Learn how to test your Ontraport order forms and related automation so you can guarantee a smooth experience for customers.
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Home > Ontraport for payments > Creating order forms > Testing an order form
Home > Creating order forms > Testing an order form
Testing an order form
You'll learn:
- How to set up a dummy gateway for testing
- Steps to publish and fill out your order form to make sure it works
- Tips for making sure your automation is running smoothly
- How to publish your live gateway once it’s ready
Matthew Bixby
Testing an order form
Learn how to test your Ontraport order forms and related automation so you can guarantee a smooth experience for customers.
- How to set up a dummy gateway for testing
- Steps to publish and fill out your order form to make sure it works
- Tips for making sure your automation is running smoothly
- How to publish your live gateway once it’s ready
Course Instructor
Matthew Bixby
Related resources
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Transcript
In this video, you’ll learn how to test your Ontraport order forms and any automation you’ve set up around the purchasing process. Doing this before any of your customers actually land on your order form guarantees a smooth experience for them.
Order forms that aren’t working like they should are frustrating for both you and your customers. The way to keep everyone happy is to test all your forms in advance to make sure they work.
I’ll show you how to do that in five steps:
First, you’ll setup your dummy gateway, which is used for testing. Then you’ll publish your order form using an Ontraport domain, fill out your order form, check your automation to make sure everything’s running smoothly, and, when everything checks out, you can re-add your live gateway!
Let’s get started.
When you’re testing your order forms, you don’t actually want to run a real transaction and pay processing fees. Instead, use a dummy gateway for these tests. It acts like a real payment gateway but doesn’t actually charge anything.
To use your dummy gateway, go to your order page. Hover over your order form block here and click Edit Block. Then go to Payment settings.
In the “gateway” section, click this “X” next to your default gateway to remove it. Then add your dummy gateway from this dropdown and hit “done.”
If you don’t already have one, go ahead and create a dummy gateway now. It’s easy — just click “create new,” call it “dummy gateway” or “test” or whatever you’d like, then save it. You’ll see a new gateway screen where you can select “dummy gateway” as the type and click save. Then drop right back into the page you were editing before.
Now your form will process your transaction through a dummy gateway — great! Next you’ll publish your page.
Instead of hosting your page to your domain, you’re going to use an Ontraport domain. This keeps site visitors from stumbling upon your order form’s URL before you’re ready to launch it.
For more details about how to host your pages to an Ontraport domain, check out the “Publishing your pages” video.
So now click “Publish.” From there, you can select “use our domain” and add your subdomain, plus the Ontraport domain you want to use.
If you want to add a file path, you can do that here too. For example, you might want to use something like this.
When you’re ready, click Save & Publish.
Nice! Now it’s time to fill out your order form.
When your page is ready, you’ll see this link to your live URL appear on your publish dialog. Click that link — you’ll land on your page to test it.
Take a second to fill out your order form. If you’re testing to see if your digital product gets delivered to customers, make sure you use a real email address. Then you can check your inbox later to make sure everything got delivered.
When you get to the credit card fields, use the number four followed by fifteen “ones” — like this. You can use any future date for the expiration date, and any three digits for the CVC. Your dummy gateway won’t mind, since there isn’t actually a charge going through.
If you’re trying to see what happens when a credit card fails, change the last two digits to “03” instead, like this.
When your form is all filled out, submit it.
Your next step is to check your automation. This is where you’ll look at everything that happens after someone makes a purchase to make sure it’s exactly what you planned.
While your specific automations will differ depending on the product, here are some items you should always look at:
First, check your thank you page. Make sure you’re using the right one — if you are, awesome! If not, go back and update your form’s settings and publish your changes.
Now check your automation. Go to the campaign that should be associated with your form, and check your trigger.
Say you have a trigger for “Contact purchases ‘The Ultimate Bodyweight Ebook.’” Make sure your test contact was actually added there. If you see it, click on this number above “was here” on your trigger. Now you can double-check to make sure it was actually your test contact and not someone else.
If you don’t see your contact, double-check your time frame and make sure you’re using “all time data” or “today.”
Next up is your inbox. There are two things to look for here:
First, your invoice. If you chose to send an invoice, it should get to your inbox pretty quickly after you submit the form.
Second is your delivery email, if you’re selling a digital product. If it’s a physical product, this will be a confirmation email instead.
It’s good to reach out as soon as a customer buys, regardless of the product you’re selling. So make sure you can see that email in your own inbox.
If you see that your test contact has hit your “send an email” element on the map, but you still haven’t received the email, check your spam folder, just to be safe.
Ontraport automatically protects you from sending emails that seem particularly “spammy.” So if your email lands in the spam folder, there’s a chance you may be using the same email address for both your test email and “send from” address. Inbox providers don’t love this — to them, sending an email to an identical address seems a little fishy.
So if this happens to you, try testing again with an email address that isn’t using the same domain as your “send from” address, like a gmail address.
