PayPal Express 'Skip Order Review Step' not 100%

Question

Using Magento 1.9 PayPal Payments Pro (Includes Express Checkout). In the Express Checkout configuration I've set

• Skip Order Review Step = Yes
• Enable PayPal Guest Checkout = Yes

In testing PayPal presents different options depending on guest or logged in selection

• As a guest - "Click continue to Complete" button
• As a logged in user - "You're almost done, review on actual site"

Ideally I'd like to have both flows work as it does for the guest flow now. Presumably that's what Skip Order Review Step is supposed to do? Is it a bug perhaps, or some other configuration detail I'm missing on the Magento or PayPal side?

Answer 1

After a call with a PayPal integration engineer I finally figured it out! The Skip Order Review Step only works when customers first work their way through the Magento checkout flow, then when they get to the Payment Method option select PayPal. In this case if you have Skip Order Review Step set to Yes it will indeed skip a final confirmation step on Magento, bill the customer and redirect them to /checkout/onepage/success/ in Magento.

This is not the case for the so called 'Shortcut' links optionally displayed on the product and cart pages. You'll see the two options Shortcut on Shopping Cart and Shortcut on Product View. This is the button I was clicking that raised this question... In my case I was clicking from the cart page. The reason PayPal has to send the customer through a review step in this case is because Magento hasn't collected shipping address or shipping method, so PayPal has to capture at a minimum shipping address and billing address, and optionally shipping method then pass it back over to Magento for a final review.

Long story short - I've disabled both the 'Shortcut' buttons!

Answer 2

But if you force people to have to checkout via the magento option by either registering or as a guest, then you lose customers because many just want to backout. Having the paypal button express checkout work the work it should ensures you keep your customers and make more sales.

I have also noticed that the paypal button does work if you offer free shipping, but if you try to offer paid shipping either from the magento side or from the paypal admin area, then this is where the problem occurs.

This is very frustrating to have paid for a template and spend countless hours setting up the website and adding over 100 products and not having things work out right.

Answer 3

to add clarification to my comment above "But if you force people to have to checkout via the magento option by either registering or as a guest, then you lose customers because many just want to backout." - I have done split testing that customers who have to Register or checkout as a guest often times will leave your website because they don't like registering or filling out long forms. They will only do this if they have already paid to ensure they get their products. But using the paypal express checkout big yellow button creates more sale conversions. People are used to that type of fast checkout.

What are other people doing for their customers to checkout? I cannot imagine that all magento users are forced to have people either register or use the magento checkout option only.