Drupal 7 - How To Reduce Payment Methods Confusion at Ubercart Checkout (Bank Transfer)

CentOS 7 / Ubercart 7

How To Reduce Payment Methods Confusion at Ubercart Checkout

One thing we notice with our Drupal 7 eCommerce website is confusion when it comes to selecting a Payment Method during checkout.

When we offer a single payment method (PayPal, for example), the customer gets to the Payment Method selection pane in checkout and then doesn't know what to do, because they are asked to make a choice - and then not presented with a choice.

The easy way to get around this is to offer something like an Offline Payment Method: 

Here's where and how to get it:

First, I backed up my site...

# ./backup.mobile.holisticpethelp.com.bash
backing up website...
Backing up database...

DONE!

Then I installed the module by:

A)  Right-clicking tar.gz (13.57 KB) in the Downloads area

B)  Selecting Copy link address 

C) Navigating to the Linux CLI

D) Performing the following:

# pwd
<drupal_root>/sites/all/modules
# wget https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/uc_bank_transfer-7.x-1.0-beta1.tar.gz
--2019-11-30 07:39:55--  https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/uc_bank_transfer-7.x-1.0-beta1.tar.gz
Resolving ftp.drupal.org (ftp.drupal.org)... 151.101.2.217, 151.101.66.217, 151.101.130.217, ...
Connecting to ftp.drupal.org (ftp.drupal.org)|151.101.2.217|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 13899 (14K) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘uc_bank_transfer-7.x-1.0-beta1.tar.gz’

100%[========================================================>] 13,899      --.-K/s   in 0.001s

2019-11-30 07:39:56 (16.1 MB/s) - ‘uc_bank_transfer-7.x-1.0-beta1.tar.gz’ saved [13899/13899]

# tar -zxvf uc_bank_transfer-7.x-1.0-beta1.tar.gz
uc_bank_transfer/
uc_bank_transfer/uc_bank_transfer.admin.inc
uc_bank_transfer/README.txt
uc_bank_transfer/uc_bank_transfer.install
uc_bank_transfer/LICENSE.txt
uc_bank_transfer/uc_bank_transfer.module
uc_bank_transfer/uc_bank_transfer.info
uc_bank_transfer/template/
uc_bank_transfer/template/uc-order--customer-bank_transfer.tpl.php

The next step was to use the Drupal 7 Administrator GUI to turn ON the Bank Transfer Module:

Then, click on Save configuration:

After that, navigate to the Configuration page of the Payment Methods area of Store (Ubercart), and click on settings:

Enter the appropriate information under BANK DETAILS (by clicking on it to expand it) and then click on Save configuration:

Next, we needed to enable Translation for the Ubercart Bank Transfer Module.

Confusingly, the translation of text is done in two different places in Drupal 7, depending on what the nature of the text is (Constant or a Variable).

How To Translate Ubercart Bank Transfer Constants in Drupal 7

Ubercart Bank Transfer Module Constants are translated in the Translate interface area:

The next part is to Translate Variables, so the 

How To Translate Ubercart Bank Transfer Variables in Drupal 7

Ubercart Bank Transfer Module Variables are a bit trickier to accomplish.

First, the variables must be activated as multilingual variables in the Multilingual settings interface of the Regional and language area:

After that, the individual strings can be translated in the Bank Transfer settings area:

Conclusion:

After putting in the Ubercart Bank Transfer Module, things worked "OK", but we didn't love it because it uses a workflow that we think will confuse our customers:

1)  It results in an "Order Complete" message, but that's not strictly true.  We would prefer that the message reads "Order Pending Transfer Confirmation" or something like that.

2)  The module didn't demand a transaction / confirmation number from the user, which we would prefer to have happen rather than proceeding through the checkout - we are never going to ship before receiving payment, so stalling the transaction at this point makes sense to us.

I hope to modify the Ubercart Bank Transfer Module to suit our needs better, and mirror our other payment methods.  So, look for a future post about How To Make The Bank Transfer Module Work Like PayPal.

REFERENCES:

https://www.drupal.org/project/uc_bank_transfer