Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : Can people buy my stuff using paypal without a shopping cart or paypal account?

[pk7677]

So I got a offline business that I want to bring online which I did last year but I stopped because I was too busy to edit my stock for each items.(An example is: if I sell 4 shoes in real life I need to change how many shoes are in stock online, I was selling 100 different items and there was no way I can edited each item count every day on the website, so I stopped.) This year I want to try something different, I want to make another website that doesn't have a shopping cart, more like a website that is just a catalog of all the items that I'm selling, I only give my customers my email address, so they can email me about which item they want to buy and I can tell them which is in stock which is not. With this method I no longer need to track my inventory online, but it raises another question, how can I accept payment? If I use paypal how can the customer wire me money? Don't they need to have a paypal account to transfer money to me? Can they just use their credit card to transfer fund to my paypal account? Is this possible?

[altteam]

I'm sure that you will have more orders if you have a shopping cart system because it adds trust to your service and it's a secure way to lead a business. Catalog website can be sucessful only if you promote it everywhere and have some very satisfied customers who will tell everybody about you.
If you want to get money to your Paypal account, your customers should have a paypal account as well and not everybody have it. And believe me competition is high and your customers will run from you if they have to write an email to know the stock, wait your reply, etc. But you may try. Anyway, you will experience problems with payment.

[paraiba]

Hiya mate,

Yes, your customers can send payments to your paypal account without a shopping cart. You don't need a shopping cart to accept Paypal payments.

You will need to create Buy Now Buttons from your paypal account. You may would like to learn more information about Buy Now Buttons, here is the link: https://www.paypal.com/pdn-item

Buy-Now-Button will take your customers to Paypal's secure shoopping page. In that page, your customers will be able to make their payments. They will be redirected to your website after completing their payments. You will also have full ability to select the exact redirection url(Paypal will redirect your customers to that url after succesful payments).

There are very nice open source PHP shopping softwares. You can use them. That would be best option. If you don't know anything about websites, you may would like to hire someone to do everything for you.

There are some websites which allows you to run your online shopping website. In example: http://www.shopify.com/

I have read your story. You would like to track your stock. You don't want to accept payments for the products which you don't have on your stock.

You can track your stock with Oscommerce. Most of shopping softwares are able to track product stocks. You will not need to remove products from sale, because your software will already remove the products if they are out of the stock.

I hope you would find the best option for you.
Regards

[amspcs]

Well, the answer to your question is kind of yes AND no. You don't need a shopping cart if you sell only one item with no variations. But in your case, if you need people to make certain choices such as color, size etc., than going without a cart would be extremely impractical and counter productive.

[pk7677]

Originally Posted by altteam

I'm sure that you will have more orders if you have a shopping cart system because it adds trust to your service and it's a secure way to lead a business. Catalog website can be sucessful only if you promote it everywhere and have some very satisfied customers who will tell everybody about you.
If you want to get money to your Paypal account, your customers should have a paypal account as well and not everybody have it. And believe me competition is high and your customers will run from you if they have to write an email to know the stock, wait your reply, etc. But you may try. Anyway, you will experience problems with payment.

We are already a established business, and the customers all know us, so trust is not a issue. As for paypal I learned that you can sent out a email inovice to the customer and they can pay it that way, they don't need to have a paypal account they can just do guest check out.

[GORF]

You are making more work for yourself than needed. You have to make PayPal buttons for every product and integrate them into your site, you have to manually create PayPal invoices then track payments.... The list is too long.

Just put a cart/catalog software in place that tracks stock and has a PayPal gateway integrated. Look at OpenCart. Simple to use.

[pk7677]

Originally Posted by GORF

You are making more work for yourself than needed. You have to make PayPal buttons for every product and integrate them into your site, you have to manually create PayPal invoices then track payments.... The list is too long.

Just put a cart/catalog software in place that tracks stock and has a PayPal gateway integrated. Look at OpenCart. Simple to use.

You do not need to make a paypal button on every product, and like I said I have no problem tracking stock on my website I did last year, in fact I was using opencart and it was great. The problem is that my in real life business and online store share the same inventory, I was selling things faster offline than I can change/edit the inventory stock on my website. (It would be great if I sell something offline it would automatically update the inventory online) So if I use the catalog style site I no longer need to worry about the inventory, when customer orders something with email I can just tell them if I have it or not, plus google checkout and paypal all tracks the invoice for you so I don't think there is a problem.

[GORF]

Sorry, I did not understand the full extent of your problem from your original run-on sentence.

It sounds like you are looking for Point Of Sale software with integrated website inventory. Here's one that comes to mind - http://www.camcommerce.com/contents/point-of-sale/