Order Confirmation Pages

What Is Order Confirmation?

The Order Confirmation page is where the buyer confirms they want to proceed with the order. It is a pre-order step; it is not a thank you page. If the buyer cancels on this page then there is no order. The page consists of an order summary and a “confirm order” button. Only when the buyer clicks the Confirm Order button, is the initial charge is taken, and a recurring payment agreement is set up.

You have an option whether or not to use order confirmation pages on a subscription by subscription basis.

What Does An Order Confirmation Page Look Like?

Below is an example of an order confirmation page It clearly shows that they are only being billed for the initial charge today, and will be billed for the first of the recurring charges in however many days time. Also shown will be any tax and shipping costs, and the order total.

The above example confirmation page below shows an initial charge of $49.00, followed by recurring charges of $7.95.

When To Use An Order Confirmation Page

When there is a delay before the first recurring billing charge, it is recommended that you use an order confirmation page. This will show the buyer the charge that will be taken immediately on PayPal, and has a separate line item showing the recurring charge that will start in n days time (as defined by the billing delay).

Payment plans are another good example of when to use this technique as it gives the initial payment and the number of remaining payments, and the all important total order value.

This makes it crystal clear to the buyer exactly what the charges are, and when they will happen, and is in line with PayPal’s operating guidelines.

Creating an Order Confirmation Process

There are two steps to setting up the order confirmation: the first is to create the page on WordPress and the second is to configure the subscription to use that page.

If your instructions on the page are non-product specific you may only need a single order confirmation page which you can use for all your payment plans and subscriptions. However if you have product-specific instructions then you will need to put these instructions on a different order confirmation page.

Step One: Create The Order Confirmation Page

Firstly add a new page, go into the HTML editor and enter the subb-confirm shortcode in square brackets. Add any appropriate text before or after the short code. For example:

The subb-confirm short code displays an order summary that shows a line by line breakdown of charges including any tax and shipping and then displays an “Order Confirm” button. When the user clicks the button the plugin takes any immediate payment and sets up an Recurring Payment Profile on PayPal, sets up the contact and order on Infusionsoft including any affiliate information, runs any required action set and then sends the user to the thank you page.

In SubscriptionBoss Settings, you have a choice of a number of confirm order buttons, or you can define your own. For example, to display your own big yellow confirmation button then you code use:

[ subb-confirm button="http://www.mysite.com/images/big-yellow-order-confirm.png"]

Note that a space has been added above to stop the short code being translated – remove the space after the square bracket when you use short codes

Step Two: Choosing Your Order Confirmation Page

To set the newly created page as the order confirmation page for the subscription just simply select it from the dropdown listbox in the Order Confirmation section for the subscription.

Useful Tips

When testing the ordering of your subscription on the PayPal checkout out page, pay particular attention to the text on the button .

If it reads “Agree and Pay” then there is NO order confirmation page and on clicking the button the transaction will take place.

If it reads “Agree and Continue” then there is an order confirmation page and PayPal will not take payment until the order is confirmed.

So if you make a mistake and specify an order confirmation page in Step Two above that does NOT have an “Confirm Order” button then the transaction will not be able to be completed as the buyer will be unable to confirm the order.

Troubleshooting

The most common problem is to confuse Thank you pages and Order Confirmation pages and specify the “Thank You For Your Order Page” as the Order Confirmation page in Step Two. The buyer thinks they have purchased as they end up on the Thank You page however the order was not confirmed so no transaction has taken place.

The solution here is simply to change the Order Confirmation Page setting to “No Order Confirmation” (if confirmation is not required) or to choose an order confirmation page that has been set up correctly.