Customize Your PayPal Checkout Page

As I set up another checkout page for a client, it occurred to me that I’d never shared with anyone the steps it takes to replace the simple text header identifying your store with a logo. It’s actually pretty easy to do some basic customization. I spent more time trying to find the tools than I did doing the customization. So here you go.

When you’re logged into your PayPal account, click the My Account tab, then Profile. From there, go into My selling tools and look for Custom payment pages. Click Update.

You can’t edit the default page, so click Add to create a new one. Give it a descriptive name (30 characters, no spaces).

The first two entries apply to the new PayPal checkout page. In the Logo Image URL field you’ll define the location of your logo file*, and Cart Area Gradient Color will be create a CSS gradient from whatever color you specify at the bottom of the area to white at top.

The rest of the entries apply to the classic PayPal checkout page. For some strange reason, you can only use a 950px wide header image even though the div is 960px wide.

*Because PayPal is a secure site, you have to host your graphic file on a secure server as well. If you don’t, your customers will get a warning about some elements on your checkout page being unsecure. This tends to freak people out. If you don’t have access to a secure server, I’d suggest using SSLpic, which is free, easy to use, and works perfectly with PayPal.

Any questions? Comment away.