Alright, I got my Paypal shopping cart set up and working, now I'd like to be able to add discount coupons.
I know I can simply implement the 'discount_amount_cart' variable in my form, but I'm still a little lost when it comes to handling the deactivation of a coupon code.
Let's say A activates the code. Now in my database it will be marked as 'reserved', meaning no one else can use it. Once A completes his transaction, the IPN will mark the code as 'used' and it becomes useless.
But what if A decides to activate the code, but never actually buys anything on my website?
I'm using the $_SESSION variable to save my shopping cart, so once the user returns to my website, the code might still be shown as activated for him. When exactly would I mark it back as 'not reserved & not used' in my database?
I could do this based on time, but this doesn't really feel safe either. Let's say the user puts everything into his basket, goes to Paypal, waits for an hour and then decides to finish his checkout. The discount would still be activated, but in the meantime, it could've already been 'unreserved' in the database and used by another person!?
How would I go about this?
Thanks in advance!
IMHO, this has little to do with PayPal and more about your business rules. If your coupon is single use (globally), then you will be faced with the same issue regardless of any payment flow.
Simply putting it in "cart" and/or any event where a user "activates" said coupon, then just navigating elsewhere in your site, doesn't do anything, [whatever], creates that lag
it could be Paypal, Amazon, your own gateway - it really doesn't matter...but there will be a lag between activation and payment (beyond your control)
I think it's just best to be explicit with your customers and handle it appropriately technically (based on what that explicit messaging is).
You'll see some implementation of "timed purchase" at ticketing sites (e.g. buying a ticket to a game, movie, etc.) - they will have a "timer" for the user to do something (otherwise, the "reservation" is lost).
Hth...
Put an expiry date on coupon use - such as must be used within 10 days of activation. It gives the user urgency to use the coupon and gives you a timeframe to invalidate it.
Related
I asked this question directly to the Google Analytics community with absolutely no answer.
The question is as follow:
I have a AI based site, which give a customer a specific aid to select the right product he/she want to buy. The front ed application is React/js based.
My site is usually a small icon on a merchant site, and the user, while he/she is navigating the merchant site, can decide to recall clicking on a specific icon.
Then my site opens and help the user to select the right product(s) belonging to the merchant site. The product are choosen and then clicked to be added to the merchant cart.
Of course, there is a written agreement between the merchant and I to be signed, and some changes to the merchant site to incorporate my clickable icon: I'd like to pass a piece of code to the merchant including the icon and all the code needed to implement this kind of application.
So, given that the merchant call my site passing a specific transaction related token and the customer info (if any) when the user click on my icon, how can I:
directly add one or more items into the merchant cart
track the action made by the user after he/she leave me site and return to the merchant one to conclude the journey with a payment, so I can later invoice the merchant for the right commission
track if the user remove some (or all the) item from the cart, so I have less to nothing commissions to invoice.
I tried to follow the instruction given by google, but they are a mess, and I wasn't able to reach any conclusion.
Any help will be really appreciated.
Adding items to the merchant's cart is possible using some live API that the client would extend, but the easiest way to do it would be just using the window.postMessage(). So, I would suggest having your button implemented as a simple iframe. That will make it possible for you to send messages to the parent page from that button. The parent page, however, has to be ready to listen to those messages and add to cart whatever ids you specify. So the client devs will have to do some implementation for this to work.
Well, no, this is a bit too much to ask for. You can ask the merchant to share that data with you so that you could improve your algos (tune them for the client) and, therefore, improve the merchant's conversion rates (which is a win-win scenario), but the merchant would have to actively either implement parallel tracking to your instance of analytics (install your pixel, if you're willing to develop one), or share their own data with you.
That's what a lot of very similar services do. Let's say, Facebook. Facebook sells traffic. When you buy traffic, you generally don't want to pay for irrelevant/badly converting tracking, so you're implementing so-called facebook pixel. Facebook doesn't do this implementation. Client's developers/implementation experts implement it and trigger various events through it, making it send signals to the FB endoint, indicating which client this is from, for which campaign, what the action is page load, purchase, add to cart... Just take a quick glance at FB documentation: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/402791146561655?id=1205376682832142
Facebook is just an example. There are many-many services that do similar pixels. It may be not about selling traffic, it may be about adjusting site look and feel based on AI, or generating discounts and customizing conversion funnels, or even simpler stuff like feedback chat performance and suggestions modules. All these and more exist as third parties and pretty much all of the established ones use pixels for tracking.
