For a long time, I've heard Joomla small business users complain about a lack of certain features in Virtuemart. The biggest complaint is when shoppers have to leave their ecommerce website to enter their credit card or paypal account information on paypal.com which causes

• more complicated checkout process
• broken online shopping experience

So for onsite processing, here are steps that your Joomla developer needs to complete:  

1. Make a backup of your Joomla website.
2. Integrate Paypal Pro payment gateway on a test installation.
3. Test Paypal Pro payment gateway.
4. Implement the same changes on the official website.
5. Test the changes on the official website!

For this, your Joomla designer or you will also need to:

• Purchase and install 1 SSL Certificate.
• Re-key SSL certificate every year.
• Apply for a PayPal Pro Account.
• Meet current PCI compliance standards. To use Website Payments Pro, you need to comply with security requirements for collecting and transmitting payment data.

Possible issues include but are not limited to https:// issues with your Joomla template, cross browser compatibility problems, security issues with your website and more. Therefore, considering that Virtuemart shopping cart does not come pre-integrated with PayPal's Website Payments Pro, you will either need programming skills, or the resources to hire a Joomla programmer.

So this year consider making it easier for your existing and new Virtuemart shoppers to purchase your products!

Ogy on Twitter
Joomla consultant