Configuring your checkout
Shipping based on Weight
For best results please always define your cheapest (or slowest) method of shipping first. This will cause the cheapest method to appear first in your shipping drop down menu. The first shipping method defined is also called the default shipping method meaning that if your shopper fails to choose a shipping method at the time of checkout then this is the shipping method that will get used.
Weight-based shipping is by far the method that most of our users choose when deciding how to charge for shipping charges. There are a two things to consider before you begin defining your shipping based on weight.
- Unit of measure. RealCart is not tied to one specific unit of measure. The weight values you enter need only to be relative to each other. You are not forced to use pounds or ounces nor are you limited to only mg, grams and kg. Choose whichever unit of measure for weight that you like. Just remember that the unit of measure you choose applies to your entire store. For example, if you enter the ounces that something weighs then every time thereafter when you enter a number in the weight fields of either the Product Wizard or the Checkout Wizard you are entering ounces.
- Shipping Carriers to use Priority Mail is a very obvious choice as a method of shipping due to it’s pricing consistency between shipping zones. There are only moderate differences in sending shipments with Priority Mail across town or across the US. For this reason many users utilize USPS Priority Mail as their main carrier. You may of course combine several shipping carriers to give your customer a wider choice of shipping options. Some of your customers may want to order something with overnight delivery while other customers are quite happy with Priority Mail or even Parcel Post. UPS, FedEx and any other shipper’s rates can easily be entered into RealCart in a matter of minutes. Shipping charges are just a easy to edit.
To define shipping charges based on weight follow these steps:
- Start RealCart.
- Open the Checkout Wizard by clicking the Cash Register button on RealCart’s large toolbar.
- Click the Shipping tab.
- Click the Add button.
- Select Weight as the shipping type.
- click OK.
- In the Shipping Charges dialog enter the label for the shipping carrier. (What the web shopper will see.) Typical shipping labels might include:
- DHL
- UPS
- FedEx
- USPS
- Parcel Post
- Priority Mail
- Pony Express
- Slow boat to China
- FREE
This label will be followed by the word “Shipping” when displayed to the shopper. A label of UPS will be shown to the web shopper as “UPS Shipping”.
Don’t include the word shipping in your label or you will end up with a pull-down menu on your checkout page that looks like this:
- Enter any standard Flat Rate that you want to add to all of your Priority Mail shipping charges (if any.) Normally you would leave this field either blank or filled in with 0.00.
- Now add some weight ranges and their appropriate charges by clicking the Add button.
- Enter an upper end for your range in the To field. The way it will work is to charge the rate you specify below this field to all orders that weigh up to and including the value you specify here. So if you enter a 1 and your weight-unit is pounds then any order from 0 up to and including 1.00 will be charged the rate you specify next.
- Enter the shipping charge that will be added if the order weighs from 0 to 1 (of your weight-unit).
- Click OK or hit the enter key on your keyboard after you enter a shipping charge.
- Click the Add button again to add more ranges (or click OK to close and save your new weight based shipping method.)
- Enter an upper end for this new range in the To field. We will enter a 2 and $4.75 for the shipping charge for this example.
- Click OK or hit the enter key on your keyboard after you enter a shipping charge.
- Click the Add button again to add more ranges (or click OK to close and save your new weight based shipping method.)
When you are all finished adding your shipping charges they might look something like this:
- Republish your store.
In the above example...
- An order weighing 1.00 pounds will be charged $3.75 for shipping.
- An order weighing 1.01 pounds will be charged $4.25 for shipping.
- An order weighing 12 pounds will be charged $19.25 for shipping.
- An order weighing 28 pounds or more will be charged $24.50 for shipping.
If your highest range cap is lower than the total weight of the order then the shopping cart will charge the highest shipping amount you have defined for this shipping carrier. If you prefer you could have entered 99999 instead of 25 as your last To amount above.
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