Customize Your Paypal Checkout Page

Hello Everyone! While clicking around Paypal the other day, I came across a way to customize your checkout page with your logo or a banner. Not the biggest deal, but I believe any time you can get your name or your logo in front of a customer, you should take the opportunity to do so. This is one more tool to put in your marketing  tool belt....Seeing your logo that one last time could be the difference between a customer remembering you instead of another seller when making a repeat purchase or a recommendation to a friend or family member.

Here are mine:

How to:
1. Login to Paypal, go to Profile on your account page and choose 'More Options.'

2. Under Selling Preferences, choose 'Custom Payment Pages.,' then choose 'Add.'

3. From here you will be able to enter your logo which will be used for enhanced Paypal checkout. It must be from a url, so you will first need to have a logo on a web page.  You then right click and choose 'copy image url'. I used my Etsy avatar, you can use any image you would like as long as it is the correct size - a maximum of 190 wide x 60 pixels high.

4. Further down the page you will see a place to enter a 'Header' which must be a maximum of 750 pixels wide by 90 pixels high.  This will be used for classic Paypal checkout. Again, you must use an image url. You can use the url of your Etsy banner and Paypal will size it down. I did not like the way it looked so I re-sized a copy of my Etsy banner which I then uploaded to photobucket so I would have an image url to enter.

5.  Next, you can choose colors for your background and border. You can then preview both pages, Enhanced and Classic and you are done!

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Change Your Facebook Avatar To A Banner

A few days ago, I found myself on a Facebook fan page with a huge banner going down the side of it, instead of the usual small avatar picture. It looked so great that I had to ask how she accomplished it.

Turns out, Facebook won't crop images that are 200wide x 600 long! That is it, nothing tricky to it.

Try it out, it is a  lot of space to market yourself and really personalize your Facebook page. Check mine out at:
http://www.facebook.com/charmeddesign1012

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How Did Your Customer Find You?

In the vast sea of items on Etsy, I am always curious as to how my customers found me, little old me, among the masses. How about you? It is such useful information, seeing if certain marketing or advertising efforts are succeeding and helping you fine tune your efforts.

 I want to preface what I am about to tell you with the statement that I am sure Google Analytics can somehow answer this question for you. But, if you are anything, like me, GA can be very overwhelming and even a bit confusing.

I have thought about asking this question in the convo I always send after a purchase, acknowledging that I have received their order and thanking them for their purchase, but it seems a little invasive to me. Now I've  found a way that takes me out of the equation and allows them a choice as to whether to answer.

.....Paypal. Paypal checkout to be more specific. Paypal allows you to set up a survey question with up to five possible answers during the checkout process. Whether your customer answers is up to them, but you never know if you don't ask.

How To:
1. Login. Go to Profile, then down to More Options and click.

2.Under Selling Preferences, choose Custom Payment Pages. You then have two tabs:  Page Style and Options, choose Options.

3.Scroll down to Merchant Service Options and check Add A Customer Survey. You can now enter a question. I asked 'How did you find Charmed Design 1012?' And then  add up to five answers. I wanted more than five, but that is all they allow. My choices are: browsing etsy, facebook, search engine, word of mouth, and other site. Click Save.

4. To find out if your survey question was answered, click Transaction Details, and the answer will be there if your customer elected to answer.

Will you use the survey question? If yes, what will you ask? Please comment and let me know!

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New $25 Giveaway!

Take a look at my feature on AdoreByNat and enter to win a $25 Gift Certificate to my Etsy Shop:

http://adorebynat.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-25-gift-certificate-from.html

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How To Sell Gift Certificates On Facebook, Blogs and Websites

I came across a wonderful post yesterday, on the TrendyGal blog detailing how to sell gift certificates for your Etsy shop from your Facebook page.

Trying to sell gift certificates directly from your Etsy shop is both problematic and costly. First, you have to create a listing for the gift certificate and create a code for the buyer to use in a convo when he or she uses it. When someone buys the gift certificate, you pay your usual Etsy fees for a sale. And then you pay again when the certificate is used and you are charged Etsy fees for the item. And if the desired item is more than the gift certificate? You must send a revised invoice and wait for them to pay. Whew! Way too much trouble for me.

Last night I discovered a great alternative. I learned how to sell gift certificates on Facebook.  You add a tab to your page with a 'buy gift certificate' button (instructions to follow) and Paypal takes it from there... processing payment, managing balances, designing the certificate and printing it or emailing it to the recipient.

