Providing Shipping Options
Providing your Quick Shopping Cart storefront customers with a variety of options when it comes to shipping an order is an important way to close the sale. Many shoppers cancel their purchase if they are not satisfied with the shipping options provided.
When shoppers purchase an item, they are presented with the shipping options you define, and the total order charges include a "Shipping" charge. When using FedEx, UPS, or USPS, you can specify whether the shipping is calculated for each item shipping individually or for multiple items packaged together. You can also establish a handling fee to apply to all orders.
Shipping is configured in two ways: as available to all products in your catalog and on a product-by-product basis. If you elect to provide shipping available to all products, all selected options are presented to the shopper. If you elect to not provide shipping, no options are available. It is important to accurately define the weight and dimensions of each product when you add a product to your catalog because those settings are used to calculate the shipping charge to your customers.
For additional information on setting shipping prices on a per-product basis, see Setting Custom Options for Price-Based Shipping.
Shipping Multiple Items
You can set up UPS or United States Postal Service shipping to calculate rates for multiple items shipping in the same package. When you select this shipping option, you must:
- Define the package sizes you use to ship.
- Indicate, for each product in your catalog, whether to charge for shipping.
- Indicate, for each product in your catalog, whether the item ships in its own package.
- Accurately define the weight and dimensions of each product.
To get the multi-item rates, Quick Shopping Cart uses your package dimensions and the product dimensions to "pack" as many items that a package holds, then it starts to "pack" a new package. When all items in the order are accounted for, Quick Shopping Cart sends this information to the rate servers to get a shipping quote.
If the items you are shipping require padding or other packing materials, account for this in the product dimensions. For example, if you have a porcelain figurine that is 4" x 4" x 4", you may want to specify the product dimensions as 6" x 6" x 6".
NOTE: If you select to ship multiple products in the same package, you need to configure the maximum weight and size you can use. Items are packed automatically based on declared item volume and declared box volume. Items exceeding max box weight or size ship separately.
When you receive an order, the Order Detail screen displays the number of packages and the package contents that Quick Shopping Cart used to charge shipping rates. This gives you an idea of how the rates were determined. Of course, how you actually package and ship the items is up to you. You may want to run some tests and fine-tune your product dimensions to get shipping rates as close as possible to what the actual shipping costs are.