If you don't want to spend time at the moment to make your own tracking logic, then implementing a parallel GA tracking will be a pain for you (for your clients, actually). Instead, it would be easier to enrich their data with your products. Let's say, have them implement a product-level custom dimension that would "paint" products added to cart by you and share the data with you.
Note that a client who goes for it must be a very loyal client since analytics data is normally treated as sensitive and is not readily shared with third parties, not mentioning the implementation of a custom dimension (or the using the expensive product parameters) just for a third party to count their conversions. Yes, it has to be a good friend that allows this.
Finally, you could ask them installing your GTM instance or giving you access to theirs, but that would effectively give you the power to execute arbitrary code on any of their page. I would never give a third party that power.
Tl;Dr: I would suggest making your own very simple pixel. Even though it sounds now like a lot of work, it will worth it if the project itself has real potential to be useful for ecommerce.
Exactly the same as 2.
I'm using ASP.Net Membership Provider for logging into the premium content of this web site. The content isn't downloads, it's web pages of information and discounts, etc. That part is done. We want them to also have a PayPal Subscription annual payment to see the premium content. I would like ASP Membership and PayPal Subscription to work together as much as possible, but for the minimum I am thinking they will have to create a MemberId before they pay. Then I will send that MemberId to PayPal to associate the two.
I think I can do that like this:
Set "Auto Return" on in the interface so that it will redirect to return URL when payment is made.
Set "return URL" query string to MemberId. This requires not using the precompiled "Saved" buttons. I'll have to set it in Code Behind with Name Value Pairs, "NVP" to PayPal. I was hoping to just paste the stupid button.
But then, there were those "Advanced Variables" in the Button maker. Problem was they are compiled into the Saved button, so I can't change them for each person. But maybe that one parameter could be separate from the compiled parameters? Is this better than hacking the return URL? Are "Advanced Variables" good for anything?
All the details about the transaction will be POSTed to the return URL if I put in the right code, which might be rm=2. (Right?) Then I can record it.
This process is said to be unreliable, though, and PayPal recommends using a secondary system that they have, "IPN". PayPal sends the transaction details to me. I send them back http 200 code. Then I send it back to them in the same order I got it. Then they send me http 200. Then we all know it's good. This sounds like a few hours research to me, but if you've already done it once, it sounds like copy and paste. I hate reinventing the wheel. Is there a .Net sample of this IPN handshake/dance?
Also, if I do the IPN thing, maybe I don't need Auto Return. Maybe I add MemberId to "notify" URL instead of "return" URL. Then PayPal can handle the confirmation page, email, etc. Is that better?
Assuming we get the Subscription paid for and recorded with the MemberId, at least once per user session, after they log in, I have to check if they have paid their PayPal subscription and if it's up to date. "GetRecurringPaymentsProfileDetails" does this, but it is an API operation. That makes sense, but I was hoping to avoid learning their REST API. (Is there a "NVP" version?)
REST API OAUTH tokens expire every few minutes, but the only way it tells to get one is by using "Bash" to "cURL" some Linux commands. Again, this seems like the kind of thing that would only ever have to be written once. Does this already exist as a sample code somewhere?
(I don't want to use the API to do the Subscribe, because I don't want the Credit Card numbers to ever go to our site. Too much liability. That's why I wanted PayPal.)
Will this even work? I know PayPal has 18 ways to do everything and they all exclude each other, and I'm just getting the feeling that I'm creating a patchwork of unrelated ideas to fool myself into believing there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I've already been researching and experimenting for 10 hours or so. I really thought, going in, I'd just be pasting a stupid button.
If you want to just "copy the stupid button" then you'll have to stick to Payments Standard, and then you'll be limited with what you can do. For example, you won't be able to use GetRecurringPaymentsProfileDetails for a standard subscription.
Instead, you'll need to use Express Checkout and / or Payments Pro. There is indeed an NVP API available for these, and there is also a SOAP/XML version. Details on those can be found here: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/
Specifically, for Express Checkout, you'll want SetExpressCheckout, GetExpressCheckoutDetails, DoExpressCheckoutPayment, and CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile. Some of those calls are optional depending on how exactly you're configuring things with the checkout flow.
For Payments Pro you'll use either DoDirectPayment / CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile or PayFlow depending on what version they put you on.
In any case, IPN is definitely the way to go for post-transaction processing.
.NET IPN Sample - https://github.com/paypal/ipn-code-samples/blob/master/paypal_ipn.asp
I have just created my first PayPal button and it is working correctly within sand box. I would like to know the best way (if possible) to issue a unique activation code on my return url ensuring that the user has definitely paid before they receive the code. I could manually email the code but wondered if the was any way of automating this using some sort of return value? Possibly returning to an aspx page which then reads from my database to get the next activation key and displays it?
