Support Articles
Delivery options for your online shop
16 December 2010Shipping zones and delivery methods explained.
Many online shops including Darwin Web Design eShop packages have a good selection of delivery options for any type of business.
Shipping Zones
The first step is to decide where you want to deliver your products to. For example you could narrow it down via the following options:
- global (eg worldwide)
- country (eg Australia only)
- state (eg only local clients in the NT)
- postcode (specific suburbs only)
The shipping zone is determined by the delivery address of your customer. For example, typically there would be an international (global) zone for all of your overseas customers (if you want to sell overseas) and an Australian (country) zone for your local customers. The Australian zone can even be divided by state or postcode if you want to charge different rates for places closer to home. If you are undertaking an online shop with Darwin Web Design, please tell me whether you want to sell overseas or to specific countries only, I will then set up the zones for you. The following methods can be applied to any zone and I will also need to know which method/s you would like to use for each geographical zone.
Delivery methods
Real time shipping quotes with Australia Post
This is the most popular setting. Your website will connect with Aussie Post to calculate the delivery charges for you based on the total dimensions and weight of items purchased! For Australian delivery there is Regular or Express and with international deliveries, there is Express, Airmail or Sea Mail. The customer can choose and pay for the one they would like (and this will be displayed on the order you receive).
The delivery cost can be calculated by the customer at checkout, before proceeding to final payment - by the customer putting in their country and state of origin (see screenshot below from checkout page):
Once the order goes to the checkout page, the shipping is confirmed when the customer adds their full delivery address to the online form. All you need to do is enter the dimensions and weight for each product and the script does the rest.
Free Shipping
Free shipping may be an option if you want to factor in an average shipping price into your product's pricing or promote this as a marketing angle. It can be applied a couple of different ways to any zone:
- Storewide: I can set up free shipping to any zone you choose. For example you may want to apply free shipping to the state you live in or some particular postcodes in your area where you can deliver for free but not places further afield.
- Product specific: When you edit a particular product, you can click a product’s checkbox to toggle free shipping on or off, this is optional. When you click 'Yes', this will over-ride any other shipping settings I have for your site and give free shipping regardless of destination. You may want to do this for non-physical products, such as e-books, that do not require physical shipping or if you want to have a special promotion with a certain product or range of products with free shipping. If you do not click 'Yes', the normal shipping settings will apply.
Great feature - In the 'advanced search' feature of your website, customers can also search products offering free shipping.
Fixed shipping cost
Fixed shipping cost can be applied a few of different ways to any zone:
- Flat rate per item: A fixed shipping cost that is the same for each item in your shop. For example: If someone orders 3 things, that shipping cost will be applied 3 times. See note below**
- Flat rate per order: This is a fixed shipping cost similar to above, but its one flat rate that you nominate based per order regardless of how many items are sold.
- Ship by weight: You can specify your own shipping costs based on a list of weight ranges of your products. This is sort of like the Australia Post option but entered manually. For example: When weight is greater than or equal to x Grams and less than y Grams shipping is $xyz, these can be listed to form your own customised shipping calculation. This applies to all products in your shop.
- Ship by order total: This is a similar setup to ship by weight but the delivery fee is calculated on how much the total order amounts to. For example: When the total is greater than or equal to $x and less than $y shipping is $xyz.
- ** You can over-ride the above settings with a product specific flat rate per item: The above 4 options are storewide based on a shipping zone and I need to set them up for you. When you edit a particular product, you can optionally enter a fixed shipping cost. This will be specific to that product only for all destinations and override any other shipping settings which are set up for your shop.
Contact me:
If I am setting up your online shop, please let me know which options above would suit your requirements.