View Cart
RSS FeedCalculating shipping costs with PDG Commerce
In numerous focus groups and research studies, a consistent message from people who do not shop online frequently was that they felt shipping costs were too exorbitant. Sure, you can buy the same battery for your car alarm’s remote for $2.00 online that the “big box” stores sell for $8.99, but by the time you pay $6.00 shipping your savings have all but dwindled away. So how do you come up with shipping costs that are accurate enough to be fair to your customers, while still protecting you from unnecessary and costly losses when the amount charged doesn’t cover your actual expenses? PDG Commerce provides one of the most comprehensive shipping calculators found within any ecommerce software solution that can fit the needs of virtually any merchant.
Right out of the gate, PDG Commerce provides the ability to get real-time rate quotes for major shipping carriers including UPS, USPS, FedEx, and prior to their moving out of the US market to focus on international shipping, DHL. With any one of these carriers, PDG Commerce can send the shipping weights of the items being ordered (can be entered as dimensional weights for oversize items), the origin zip code of where your shipments originate and the customer’s shipping address and get back immediate quotes directly from the carrier. You can specify specific services (e.g. ground, overnight, etc.) or offer your customers a comparison of all the service types offered by the carrier with a “radial” option for them to choose their preferred method. “But what about my packaging and handling costs”, you ask. Keep reading and we’ll talk about the options available to you to help “pad” the quote from the carrier.
Setting up the rate quoting ability for any of the carriers above is generally a simple task that can be completed within a few minutes. Each carrier will have a registration process that you must go through in order to subscribe to their services. Fortunately, there are no costs in order to subscribe and you are NOT required to have an account with the carrier in order to use their quoting tools. Once you’ve registered, you’ll specify some options for how you ship your products. Do you have a daily pick up with the carrier or will you be dropping it at one of their facilities? Will you be using your own packaging or packaging supplied by the carrier? Remember that each of these options, just as if you were filling out the “get quote” form on the carrier’s own site, will impact the final quoted price. As a result, it is very important that you choose the correct options in order to get the most accurate rates possible.
In addition to the real-time quoting options, PDG Commerce will also allow you to create your own shipping “tiers” in order to incorporate your own unique shipping tables. Based on the weight of the total order, the quantity of items being ordered or the subtotal value of the order, you can specify variable amounts to match any of the tiers specified. For example, if you want to charge $4.99 shipping if the user orders up to 3 items, and $6.99 if they order between 4 and 6 items, you can set up a “ship by quantity” rule set that says if they order between “1″ (start of tier) and “3″ (end of tier) to charge $4.99 with a second tier from “4″ (start) to “6″ (end) with a cost of $6.99. You can set up as many tiers as you need, and when you feel confident that you’ve accounted for your typical order volume and want to have an “end all, be all” charge “$X.XX if they order “Y” or more, a dash ( – ) as the tier max will serve as infinity and apply that rule set to anything greater than the specified minimum for the tier.
Important note regarding “ship by weight” and “ship by subtotal” shipping tiers… You need to accommodate for “fractions” of a whole. If you set up a tier that says charge one amount for orders between “$0.00″ and “$10.00″ and your next tier is from “$11.00″ to “$20.00″, guess what happens when someone’s total is $10.59? It doesn’t match either tier and no shipping costs would be applied!!! Same thing for weights if you plan to put in fractional weights for items. For the sample above, the preferred setting would be a “$0.00″ to “$10.00″ tier and then a “$10.01″ to $20.00″ tier.
As promised, now we’re going to talk about how you can set up additional costs for packaging, handling and other costs that might not be part of the initial rate calculation. As is often the case, we’ll be giving you a couple of different options (we like to make everyone happy…).
For someone wanting a quick “down and dirty” set up, you can use the “additional shipping” field for the shipping method to specify an additional dollar amount (e.g. putting in $2.00 would add a “one time” $2.00 to the quoted amount) or an additional percentage of the quoted amount (e.g. putting in 10% would result in a $15.00 quote getting $1.50 added). The costs that the end user sees will be labled “shipping & handling” and will not itemize which is part of the quote and which is part of your additional costs. Note that these values can either add to or subtract from the quote. A positive amount/percentage in the field indicates an addition to the quoted amount. A negative value (e.g. -2.00 or -20%) would discount the quoted amount.
If your needs are a little more complex, another option available to you is to combine any number of the shipping calculators. For example, you can set up the basic quoting system to quote one of the carrier’s rates to get the actual shipping costs, and then set up a “ship by quantity” table that will add in only the cost for your additional packing and handling expenses. You can combine any number of these shipping options in order to achieve the most accurate quotes possible.
Last but not least… Advertise your low cost shipping! If you charge only the actual carrier’s rates, let people know that from the moment they enter your site. Dispel the myth off “inflated” shipping charges right there on your home page or on a “shipping policy” page. Something else to consider is offering free shipping if the user exceeds a certain threshold. PDG Commerce will allow you to set up a shipping discount when you’re setting up the shipping rule. If you want to offer free ground shipping for orders over $50.00, you’ll tell PDG to discount shipping by “100%” for orders over “$50.00″ subtotal. Then make sure that you mention this offer consistently throughout your site to encourage visitors to keep shopping until they meet that threshold. Even if they ultimately spend more money with you, the perceived value of getting something for nothing (e.g. “free shipping”) can entice users to keep on spending!