When you’ve fixed any snags in your system revealed by these steps, you can feel confident that your automation is running flawlessly.
Once you feel good about everything, you can add your normal payment gateway back to your form and host your page to your own domain. Then you’re good to go!
That’s it! You’ve learned how to test your order forms in Ontraport.
To make sales, you have to give your customers a reliable way to buy from you — and now you have the knowledge and tools you need to make that happen.
Check out some other “Ontraport for Payments” videos to learn more about managing order forms and customer purchases
Order forms that aren’t working like they should are frustrating for both you and your customers. The way to keep everyone happy is to test all your forms in advance to make sure they work.
I’ll show you how to do that in five steps:
First, you’ll setup your dummy gateway, which is used for testing. Then you’ll publish your order form using an Ontraport domain, fill out your order form, check your automation to make sure everything’s running smoothly, and, when everything checks out, you can re-add your live gateway!
Let’s get started.
When you’re testing your order forms, you don’t actually want to run a real transaction and pay processing fees. Instead, use a dummy gateway for these tests. It acts like a real payment gateway but doesn’t actually charge anything.
To use your dummy gateway, go to your order page. Hover over your order form block here and click Edit Block. Then go to Payment settings.
In the “gateway” section, click this “X” next to your default gateway to remove it. Then add your dummy gateway from this dropdown and hit “done.”
If you don’t already have one, go ahead and create a dummy gateway now. It’s easy — just click “create new,” call it “dummy gateway” or “test” or whatever you’d like, then save it. You’ll see a new gateway screen where you can select “dummy gateway” as the type and click save. Then drop right back into the page you were editing before.
Now your form will process your transaction through a dummy gateway — great! Next you’ll publish your page.
Instead of hosting your page to your domain, you’re going to use an Ontraport domain. This keeps site visitors from stumbling upon your order form’s URL before you’re ready to launch it.
For more details about how to host your pages to an Ontraport domain, check out the “Publishing your pages” video.
So now click “Publish.” From there, you can select “use our domain” and add your subdomain, plus the Ontraport domain you want to use.
If you want to add a file path, you can do that here too. For example, you might want to use something like this.
When you’re ready, click Save & Publish.
Nice! Now it’s time to fill out your order form.
When your page is ready, you’ll see this link to your live URL appear on your publish dialog. Click that link — you’ll land on your page to test it.
Take a second to fill out your order form. If you’re testing to see if your digital product gets delivered to customers, make sure you use a real email address. Then you can check your inbox later to make sure everything got delivered.
When you get to the credit card fields, use the number four followed by fifteen “ones” — like this. You can use any future date for the expiration date, and any three digits for the CVC. Your dummy gateway won’t mind, since there isn’t actually a charge going through.
If you’re trying to see what happens when a credit card fails, change the last two digits to “03” instead, like this.
When your form is all filled out, submit it.
Your next step is to check your automation. This is where you’ll look at everything that happens after someone makes a purchase to make sure it’s exactly what you planned.
While your specific automations will differ depending on the product, here are some items you should always look at:
First, check your thank you page. Make sure you’re using the right one — if you are, awesome! If not, go back and update your form’s settings and publish your changes.
Now check your automation. Go to the campaign that should be associated with your form, and check your trigger.
Say you have a trigger for “Contact purchases ‘The Ultimate Bodyweight Ebook.’” Make sure your test contact was actually added there. If you see it, click on this number above “was here” on your trigger. Now you can double-check to make sure it was actually your test contact and not someone else.
If you don’t see your contact, double-check your time frame and make sure you’re using “all time data” or “today.”
Next up is your inbox. There are two things to look for here:
First, your invoice. If you chose to send an invoice, it should get to your inbox pretty quickly after you submit the form.
Second is your delivery email, if you’re selling a digital product. If it’s a physical product, this will be a confirmation email instead.
It’s good to reach out as soon as a customer buys, regardless of the product you’re selling. So make sure you can see that email in your own inbox.
If you see that your test contact has hit your “send an email” element on the map, but you still haven’t received the email, check your spam folder, just to be safe.
Ontraport automatically protects you from sending emails that seem particularly “spammy.” So if your email lands in the spam folder, there’s a chance you may be using the same email address for both your test email and “send from” address. Inbox providers don’t love this — to them, sending an email to an identical address seems a little fishy.
So if this happens to you, try testing again with an email address that isn’t using the same domain as your “send from” address, like a gmail address.
When you’ve fixed any snags in your system revealed by these steps, you can feel confident that your automation is running flawlessly.
Once you feel good about everything, you can add your normal payment gateway back to your form and host your page to your own domain. Then you’re good to go!
That’s it! You’ve learned how to test your order forms in Ontraport.
To make sales, you have to give your customers a reliable way to buy from you — and now you have the knowledge and tools you need to make that happen.
Check out some other “Ontraport for Payments” videos to learn more about managing order forms and customer purchases
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