[intro]Now you need to set up your Delivery Methods to ensure that you can ship completed orders to your customers. [/intro]
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The Delivery Methods that you use on your EKM online shop will depend on the kind of products that your sell and your business itself. For example, if you have a physical as well as an online shop, you may want to set up a ‘Collect from Store’ method, where customers located close to your store can pop by to pick up their orders. Equally, if you carry high-value items, you may want to use a courier service where parcels have to be signed for.
Setting up your first Delivery Method
1. From the Dashboard, click Settings at the bottom of the left-hand menu:
2. Click Delivery on the left-hand side:
3. Click the green button:
4. At the top of the page, you can select one of the methods from the drop-down menu. If you do not see the company you wish to use, select Custom:
5. Scroll down a little further and you’ll see:
Enable Delivery Method? = Keep this box ticked to enable this Delivery Method. Alternatively, if you still have to add details to this Delivery Method at a later date, untick this box and click the green Save button in the bottom right-hand corner of the page to save what you have set up so far. When you have finished adding all of the details, tick the box and save your changes.
Enable for All Products = Keep this box ticked if this Delivery Method can be used for all of your products. Alternatively, if you have an item which is an unusual shape or size that this Delivery Method is intended for, untick this box and after you have set up your Delivery Method, click the Delivery tab within the Add/Edit Product window to assign it to a specific item.
Country = Use this box to select what Country this Delivery Method is intended for. It is set to the United Kingdom by default. If you intend to sell to different countries, you will need to set up different Delivery Methods for those countries. You can read more about this in our Country Groups Guide.
[remember]The EKM online shop platform will only allow customers to use one specific Delivery Method per transaction; customers cannot select different Delivery Methods for different Products. To do so, they would need to purchase the Products separately.[/remember]
6. Scroll further down the page and you’ll see some more settings:
Name - To distinguish it from the others, you need to give this Delivery Method a name.
Display Name - Commonly copied from the field above, this is the name of the Delivery Method that is displayed to the customers.
Description - The Description is also visible to the customers.
Price - This is the 'base price' of the Delivery Method. If this is set as 0.00, the system will automatically look further down the page for prices applied within Price Restrictions or Weight Restrictions. Leave this as 0.00 if you have applied a Weight to all of your products.
Tax Rate - This is usually Standard Rate, but check with your delivery/shipping company to be sure.
Delivery Notes - it's optional to complete this field, but useful for customers for some of the more unusual Delivery Methods, such as 'Your Order will be delivered on a pallet. Please ensure you have sufficient space to store this order when it arrives'.
When you have completed the relevant fields above, scrolling further down will reveal the Location Restrictions for this Delivery Method.
Delivery Slots
If you provide your own delivery service within a specific location for your customers, then you may find that Delivery Slots are very beneficial for your EKM online shop. Read more about setting up Delivery Slots in this Guide.
Location Restrictions
7. Location Restrictions allow you to limit different Delivery Methods according to their location to your physical shop, or according to the customer’s postcode. Tick the box to enable Location Restrictions:
8. When you have ticked the box to enable Location Restrictions on a Delivery Method, you can then choose whether postcodes or distances are excluded or included for this Delivery Method. Use the Restrictions Type drop-down menu to select either Order Radius or Postal Areas:
Order Radius
If you have a physical shop, and this particular Delivery Method is a ‘Collect From Store’ or ‘Click and Collect’ type, add the postcode of your physical shop to the field provided, and then enter the maximum radius (in miles) that this Delivery Method will be visible for. For example, in the image, the postcode of my physical shop is PR2 9ZB and this Delivery Method will only be available to customers whose postcodes are within a 10-mile radius.
Postal Areas
Postal Areas within the Location Restrictions allow you to tailor your Delivery Methods around customers who may live in areas where it is slightly more expensive to ship Products to them, such as the Isle of Man, Jersey, the Scottish Highlands, Northern Ireland and Guernsey. If you intend on using the Royal Mail to ship your Products to the UK Channel Islands, the prices do not fluctuate however some of the services do. You can read about this further on the Royal Mail website by clicking here.
