My understanding is that every shopper ultimately becomes a Joomla user. At checkout time the user is asked to register.
If PayPal is the only payment method used, is it feasible to have the "Checkout" button just do a "cart upload" command and let PayPal handle the rest of the payment process, skipping the user registration all together? We may be able to then use the IPN callback to update shipping address, inventory, etc.
We wouldn't need "username", "password", "billing address", "shipping address" on the cart because those would be handled by PayPal. Tax calculation would be handled by PayPal too (since the VM side does not know the shipping address at all).
I don't mind doing programming but being new to VM2 I thought I would ask first before I reinvent the wheel.
You may ask why. Any shortening of the checkout process will reduce the risk of cart abandonment. If the shop uses only PayPal anyway, all necessary information could be derived from PayPal.
You can enable "Guest Checkout". Go to configuration --> find User Registration Type
Thank you!
Forgot to mention that I am running the release version 2.0.0 of VM. The UI looks rather different. Both of these checkboxes in configuration are unchecked.
On checkout, ask for registration
Only registered users can checkout
Ah, found that I had to set
New User Account Activation
in Joomla itself to "None"
Still there are too many button clicks...