FormSpring Blog » Payment/Order Forms

Using Multiple Payment Processors on an Order Form

ryan — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:20:14 +0000

You can use one payment option, such as PayPal, on your order form, or you can use two or more payment options. Each payment option will need to be set up separately under Settings > Payment Integration.

When using multiple payment options on a form, you will need use Smart Routing on your Submit Actions.

For example, say you wanted to offer all four current payment options on a single form. One way to do this would be to create a select list on your form called “Choose a payment method” with four choices: PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net and First Data.

For your smart routing rules, you would set the PayPal Submit Action to redirect the user to PayPal if they pick PayPal from the “Payment method” select list, you would edit the Google Checkout Submit Action to redirect them to Google Checkout if they chose that option from the select list, and you would do the same for the other two payment options. You set this up under Settings > E-mail & Redirects > After the Form is Submitted.

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Creating Smart Order Forms

chris — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:02:48 +0000

Today’s post in our “Online Forms That Convert” series is from James Paden of Xemion. More information about James can be found at the bottom of this post.

When creating online order forms, whether for a large corporation, a small business or a non-profit, there are three questions your visitors will always ask:

Why should I order?
What negative things might happen if I order?
How do I order?

Note carefully the order of these questions. These are the same order your visitors will ask these questions.

For the most part, your actual form does not directly answer any of these questions. But make no mistake, if you fail to answer any of these three questions, you will dramatically decrease the effectiveness of your order form and you will lose sales.

Why should I order?

This is often the easiest question to answer. This question should be answered by the sales and product information on your website. Too often, however, businesses fail to provide this information. If your website features a banner that says “Buy Widget X” or “Request a Demo”, explain why I should buy widget X or why a demo would be beneficial. Your order form should not be the first element on your sales page, your product information should be. Include photos if applicable and a detailed description of what you are selling.

What negative things might happen if I order?

Fear halts more e-commerce orders than any other factor except lack of product information. What if it breaks? What if I don’t like it? When will my package arrive? What if it never arrives? Can I trust this company? Will my information be secure?

Before visitors ever reach your order form, you need to eliminate these worries by adding credibility indicators and providing additional assurances. Here’s just a few of the non-form elements you can add to your page to reduce your customers fears:

Security Seals & BBB Seals
Testimonials & Customer Reviews
Shipping & Returns Information
Alternative Payment Methods (FormSpring lets you do this!)
Phone Number & Contact Information
Privacy Policy
Satisfaction & Quality Guarantees
Product/Service Video
Live Chat

Each of these elements has been proven to increase the conversion rate and effectiveness of e-commerce websites. That does not mean they’re effective for every site, but they’re definitely worth trying. Consider the list of questions at the beginning of this section. What worries and fears are you not addressing before visitors reach your order form?

How do I order?

Another simple question, but again, many businesses fail to answer it. It should be 100% obvious what the next step is to purchase a product. There should be a nice-sized “Order” button that contrasts with the rest of the page. Never link to your order form merely with a text link, especially one that’s hidden in the middle of a paragraph.

Your actual form should be laid out professionally with clear directions and steps. This part should be particularly easy because FormSpring does this so well. The number one usability rule is “don’t make me think”. If a user ever has to ask “how do I order?” or “what do I do next?”, you have a problem.

In summary, to create a smart order form, one that converts visitors into customers or donors, you must effectively answer each of the three questions.

James Paden runs the Xemion Web Designer Directory and has over nine years of experience in web design and e-commerce. In addition to running Xemion, he serves as the Directory of Technology for an Indianapolis e-commerce network and consults with e-commerce companies on boosting conversion rates. Whenever working on a website, James focuses on using design and technology to achieve the business’ goals.Recent Posts:

Calculating Total, Tax & Shipping On Your Forms

ryan — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:18:11 +0000

For the last two weeks, I’ve been blogging about creating some basic order forms with FormSpring. We’ve covered both single item and multi-item forms. This week, I thought I’d go back to a single item form, but this time show how to calculate tax, shipping, and a total, all on the form, instead of on the payment integration page.

We’re going to begin with a single item order form with a t-shirt size select list (with prices added to the option values) and a quantity select list. If you don’t know how to use separate values to associate prices with items, you can read my earlier post on this.

Now, we’re going to add a calculating form field to our order form that will show the total right on our form. To do this, add a short answer field and then click on the button that says “Use Calculation”. For this simple example, the calculation used is T-Shirt Size * Quantity.

