How To Manage a Webform and a Contribution page?

Question

I currently have a webform set up so that an individual, while renewing a membership for an organisation, is required to update the organisations details at the same time as processing a payment.

From my interpretation of CiviCRM (4.4.14) there are two different methods of achieving this:

1. Renewing the Membership as part of the webform. The user completes the detail update and then the contribution page appears as "page 2 of 2"
2. Updating the form and then putting the URL of the contribution page as the confirmation page, so essentially it saves all the updated details before accepting payment.

I am trying to work out though; which it better practice? I know that essentially both payment pages are the same, but are there any advantages (ie security, etc) to directing the user directly to the contribution page?

Answer 1

As far as Civi and the payment processor are concerned, both methods are the same. It's the same contribution page, just presented 2 ways (full-screen, or embedded in a drupal webform). So it just comes down to your preference about the user experience. The first option would present fewer screens to the user, since the 2nd option involves 1 page of webform + 2 pages of contribution form.