization
May 23, 2008
The Problem:
The problem faced in this project is that the Flight Booking form would redirect to the booking software page and not allow the use to stay on the company’s website
The Solution:
We created a pop-up so that when the “search flights” button is clicked by the user the user is able to use the booking software and continue to use the flight booking tool.
Top 10 Reasons Why Customers Abandon Their Shopping Carts
May 13, 2008
I wrote a brief article about Multi-page checkouts versus Single or “One Page” checkouts the other day and I wanted to follow-up with some reasons that people such as the customers and potential customers on your websites right now abandon their shopping carts. It is probably the biggest problem faced by anyone running an e-commerce based company today. So what factors affect people from spending on your web site? Well…
- Cost of shipping too high and not shown until checkout
- Changed mind and discarded cart contents
- Comparison shopping or browsing
- Total cost of items is too high
- Saving items for later purchase
- Checkout process is too long
- Out of stock products at checkout time
- Checkout requires too much personal information
- Poor site navigation and long download times
- Lack of sufficient product or contact information
Source: SurveyPro
As you can see “Time is Money” as I stated in my original article and overall success in e-commerce weighs heavily on the cost of purchasing and the time in which is takes to do it. Just something to think about if you run an ecommerce business
Luc
