Friday, September 12th 2008

If you're looking for a super easy way to start selling things online PayPal Labs has come out with a new tool that can turn any page on your website into an online store in a few easy steps. You'll need a PayPal account if you don't already have one. You can sign up for a free PayPal account at PayPal.com. Here are the step by step instructions to adding the PayPal Storefront widget to your website. If you have trouble following these instructions be sure to checkout the video.

1. Go to storefront.paypallabs.com.

PayPal Labs is PayPals showcase site dedicated to developing innovative products and services. From the PayPal Storefront widget homepage login with your PayPal account login username and password. Again, if you don't already have a PayPal account you'll need to go to PayPal.com to sign up for a free PayPal account.

2. Create a new storefront.

Once you're logged in you'll want to click on the button labeled 'Create new storefront'. You will now be able to customize the appearance of your storefront. You can change colors, upload, your logo, and give your storetront a title as well as set store policies. For example: you can state your refund and exchange policies.

3. Customize your products.

Click on the 'Products' tab and you will be able to enter you product title, description, price and link to a photo of your product. Please note that PayPal won't acutally host images of your products. So you'll have to put the URL location for your image into the field provided. You can do this by uploading your images to WebStarts. You'll want to make sure your images are 188 x 168 to make sure they're not distorted.  I show you how to do all of this in the video so if you're not sure refer back to the video.

Notice the inventory tab when setting up your products. You will have to set a number of product in your inventory for the 'add to cart' button to be active on your live storefront. If inventory isn't important click on the 'infinity' icon and it will indicate and unlimited supply.

After entering your product details you'll want to setup shipping options and prices if you're selling hard goods.

4. Publish your storefront and copy and paste it into your page editor.

Once you've finished customizing your store and setting up your products you'll need to publish your storefront. When publishing your storefront be sure to choose the radio button labeled 'Just give me the HTML so I can do it myself'. Publishing your storefront will save your storefront code to your clipboard which must then be pasted into our page editor. You can do this by navigating back to your WebStarte account, selecting the page you want the storefront to appear on, clicking on 'Insert' and then 'HTML Code' on the toolbar, and pasting the code in the space provided. At that point you can drag and drop your storefront wherever you would like it to appear.

Click save your storefront will now be displayed on your live website. You can update your products and store settings at any time by going back got storefront.paypallabs.com, making your changes, then clicking on the 'Update Storefront' button. You will not have to re-copy and paste the storefront code to update your store.