Shopping Cart Credit Card Drop Down

[juliaritz]

I recently had an opportunity to spend time with Andy Edmonds, who is a conversion/GA expert, has worked fro Microsoft and now for Ebay. In reviewing my site for conversion opps, he said the drop down for the credit cards on the shopping cart is something that needs to be removed. he said this does affect conversion - the checkout needs to be made as simple as possible for the client. My developer thought he had a work around on this by adding the paypal button along with the checkout button, but the drop down still appears. He has spoke with Shopsite and was told as long as we offer paypal, this drop down will stay. What can we do to get this fixed? This to me seems like a small fix (though honestly I do not know what is involved) - but Andy is an expert and I trust he has done a lot of testing over the years - and I think we need to take his advice. Any thoughts or help is much appreciated!

[Jim]

If you only have one payment type, ( i.e. only credit cards, or only PayPal, or only Google Checkout) then the drop down will not display on the first shopping cart screen. If you have multiple types of payment then the dropdown option is required so the proper form fields can be displayed on the billing screen that follows.

This is an integral part of the shopping cart and would not be a simple thing to change. There is a class for the payment types and you might be able to use css to change it to radio buttons but it would still have to appear on the first shopping cart screen.

[juliaritz]

Thnx Jim - but I would like to point out if Google Checkout is enabled there is no drop down menu. Why can’t the same be done Pay Pal?

[Jim]

The Google Checkout option has a "Pre" shopping cart screen before the regular shopping cart screen. When we implemented Google Checkout they had a requirement that we could collect NO personal information from the shopper including zip code and no other payment option was allowed on the same screen.. Because of those requirements we had to add an additional screen which would only show the Google Checkout option. They have since loosened up on those requirements so in recent versions there is an option to turn off the Pre screen. If that option is turned off then you will see other payment options in a drop down list on the same screen where the Google Checkout button is displayed.