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Hack 75 Streamlining Checkout and Payment
Use an off-eBay checkout system to integrate
payments with shipping and accounting.
In
the old days, any seller who wanted to accept credit cards had to get
a credit card merchant account. Now, payment services like PayPal,
BidPay, and C2IT have made merchant accounts largely unnecessary for
everyone but the largest sellers.
But if there's any single truth when it comes to
accepting payments on eBay, it's this: the more
types of payment you accept, the more bids you'll
get.
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But there are still reasons to get a merchant account. For instance,
sellers who do a lot of business may be able to get a better discount
rate as a credit card merchant than they could through PayPal, which
essentially means that they'll get to keep a larger
percentage of the payments they receive. And anyone who sells
merchandise outside of eBay will not want to limit their transactions
only to PayPal.
Getting a Merchant Account
This is
one thing that eBay won't do for you, and one thing
that requires more than spending five minutes filling out a form on
some web site. The best way to start is by contacting your bank and
asking them to recommend a merchant account provider with which
they're affiliated.
A representative will then talk to you and request lots of
information about you and your business to help them establish your
identity. You'll discuss payment plans and discount
rates; don't be afraid to ask questions. When all is
said and done, you'll be given a terminal or other
means of entering credit card information, and
you'll be ready to accept credit card payments.
Be warnedsetting up a merchant account is not cheap, and is
not for the faint of heart. Also, be extremely wary of Internet and
email ads for merchant accounts.
See [Hack #67] for some of the steps
you should take to prevent chargebacks and unnecessary fees.
7.5.1 Accepting Credit Card Payments
Once you
get your merchant account, the next step is to provide the means for
your customers to transmit their credit card numbers and related
information to you. This involves an HTML form and a backend script
on a public web server. Let's start with a simple
order form:
<form action="http://www.ebayhacks.com/cgi-bin/checkout.pl"
method=post name="ccform" onSubmit="return confirmation();">
<table border><tr><td width=50% valign=top>
<table border=0 width=100%>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>eBay auction number(s):</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input size=12 name="invoice"></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Total amount of payment:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input size=12 name="total"></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Method of Payment:</td>
<td align=left valign=top>
<select name="paytype"><option selected>(please make a selection)
<option>Visa<option>MasterCard<option>American Express</select>
</td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Credit card number:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input size=25 name="ccnumber"></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>CVV code:<br>(3-4 digits after
your CC number, on the back of the card)</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input size=4 maxlength=4 name="cvv"></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Expiration Date:</td>
<td align=left valign=top>
<select name="expiremonth"><option selected value="??">(Month)
<option value="01">1<option value="02">2<option value="03">3
<option value="04">4<option value="05">5<option value="06">6
<option value="07">7<option value="08">8<option value="09">9
<option value="10">10<option value="11">11<option value="12">12
</select>
<select name="expireyear"><option selected value="????">(Year)
<option>2003<option>2004<option>2005<option>2006<option>2007
<option>2008<option>2009<option>2010<option>2011<option>2012
<option>2013<option>2014<option>2015<option>2016<option>2017
</select>
</td></tr></table>
</td><td width=50% valign=top>
<table width=100%>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>First Name:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="firstname" size=15></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Last Name:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="lastname" size=15></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>E-mail Address:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="email" size=30></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Mailing Address:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="address1" size=30>
<input name="address2" maxlength=50 size=30></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>City:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="city" size=25></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>State/Province:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="state" size=4></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Zip:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="zip" size=10></td></tr>
<tr><td align=right valign=top>Country:</td>
<td align=left valign=top><input name="country" size=25></td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td align=left valign=top>
<input type="submit" value="Complete Your Order">
</td></tr></table>
</td></tr></table>
Place this HTML form on your public web server.
You'll need to make sure your server supports
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), so the
information your customers enter can be safely submitted to your
server, as described in [Hack #29].
Next, install the following backend Perl script,
checkout.pl, to process the incoming data and store
it in a file.