Now when we view the form and choose a Large t-shirt and a Quantity of 2, the total automatically changes to $24.00 (as each Large t-shirt costs $12).

Now let’s say we also want to charge $5 shipping per shirt and a tax of 5% of the merchandise total. To find the shipping cost, we’ll first create a hidden short answer field called Shipping Rate and set the default value to $5.

Then we can add another short answer field called Shipping and use a calculation (shipping rate * quantity) to figure out the total shipping cost.

Next, we want to calculate the tax, so we’ll add a hidden short answer field called “Tax Rate” and set the default value to .05.

Now we’ll add another short answer field called “Tax” and use a calculation to figure out how much tax to charge [tax rate * (t-shirt size * quantity)].

Finally, we’ll edit our total calculation to be [t-shirts size * quantity) + shipping + tax)].

On the PayPal Integration page, we only need to set the Price field, which is our Total field. We can leave Quantity, Tax, and Shipping blank as we’ve already added those into our total that we’re passing on to PayPal.

When we look at the completed form in the form builder, it should look like this:

And when we view the form itself, it will automatically calculate shipping, tax and our total as we change the t-shirt size and quantity.

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Creating A Multi-Item Paypal Order Form

ryan — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:53:13 +0000

Last week, I wrote about how to create a single item order form, but what if you have more than one item and want to integrate your form with PayPal? Well, today I’m going to show you the most basic way to do this. I’m going to skip all of the steps from my last blog post, so if you haven’t read that one, you should head there now.

First, we’ll build a form with two item fields and two quantity fields.

Next, we’ll go to Settings > Payment Integration > PayPal and choose Multiple Items instead of Single Item from the Item List setting.

Now, we hit the green plus symbol icon to add a second item. You can add as many items as you like this way or hit the red minus symbol icon to delete item fields. You can put an identifying word for your item in the first box (I’m using “T-Shirt” and “Pants” in my example), then choose your item field from your form and each of your quantity fields from the form. (Make sure if your quantity fields have the same name that you choose the correct one from your form. They appear in the drop down menu in the same order as they appear on the form.) Make sure you hit the Save Settings button at the bottom of the payment integration page when your done setting up your Paypal Integration.

Other fields, such as shipping, handling, tax, currency, invoice number, etc. are optional flat-rate values. In a future blog post, I’ll show you how to calculate shipping and tax in hidden fields on your form itself for values that are not flat.

Finally, if we view the form and choose a few items, and then hit submit…

…we’ll see that the form works and shows the items we have chosen.

Recent Posts:

Creating A Basic Paypal Order Form

ryan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:27:21 +0000

We get a lot of questions here at FormSpring about setting up basic order forms, so I thought over the next several weeks I could get a little more in-depth with order forms here in the blog than we do in our support documentation. For today, I’m going to show you how to build a simple single-item form and integrate it with Paypal.

In this example form, we’re going to offer t-shirts for sale. I’m going to start with a blank form and then add two select lists, one for the t-shirt size and one for t-shirt quantity. For size, my choices are Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large. For quantity, the user can choose from 1 to 5.

So with those two fields, we have a basic order form, but how do we associate a dollar value with that, so we can pass it on to Paypal? To do this, we’ll have to use separate values. First, we’ll click on the t-shirt size field to edit it.

Next, we’ll add some option values to our option labels. Columnn one is option labels, which are what our users will see on the form. Column two is option values, which are the dollar values associated with those labels. The user does not see the values, but these are passed on to Paypal.

Note: You’ll notice that I used both $12 and $12.0 as option values instead of just making them both $12. This is because option values must be unique. To add more values with the same number, I could just add more zeroes. $12.00, $12.000, $12.0000, etc.

Okay, now we’re ready for our Paypal integration. You can set this up under Settings > Payment Integration > Paypal. Our price field is “Please choose a t-shirt size,” so that is what we’ll choose from the drop-down menu. We called our quantity field “Quantity,” so we’ll set that as well.

Now, when we test the form, we should be taken to Paypal and charged the proper amount. I’m going to test this by choosing 3 “Extra Large” t-shirts, which are $15 each, so my total when I get to Paypal should be $15.

As you can see from the image below, my total at Paypal is indeed $45.

Next week, I’ll show you how to build an order form with multiple items and integrate that into Paypal.Recent Posts:

Don’t Forget The Emergency Contact Form

chris — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:07:20 +0000

Spring is here and that means the spring/summer sports leagues are kicking into high gear. We have a wide variety of sports and rec leagues who already use FormSpring for online registration/sign up forms and one big issue that many leagues have is getting the players and their families to fill out the necessary forms and turn them in the first day of practice.

