WordPress.com users have endured long processes when adding a payment button on their sites for an extended period. Specifically, adding a PayPal payment option, which is still available for Premium and Business plans, involves multiple hurdles: first, a blogger is required to get a link code from his PayPal account, copy it to an ‘email’ tab, copy another code for placement of a PayPal button, add a Text widget before saving the process. It should be noted that getting a PayPal Button code is another 9-step process that consumes up to 15 minutes of a blogger’s slash web developer’s time.
In a blogpost, Automattic, the web development corporation that owns WordPress acknowledges that adding a PayPal payment solution is not user friendly, which is why a simpler process will be rolled out.
“So a small team of engineers and designers came together to solve that problem with the intent of releasing a “Version One” with which we could start to understand how a simpler payment button could be used by our customers. It’s currently limited to our Premium and Business Plan members while we tune and refine how it can work best,” says the blogpost.
Simply put, a user will open a new post, select ‘Insert Content,’ and choose ‘Add Payment Button.’ Afterward, he/she will be prompted to fill other details for product(s) to be sold (or a donation), including an email address and PayPall account of where money should be deposited. It is that straightforward, thanks to behind-the-scenes additions.
“We spent a lot of time with customers, particularly small business owners, to learn about what they need from their websites. We learned that many of them just want a simple way to take payments. So we used that as our guiding principle, make it as simple as possible for these business owners to add a payment button to their site,” explains John Maeda, global head of computational design and inclusion at parent company Automattic.
As mentioned, this feature is limited to Premium and Business subscribers.
