Before you begin to think about taking your site live, you should absolutely run a test transaction. Running a test transaction on your website will tell you whether you have your payment gateway set up properly or not. It’s going to let you know if there’s an error, and as a business owner, you would much rather discover that than wait for a potential customer to discover it.

There are only a few things you’re going to need to complete this process and it should take you about five minutes if all goes well.

Run Test Transaction

1. Make sure you are logged in to your Art Storefronts SIte Manager. This is sometimes referred to as the back-end of the site or the Control Panel.
   When you’re sure you’re logged in and in the right place, click on the button at the top titled SITE SETTINGS.
   
   
   
   Please Note: This process will only work for Stripe and Authorize.net. It does not work for PayPal.
   
   
   
   
2. Now, before you move forward, you need to find the tab titled SHOPPING CART.
   
   
   
3. After you’re sure you’ve clicked on the right tab, scroll down and you should see a button labeled RUN A TEST TRANSACTION. Click on that button.
   
   
   
4. A pop-up is going to appear and you’re going to need to go through each field and fill it out with your credit card information.
   
   
   
5. Finish up the pop-up form and click on Attempt Charge.
   
   Please Note: This will attempt to charge your credit card for $1, to make sure your merchant account is able to accept transactions. After this charge is made, you should be able to login to your merchant account and refund the transaction if you wish. If the charge goes through, all will be well. If it does not, you will receive a message saying it was declined and you should review your Merchant information.
   
   
   
   

Run Test Transaction - Paypal

To run a test transaction for PayPal, it is only necessary to begin a transaction, and if you have successfully set up your API keys you will be redirected to PayPal's site.

1. Make sure PayPal is a selected payment option on your site
   
2. Go to the Front end of your website and go through the purchasing in the same way your customer would, by selecting an image and go through the checkout process.
   
3. When you get to the step to pay select paypal as your payment choice and press confirm.
   
4. If once you select confirm you are redirected to paypal’s site, your site is set up correctly to accept paypal payments.
   

Troubleshooting

1. I got an error message when I attempted my charge.
   1. Double check your Payment Gateway credentials. If they aren’t correct, the charge won’t go through.
   2. Make sure your card number was entered properly. If it wasn’t it won’t go through.
2. The pop-up where I can enter my card information isn’t popping up.
   1. You may need to use an approved browser. If you’re using anything other than Firefox or Chrome, you should stop and use either Chrome or Firefox.
   2. If you’re using an approved browser, you may need to clear your cache. Check out how to clear the cache by using the article on How To: Clear your Cache.

What do I do next?

Once your test transaction has been run and you’re sure it’s gone through, it’s time to move on and start thinking about your taxes. Depending on where you live and what your laws are, you may need to set up your tax methods. Art Storefronts can’t tell you what you should set up for your taxes, but we can show you how. To learn more, check out the article How To: Enable a Tax Method.