An easy way that many of these organizations handle and process important forms like emergency contact forms is to have parents fill them out online! This helps eliminate the need for parents to print a document, fill it out and send it with Sally to practice. It also ensures that you have everyone’s paperwork before the first practice, making sure everyone is eligible to participate on day one!

As with most organizations there are many parents who volunteer their time to coordinate and run these leagues. Using our Smart Routing feature you can make sure that the proper person gets the right form. For instance, if John Smith handles all of the forms for Boys Lacrosse, but Jane Brown handles all the forms for Girls LaCrosse you can route them to the proper person depending on which league the user selects.

You can also use other features like our payment integration to collect online payments, conditional logic, and with our Share Data feature you can share information with other league managers/volunteers without having them log in to your account. Perfect for sharing with coaches and team managers letting them know who has registered, if they have submitted all their forms, and what size jersey to order!

By using an online form solution like FormSpring community sport leagues and other organizations can drastically reduce the amount of time manually collecting and processing forms, reduce paper waste, and ensure that everyone is ready to get started from day one!

Already a FormSpring user? Leave a comment below and let us know how your sports organization is using online forms.Recent Posts:

Are Your Forms Secure?

ryan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:41:20 +0000

If you’re using your a FormSpring form to accept sensitive data, such as credit cards or social security numbers, you must enable all of our security features in order to protect your data. These security features are not enabled by default and are only available on paid plans at the Professional level or higher. The security features available to you are SSL, PGP and data encryption.

SSL

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol for providing secure communications on the Internet. SSL provides for the authentication and encryption of traffic between your browser and Internet servers. According to our terms of service, you MUST enable SSL if you are collecting sensitive data on your form.

To enable SSL on your form:

Click on the Settings tab in the form builder.
Scroll down to Security.
Click Yes next to the Use SSL option.

If you do not see the SSL option, your account plan does not give you access to those features.

Data Encryption

You MUST enable data encryption if you are collecting sensitive data such as credit card or social security numbers and storing them in your FormSpring database. If you do not do this, you are violating our terms of service and your data is NOT secure.

When you setup your form to save data for later downloading and viewing, you can set a password to encrypt the data when stored in the FormSpring database. When you set a password, public and private keys are generated and stored with your form. The public key is used to encrypt the data when saved in the database. Your password encrypts the private key, which will be used to decrypt the data. Your encryption password is not saved on the server in plain text, so it’s not possible for anyone to decrypt the information without knowing your encryption password.

To enable data encryption on your form:

Click on the Settings tab for your form.
Scroll down to Security.
Enter a new password in the Encrypt Saved Data field. You will have to verify the password to continue.

If you do not see the Data Encryption option, your account plan does not give you access to those features.

Note: You do not need to enable data encryption if you are not saving collected data in the database.

WARNING: It is important that you memorize or store this password in a safe place. If you lose this password, we will not be able to retrieve your data, which will be irrevocably lost.

PGP

You MUST use PGP if you are e-mailing sensitive data to yourself, such as credit card or social security numbers. Regular e-mail is not a secure method for sending sensitive data and violates our terms of service.

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is a program for encrypting and decrypting email based on the OpenPGP standard.

PGP support is available in many popular email applications through 3rd-party PGP programs. Here are some of the free 3rd-party plugins available for widely used email applications:

Microsoft Outlook – GPGol
Mozilla Thunderbird – Enigmail
Apple Mail – MacGPG

If you can’t find a plugin for your email program, you can use Gpg4win, a light-weight program for Microsoft Windows, by copying the encrypted email from any email client and pasting it into WinPT for decryption. A more complete list of free PGP programs for different clients can be found here and here. Commercial PGP programs can be purchased at PGP.com.

If you want to use PGP in a hurry or don’t want to mess with installing additional software, the easiest thing to do is to setup a free email account at Hushmail.

To enable PGP for your form and upload your PGP public key:

Click on the Settings tab for your form.
Scroll down to Security.
Copy and paste your public key into the Public PGP Key field.

If you do not see the PGP field, your account plan does not give you access to those features.

Note: You do not need to enable PGP if you are not sending collected data to any email recipients, or are only sending a link to the saved data.

Alternative to Using PGP

Setting up PGP is a complicated process. An easy alternative would be to just not e-mail sensitive data to yourself. Instead, create a custom notification e-mail that includes all of the submitted data EXCEPT for the sensitive data such as credit card numbers. Then, log into your FormSpring account to view this data when you receive submissions.

