As part of setting up your Rocketspark store, you'll need to set up shipping rates. These are charged to your customers on top of the cost of their items. Shipping rates can be set up in several configurations (depending on the needs of your store).
This Rocketspark blog article outlines some best practices for configuring your shipping rates: The secrets of a successful shipping strategy - eCommerce shipping rates explained.
The essentials to understand about shipping
One rate of shipping used for all products in an order
If a customer has one product in their cart, this will be the Min cost per order, but if they add an extra product into their card the Extra item cost will apply on top of the Min cost per order.
For example:
Multiple rates of shipping used for products in an order
If two or more different items with different shipping rates are purchased the customer will only be charged the highest of the two Min cost per order values plus the Extra item cost of the second item.
Setting up shipping rates
- Set which countries you are willing to ship to. To add a shipping country, select the country from the Add shipping country drop-down menu and click the Add Country button.
- You now need to set your shipping rates (if you are selling a service and therefore no shipping is required, you will still need to set up shipping countries with shipping rates, but you can set them to $0). Shipping is perhaps the trickiest part of setting up an online shop, so we will use a customer example to help demonstrate how it works.
Customer Example: Steve has a surf shop that sells surfboards, clothing, and accessories (e.g., sunglasses, watches, etc.). The cost of shipping a surfboard to a customer is much higher than clothing or accessories. Steve sets up a shipping rate called “Large Item” with a minimum cost per order of $20 and an extra item cost of $10. Whenever Steve adds a new surfboard to his online shop he sets the shipping rate for that product to be “Large Item”. Steve also sets up a shipping rate for clothing and accessories called “Small Item” with a minimum cost per order of $5 and an extra item cost of $0. Steve sets the extra item cost to $0 for “Small Item” because he doesn’t want to charge the customer extra to add small items to their order. - Give the shipping rate a name (e.g., “Standard Shipping”) by clicking the edit button and then typing in your preferred label.
- Type in the Min Cost Per Order box the amount you want to set as a shipping minimum and in the Extra Item Cost box the amount you want to be added if more than one of the same item is ordered (for New Zealand shipping, you will need to set this for both the North and South Islands).
- To add another shipping rate in addition to Standard shipping (e.g., “Large Item”), click the Add another shipping rate button and then repeat the process.
Note A: If two items with different shipping rates are purchased, the customer will only be charged the highest of the two “Min. cost per order” values plus the “Extra item cost” of the second item.
Note B: The customer’s shipping cost will not be calculated until they go to the checkout and complete their shipping details as we can't calculate shipping until we know their address. You can always add a shipping price guide into your product description so that they can see shipping prices for an item. - Click on the next shipping country in your list and repeat steps 2-4.
Note: To delete either a shipping country or a shipping rate, simply click the red circle (with a white bar inside). A dialogue box asking you to confirm that you wish to delete it will appear. Click Yes. - Set a default shipping rate for new products. You can change your default shipping rate on the right-hand side, so that when new products are added they automatically have your default shipping rate applied. This helps avoid products being added with no shipping rate assigned, which would mean no shipping is charged on that product. If you find that products are being sold without any shipping you can apply the default shipping rate to all products that have no shipping rate applied.
- Set free shipping settings. If you'd like to provide free shipping over a certain order value click the Set minimum value for free shipping button. See our step-by-step guide for free shipping.