As a business owner, you want to find that magic balance between charging enough to cover shipping costs, but not so much that you scare customers away. Shoppers want to feel like they’re paying a fair rate for reliable shipping that will deliver their goods quickly.
But when you’re working hard to build your business and manage sales, the last thing you want to do is spend a lot of your valuable time filling out paperwork and manually keeping customers in the loop.
Top-performing stores have accurate, seamless shipping processes for both customers and merchants. Ready to level up your store?
WooCommerce has the right tools to automate the ecommerce shipping process for accurate rates, smooth processes, and happy shoppers.
Customizing shipping options based on conditions
When you sell a variety of products to a wide geographical area, shipping can become complex. Core WooCommerce shipping options allow you to set up different rates based on destination and shipping class. But if you need more options, consider adding the Conditional Shipping and Payments extension.
You can set rules for individual products or categories in addition to shipping classes. Or, trigger shipping options to display on specific products, total cart amounts, or certain users.
Perhaps you’d like to:
- Allow local pickup only for fresh foods or flowers.
- Disallow courier shipping if a product is over a certain weight or size.
- Block items marked as hazardous from being shipped by regular mail.
- Disallow faster shipping options if an item in the cart is on backorder.
- Change the shipping options if a certain coupon or gift card is used.
Do you sell memberships or subscriptions? Conditional Shipping and Payments integrates with popular extensions like WooCommerce Memberships and WooCommerce Subscriptions, allowing you to offer subscribers discounted shipping rates or exclusive shipping methods like express delivery.
No matter what you’re selling, and to whom, you’ll be able to make sure the right shipping rates and payment gateways are offered for the right product and cart combinations.
Calculating shipping based on weight
If you’d like to calculate your shipping rates based on weight or number of other items, you’ll need the Table Rate Shipping extension. With it, you can set rules based on everything from destination and weight to cart items and price.
Table Rate Shipping allows you to:
- Charge a higher rate for heavy or bulky items.
- Charge a higher rate for items that require additional packaging.
- Offer free shipping if a certain number of items are purchased.
- Add a flat shipping fee for multiple items of the same type.
- Only ship certain add-on products if they’re part of a larger order.
If your shipping rates depend heavily on the actual products purchased, then this extension will ensure that your customers are only charged for what they order, building trust and ensuring that they come back for more.
Automating shipping accurately
When you’re a business owner, time is money, and American shops can save both by adding the free WooCommerce Shipping extension. It connects directly to USPS and DHL and is fully integrated in your checkout and order fulfillment process.
Without cutting and pasting or manually filling out paperwork, you can print shipping labels directly from your dashboard. No need to waste time figuring out labels — just click, print, and add them to your package.
The best part is that you’ll save money, too — up to 90% off USPS rates and 67% off of DHL rates. Then, pass the savings on to your shoppers. And lower shipping fees mean happier, more loyal customers.
Want to take it a step further and show live shipping calculations at checkout? If you’ve entered size and weight information for your products, you can connect directly to USPS for up-to-the-minute, live quotes. All you need is the USPS Shipping Method extension.
Tracking shipments
Keeping your customers in the loop is a win-win situation. They’ll be happier knowing what will arrive and when; you’ll be able to spend less time fielding customer questions; and you’ll be able to track packages yourself when disputes arise.
The Shipment Tracking extension connects to most major mail providers, including USPS, DHL, UPS, FedEx, Royal Mail, and more. When you send out your packages, before marking the order as “complete,” simply enter the tracking codes into WooCommerce. Then, it will automatically update customers via email and let them track their shipment on their account page.
The best part? It’s fully integrated with the WooCommerce mobile app, so you can input updates while you’re still at the post office, and forget all about it the minute you leave. Your online shop will take care of everything else behind the scenes.
Ready to get your products to customers quickly, easily, and automatically with the right rates applied to the right products? This can all be done with WooCommerce extensions, giving both you and your customers confidence in your online shopping process.