If you enable all of the security features listed here, you can rest assured that your form data is secure. If you are collecting sensitive data and have not enabled these security features yet, please do so immediately. If you get stuck, you can always contact our support staff.Recent Posts:

Google Checkout and Nonprofits

chris — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:04:11 +0000

A while back we wrote about the integration of Google Checkout and FormSpring forms. At the time we wrote that, nonprofit entities were able to process their donations with Google Checkout with no fees or set up costs.

Since then Google has changed some of their policies. Now nonprofits can sumbit for the Google Grants program which is an in-kind advertising option for nonprofits. You can read the full program rules and eligibility requirements on the program details page. If you do not qualify for the Google Grants program you can still take advantage of their low transaction rates. Nonprofits will only be charged 2% + $0.20 per transaction through May 5 2009.

With our form builder and Google Checkout you can create online donation forms, event registrations and much more. Learn more about how to integrate your online forms and Google Checkout, or come Live Chat with us and learn how you can get started today!Recent Posts:

Introducing First Data Payment Integration

ryan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:36:53 +0000

Like Authorize.Net, First Data is a payment gateway service provider, allowing merchants to accept credit cards and electronic checks through their web sites. It’s also now one of the payment integration methods available here at FormSpring.

To integrate First Data into your form, click on the Settings tab for the form, then choose Payment Integration from the left menu and finally Enable First Data.

You will need your Store Number and your Certificate File to continue. To find your Certificate File, log into your First Data account, click on Support and then choose Download Center from the left menu.

One thing that’s different when using First Data instead of PayPal or Google Checkout is that your form will need to have fields on it for both credit card number and expiration date in addition to at least one price field. You can now find a pre-built order form in the FormSpring admin area that contains these fields and will help you get started.

There’s plenty of optional data you can pass on to First Data as well, such as shipping, tax, card verification code, etc. You can also set your form up to pass information for multiple items to First Data instead of a single item, which is another new feature that we added to all of our payment integration methods.

You will need to adjust your security settings when accepting credit cards in order to comply with our Terms of Service (TOS), which states that any credit card numbers stored in your FormSpring database must be encrypted.

Do you plan on using First Data with your forms? Let us know how you are integrating this new payment feature with your forms in the comments below.

Recent Posts:

PayPal Subsriptions & Donations

ryan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:30:50 +0000

Continuing our theme of new payment integration features, we are excited to preview our expanded PayPal functionality. With the new payment integrations we also expanded PayPal so now you have the ability to accept recurring subscriptions and donations using your FormSpring forms. These new features are useful for an unlimited number of possibilities, but some that spring to mind include taking donations for a non-profit, recurring subscriptions for a paid membership website, recurring dues for a club or organization, donations to support free software, etc. The possibilities are endless!

PayPal Subscriptions

Under PayPal Payment Integration, you now have the option of setting up recurring subscriptions. You simply choose the fields for Recurring Amount, which is the amount the user will be billed, and Billing Cycle, which is how often they will be billed (once a week, once a month, once a year, etc.). You can also set how many times you want them to be re-billed (infinite is selected by default). This way you re-bill your customers forever (until they cancel) or for a set period of time, such as once a month for 12 months and then stop automatically.

PayPal Donations

If you use your forms to accept donations, you can choose the Donations option in PayPal Payment Integration, which removes Price and Quantity fields and replaces them with a single field for donation Amount. This user is also redirected to a PayPal page that shows they are making a donation rather than purchasing a product. This is perfect for nonprofits!

As you can see the expanded PayPal integration will really allow you to maximize your FormSpring forms – have ideas how you’ll use this? Let us know below in the comments!Recent Posts:

FormSpring Blog » Payment/Order Forms

Using Multiple Payment Processors on an Order Form

Other Related Posts

Creating Smart Order Forms

Why should I order?

What negative things might happen if I order?

How do I order?

Other Related Posts

Calculating Total, Tax & Shipping On Your Forms

Other Related Posts

Creating A Multi-Item Paypal Order Form

Other Related Posts

Creating A Basic Paypal Order Form

Other Related Posts

Don’t Forget The Emergency Contact Form

Other Related Posts

Are Your Forms Secure?

SSL

Data Encryption

PGP

Alternative to Using PGP

Other Related Posts

Google Checkout and Nonprofits

Other Related Posts

Introducing First Data Payment Integration

Other Related Posts

PayPal Subsriptions & Donations

Other Related Posts