When selling online with PayPal users are redirected from the original site to a custom checkout page that displays the name or email address of the seller. In my opinion this looks pretty tacky and I don’t always want the focus to be on my email address when my customers are buying from me. Thankfully PayPal has some settings that let you upload a custom 750×90 pixel banner and change the appearance.
Here are the steps to upload a custom PayPal header banner:
- Log into PayPal and navigate to Profile then click My Selling Tools on the left
- Under “Selling online” it says “Custom payment pages” click Update
- Click Add and then name your new page style and enter the URL for your header image (PayPal recommends it be kept on an https URL but I haven’t noticed any errors by using standard http).
- Once you’ve saved your new custom page style you just need to choose it as the primary style and you’re all set!
Here’s a sample custom header image I use for a site I did called Make it Be. Feel free to download and modify this banner to suit your own needs.
Here are some screenshots from the steps listed above. The first one shows how to get to the custom payment page options.
This shot shows where you add a new page style and then later make it the primary style instead of the default PayPal style.
This last screenshot actually shows where you name the new custom page style and paste in the URL to your custom header image. Remember, using https means you have to pay a bit more for hosting and your IP address might change which means updating your content management system or whatever you use to run your website. The risk of not using https for your banner here is that some users could get a popup that says “some elements on this page are not secure” which could cost you a sale if it makes them nervous. To fix this you’ll have to purchase an SSL certificate and pay extra for hosting. The difference would be http://mysite.com/image.jpg vs. https://mysite.com/image.jpg but don’t just put that s in there if you don’t have an SSL certificate or it will throw other errors.