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#!/usr/bin/perl
require("cgi-lib.pl");
&ReadParse; [1]
$checkoutdir = "/usr/local/home"; [2]
$myemail = "checkout\@ebayhacks.com";
$ordernum = time;
# *** empty fields ***
if ((!keys(%in)) || ($in{'firstname'} eq ") || ($in{'lastname'} eq ") [3]
|| ($in{'address1'} eq ") || ($in{'city'} eq ") || ($in{'zip'} eq ")
|| (($in{'state'} eq ") && ($in{'country'} eq ")) ||
($in{'paytype'} eq "(please make a selection)")
|| ($in{'ccnumber'} eq ") || ($in{'cvv'} eq ") ||
($in{'expiremonth'} eq "??") || ($in{'expireyear'} eq "????")) {
print &PrintHeader;
print "<b>Error:</b> Please fill out all the fields and try again.\n";
exit;
}
# *** write data file ***
open(OUTFILE,">$checkoutdir/$ordernum.txt"); [4]
print OUTFILE "[checkout]\r\n";
print OUTFILE "email=$in{'email'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "firstname=$in{'firstname'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "lastname=$in{'lastname'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "address1=$in{'address1'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "address2=$in{'address2'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "city=$in{'city'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "state=$in{'state'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "zip=$in{'zip'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "country=$in{'country'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "invoice=$in{'invoice'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "total=$in{'total'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "paytype=$in{'paytype'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "cc=" . &formatccnumber($in{'ccnumber'}) . "\r\n"; [5]
print OUTFILE "cvv=$in{'cvv'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "expiremonth=$in{'expiremonth'}\r\n";
print OUTFILE "expireyear=$in{'expireyear'}\r\n";
close(OUTFILE);
open(MAIL,"|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t"); [6]
print MAIL "To: $in{'email'}\n";
print MAIL "From: $myemail\n";
print MAIL "Reply-To: $myemail\n";
print MAIL "Subject: Order Confirmation\n\n";
print MAIL "Your payment information has been received.\n";
print MAIL "Here are the details of your order:\n\n";
print MAIL " Name: $in{'firstname'} $in{'lastname'}\n";
print MAIL "Address: $in{'address1'}\n";
if ($in{'address2'} ne ") { print MAIL " $in{'address2'}\n"; }
print MAIL " $in{'city'}, $in{'state'} $in{'zip'}\n";
print MAIL " \U$in{'country'}\n\n";
if (substr($in{'total'},0,1) ne "\$") { $in{'total'} = "\$$in{'total'}"; }
print MAIL "US$in{'total'} will be charged to your $in{'paytype'}.\n\n";
print MAIL "Your item(s) will be shipped as soon as possible. If you\n";
print MAIL "have any questions, please send them to $myemail\n";
close(MAIL);
open(MAIL,"|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t"); [7]
print MAIL "To: $myemail\n";
print MAIL "From: $in{'email'}\n";
print MAIL "Reply-To: $in{'email'}\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $in{'product'} Registration\n";
print MAIL "A customer, $in{'firstname'} $in{'lastname'}, has\n";
print MAIL "submitted a payment: order number #$ordernum.\n";
close(MAIL);
print &PrintHeader; [8]
print "Thank you for your order.\n";
print "You will receive a confirmation email shortly.\n";
exit;
sub formatccnumber{ [9]
$cc = ";
$pos = 0;
for ($i = 0; $i < length($_[0]); $i++) {
if ("0123456789" =~ substr($_[0], $i, 1)) {
$cc = $cc . substr($_[0], $i, 1);
$pos++;
if ($pos / 4 == int($pos / 4)) { $cc = $cc . " "; }
}
}
return $cc;
}
This script is pretty straightforward. Using the
cgi-lib.pl module, the script parses [1] the incoming data into variables. Next, some
custom variables are declared [2], which
you'll want to modify to reflect your system.
A single if statement [3]
checks for empty fields and spits out a generic error message if any
problems are found; you'll probably want to expand
this to provide more specific and appropriate error messages to your
customers. The next section [4] stores the
data in a text file, but you can customize this to suit your needs.
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After the information is stored, three more tasks are performed: a
confirmation email is sent to the customer [6], a
notification email is sent to the seller [7], and a brief
confirmation page is shown in the browser window [8].
7.5.2 How to Use It
With these two elements in place, all that's left is
to publicize the URL of your checkout form. You'll
notice that in both [Hack #66] and
[Hack #74], the example
payment-instructions email contains a link to a custom order form,
complete with the https:// prefix, signifying a
secure SSL connection.
When a customer places an order with your checkout form,
you'll be sent an automatic email, and a new order
record file will appear in the directory you specified on line [1]. You can further automate this hack by linking
the script with your inventory system or setting it up to
automatically print a prepaid shipping label, as described in [Hack #68].
7.5.3 Checkout Providers
Those
who don't want to create their own checkout systems
may prefer an extra-cost, all-in-one
"turnkey" solution, like any of the
following.
Andale Checkout. The goal of a service like
Andale
Checkout (www.andale.com) is to
effectively eliminate the back-and-forth emails between buyers and
sellers, a necessity if you sell more than 100 items a week. Figure 7-4 shows what your customers will see when they
use Andale Checkout to pay.
Figure 7-4. What your customers see when they pay via Andale Checkout
Andale Checkout also keeps records of your current and past sales,
and offers additional automation such as invoice and shipping label
printing and post-sale communications with customers.
Vendio Checkout. Similar to Andale Checkout,
Vendio
Checkout is available with several of Vendio's
subscription-based services, such as Sales Manager (www.vendio.com).
Selling Manager. eBay's own Selling Manager (pages.ebay.com/selling_manager), discussed in
[Hack #76], and
Seller's Assistant Pro (pages.ebay.com/sellers_assistant/prol),
discussed in [Hack #73], both rely on
eBay's checkout system, but provide additional
post-auction tools and automation not otherwise available.