Thanks
Garry
As you already know that PayPal doesn't provide such facility for delivering activation instantly but it does offer the Instant Payment Notification API (PayPal IPN) which can be used to build such a platform.
Here is a great article for that purpose only. https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/383207/Selling-software-using-PayPal-IPN-as-an-eCommerceenter link description here
The best way to handle that would be to use Instant Payment Notification (IPN).
Any time a transaction happens on your site (whether it's a payment, refund, cleared pending payment, dispute, etc.) the PayPal server will POST details about that transaction to a script you have sitting on your server.
This script can receive the data and process it accordingly allowing you to automate things like updating a database, generating email notifications, hitting 3rd party web services, delivering e-goods, etc.
If you want the activation code to be visible on the return URL you can look at Payment Data Transfer (PDT), which is just like IPN except that it's made for use with the return URL. It is not recommended to use this, though, for post-transaction processing because there is no guarantee the user will make it back to the return URL, for one, and also it wouldn't handle things like e-checks correctly.
Please suggest the following:
when a user want a certain package in my site, let's call it basic package.. his starting his recurring payment..after half a month he canceles the package, but his still paid for a full month, my question is this:
When recurring payment involved, what kind of fields should i save from the ipn, and how should i know exactly when to stop the features of the package a user bought...
I've seen in the ipn, i have 'next recurring payment' date, should i save it and use it? should i, every time a user do anything related to his package,check if the package limit time just ended?
What can be a most preferred solution for this?
When recurring payment involved, what kind of fields should i save from the ipn
All of them, for any kind of IPN whatsoever. Log the entire transaction every time.
and how should i know exactly when to stop the features of the package a user bought...
You should definitely stop when you get a cancel or eot IPN message. You probably don't want to deny service just because of payment difficulties. See below for the rest of it.
I've seen in the ipn, i have 'next recurring payment' date, should i save it and use it?
Save everything. Then you don't have a problem.
should i, every time a user do anything related to his package, check if the package limit time just ended? What can be a most preferred solution for this?
I have a 'subscriptions' table which shows the user/product pair and the expiry date. Every time he pays the expiry date is pushed out another period, or maybe I create it with the final expiry date, I don't remember offhand. When he logs in, he is given the roles associated with all his subscriptions that haven't expired yet.
If he tries to do something he can no longer do due to an expiry:
he isn't even provided with a link in the first place by the webapp, so he can't get there by any direct action
in any other case, e.g. somewhere I forgot to do that, or when he tries to access via a bookmark, container-managed authentication will see that he isn't in the appropriate role and give him a 403.
He can also see a table of his subscriptions showing how long they have left to run, and another table of expired subscriptions.
This question is based on a project done through the MvcMusicStore tutorial.
Same technologies are also implemented in my site e.g. (MVC3, Sql Server 2008 SSMS & EF Code First)
I have implemented PayPal Web Standards payment at my project. Thanks to #Arun, i have referred to his site here http://www.arunrana.net/2012/01/paypal-integration-in-mvc3-and-razor.html
Situation at MvcMusicStore:
My project is similar to the data flow of MvcMusicStore. As you can see in this link, http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/mvc-music-store/mvc-music-store-part-9
In this tutorial, Jon Galloway has inserted a Payment field in the AddressAndPayment.cshtml page (but for simplicity purposes he made all products to be purchased for free by typing the keyword 'Free' - which would allow the user to checkout by clicking SubmitOrder and saving the Order in database)
Situation at My Project:
My question is about the workflow that i intend to apply.
When user adds items to shopping cart and reviews items in the Cart.
I want to:
Redirect user to PayPal to make payment upon clicking Checkout
After User make payment, return the user to AddressAndPayment.cshtml page
User then enters information and submit order
Is this work flow even right to begin with?
If yes, how do i convert these variables from my project;
Product.Title
Product.Quantity
Product.UnitPrice
to match these PayPal variables?
Item_Name
Amount
Quantity
Well i figured it out myself.
My first question, "Is this work flow even right to begin with?"
I have implemented it successfully. I cant say it is 100% right way of implementing it. It depends on your own system workflow. As for MvcMusicStudio, i cannot think of any other methods than this.
As for the second question, all i did was call a foreach loop and looped the PayPal variables. You will see it in more detail on Arun's website (link provided in the question thread above).
Thank you.