Here is a link to my page so you can see what it looks like:
http://www.facebook.com/charmeddesign1012?v=app_4949752878

Now for the how-to:
1. Login in to Paypal and click on the Merchant Services tab.( Note: this feature is only available for business accounts, not personal. I upgraded so I could use it.) Under 'Create Buttons,' you will see 'gift certificate.'

2. Click on 'gift certificate' and follow the next steps to create your button.

3.Note that you can customize the look of the gift certificate where it says 'gift certificate style,' you can add a logo image by providing an image url. I used my etsy banner. To do this, go to your etsy shop and right click on your banner and click 'copy image url' and paste into the paypal box. You can then preview what your gift certificate will look like.

4. Click 'create button' and copy the code.

5. Go to your Facebook fan page and click 'edit page.' Scroll to the bottom of the page where you will see 'More Applications' and click 'browse more.'  Search applications for Static FBML, click, then 'add to my page' on the left.

6. Next, click 'edit page' on your page. Locate the static FBML application from your list and click 'edit.' Here you will change the name of the tab to Gift Certificates and paste the code from Paypal. After pasting the code, you can add any text you'd like. Save and publish.

7. All that is left now is to make sure your new tab is showing. If not, go to the + sign on the right of the tabs and choose the gift certificate tab.

Done and Done! Now you are selling gift certificates!

The only fault I have found is that I get an error when trying to buy a gift certificate in Chrome. But, it works perfectly with Explorer and Firefox. Don't know about Safari, maybe someone could come back and report.

Here is Paypal's very detailed guide to the gift certificate function, including a description of the checkout experience when both purchasing and redeeming a gift certificate. https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/US/en_US/files/developer/MerchGCs.pdf

To add the button to a blog or website, just copy and paste the html as you did in Facebook. As you can see, I added the button to a page on my blog.

I would love to know what you think about this feature and whether you will use it and if you will , how. Please comment!

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$30 Giveaway!

Checkout etsystalker.com to enter:


http://etsystalker.com/?page_id=12922

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More on Tagging - What To Do When You Can't Decide

I know that many times I struggle to fill in my tags, but there are also a lot of times I must choose one tag over the other for lack of space. I have recently found two ways to solve this quandary.

First, a tip from my bag of tricks. If you have two words that will fit in one tag, use both, even if they are unrelated. Now, Etsy will tell you not to do this, but the truth is that the words will come up individually if searched. Thus, if you have 'blue' and 'peace' in the same tag space, they need not be searched together to come up in search results.  I have tested this over and over and it always works. You have a total of 18 characters/spaces available; use all you can! You can conceivably turn 14 tags into 28! Well, not quite that many, but you get the picture.

My next tip is to check out Tools For Etsy's 'Tag Wars.'

Tag Wars compares one tag against another and shows you the number of listings with each associated tag.  Below the results there is a Tag Summary Cloud and Materials Summary Cloud with tons of other suggestions! Ones in bold are main ones being used (the bigger the tag is the more it’s used on etsy). 

Use the tag with the most listings or not? That is a question of opinion and strategy and one I can't answer. On the one hand, you may get lost with the more popular tag, but you may not be found if the less popular tag is too specific or obscure.

Find out what tags you already use most frequently by looking at your shop'sown  tag summary cloud. On the Quick Menu at the top of the page, click Listings. Enter your shop name and up comes a bunch of info including your tag cloud. As for all of the other shop info...that's a post for another day.

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Who's Talking About You?

Want to know who is talking about you on the web? Has anyone twittered about you? Or maybe featured you on a blog?  I have found two social media search tools to help you know just that.

Both Whos Talkin' and Social Mention allow you to enter your name or your company name in a search box, hit ENTER, and voila - a list of all the places you have been mentioned on social media sites around the web.

Social Mention also hits you with a lot more information. For instance, it will tell you whether these 'mentions' are positive, negative, or neutral. It also gives you a list of the top keywords used in the mentions, and lets you know what the sources are. And if you just have to know the instant you are mentioned, you can sign up for real time alerts. And if you know right now, does that make you vain or a master of marketing? Just wondering.

Both sites also have a plugin  that allows you to type your search request into your browser's search bar, eliminating the need to even visit their sites.

And it goes without saying, although I'm saying it anyway, you can search any person, name, topic, etc and find out where they are popping up across the blogosphere. So, I know who's talking about you, now it is your turn to find out:

http://www.whostalkin.com/

http://socialmention.com/

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