In 2015-16, PayPal has been making major changes to its user interface, including its checkout pages. A client called me the other day saying there might be something wrong with a PayPal button on their site. Some of her customers thought they were in the wrong place when they arrived at PayPal after clicking the button.
When I clicked through I immediately saw what was causing the confusion.
Here’s what the initial checkout screen looked like until recently:
Notice the summary of the order over on the left. When you’re jumping from a website to PayPal, it’s important to know that the items you ordered are being properly passed through.
Now here’s the redesigned page:
Cleaner and easier to read, but where’s the order summary? There is a total payment at the top, but it’s not the first thing your eye sees.
Even if you do see the total, you don’t have the immediate reassurance about what you’re paying for, which is what the old version of the page did with its visible order summary.
You can get your order summary by clicking the down arrow next to the total:
But I think some customers aren’t getting that far. I’d like to see the order summary visible again from the start.
One of the many things I do like about the new design is that it’s much clearer now that you don’t need a PayPal account to use your credit card – with this nice big button at the bottom:
Thanks for posting this.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been integrating paypal with a website for the first time.
This couldnt have happened at a worse time.
I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what I did wrong to be presented with no ‘order summary’.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Quesiton is… ‘if Im not making the visual connection with the cart button on the top corner, will my customers be able to?’
Maybe over time.
As you say, Matt, people will hopefully get to know the new format, but in the meantime… I just had a client receive an email from a confused customer who had abandoned their purchase because they thought their order hadn’t been recorded – how many others are doing that without an explanatory email? What we’ve done on the client’s site is put up a screenshot of the PayPal landing page and explain about dropping down the order summary.