Using the price list from your delivery/courier company, you need to ascertain which areas are charged slightly more and note them down if there are any. If their postcodes aren’t explicitly stated on your price list, click here to see a list of the postcodes within the United Kingdom to look up the postcode for the more expensive areas. When you’ve jotted down the postcodes of the areas that are more expensive than the rest, check the prices, as some areas - such as Jersey for example - might be more expensive than the Isle of Man. If all of the prices are roughly the same, you can group the postcodes together.
For example, if I were creating a Delivery Method for all of the UK, but it is more expensive for my courier to send orders to addresses in the Isle of Man, I would set my Location Restrictions like this:
Then I would set up a second Delivery Method for my Isle of Man customers only, and add my Location Restrictions like this:
This means that customers within the UK would not be able to see my Isle of Man Delivery Method; this would only be displayed to customers with an Isle of Man postcode.
Price Restrictions
9. Price Restrictions are optional and useful if you plan on using more than one company to ship your Products, where orders below one total would be shipped by one service whilst orders above that total would be shipped using a different company, as the Delivery Method can be restricted to suit different amounts. Tick the box for Price Restrictions:
Here, you can amend the settings to ensure that this Delivery Method is only available on orders of a specific subtotal. This is useful if you plan to use Royal Mail for orders under £25.00 and use a courier service for orders over £25.00. Presuming that this Delivery Method is Royal Mail First Class, you would need to tick the box for Maximum Order Value and add £25.00 in the field provided:
You would then need to set up a second Delivery Method for orders over £25.01 which would be shipped by a courier. In the Price Restrictions area, you would need to tick the box for Minimum Order Value and add £25.01 in the field provided:
[caution]Price Restrictions are based on the subtotal of the order, so be aware that your Tax Settings will affect the figures added.[/caution]
Additional Costs
10. If some of your Products are expensive and shipping them will incur an additional fee, you will need to amend the fields here. As an example, if my EKM online shop sold items that over a certain price- such as £100 - would be shipped on a pallet, I would need to ensure that my Additional Costs were set up like this, by entering figures in the Price To and Additional Cost fields before clicking the green cross button:
To explain, any products less than £100.00 do not incur an additional charge, but once the subtotal goes over that threshold, and up to £500.00, I need to charge my customer an extra £15.00.
Weight Restrictions
11. Weight restrictions are used in conjunction with the weights added to each product so that as customers add more Products to their Cart, your EKM online shop will work out the total weight of all the items and charge the customer the correct amount for delivery. Using this method is the most effective for ensuring that both yourself and your customer are not left out of pocket as the result of unexpected fees caused by the finished parcel being much heavier than expected. Tick the box for Weight Restrictions:
Using Weight Restrictions is useful if you plan to use different companies for shipping your Products based on the total weight of an order. For example, if you wanted to use Royal Mail to ship out all orders under 1 kilo and use a courier company for anything heavier, you would tick the box for Maximum Order Weight on your Royal Mail Delivery Methods and add 1 kilo into the field provided:
You would then need to create a separate Delivery Method for heavier orders and ensure that within Weight Restrictions, you tick the box for Minimum Order Weight:
Additional Costs
12. Adding Additional Costs within Weight Restrictions is the most important part of creating a weight-based Delivery Method. Using the price list from your delivery/courier company or the Royal Mail, you need to add the costs for each weight group into the fields provided, clicking Add Row for each weight class. For example, if I was creating a Delivery Method for Royal Mail 1st Class, my price list would be:
13. You need to complete the Weight To and Additional Cost fields, clicking the green cross symbol for each row until all of the weights and prices have been added:
14. So, the Price field towards the top of your Delivery Method settings page should be 0.00. This means that the system will effectively ‘look down the page’ and take into account any Price Restrictions, Location Restrictions and Weight Restrictions and charge the customer according to these settings. When you’ve finished editing your Delivery Method, click the green Save button on the bottom right of the page:
15. This will return you to the Delivery Methods page, where you can edit your first Delivery Method by clicking it and then clicking the Edit button, Delete this Delivery Method entirely, Copy this Delivery Method or you can make a new Delivery Method by clicking the green button:
16. You can use all of the steps above to create different Delivery Methods for shipping to the United Kingdom only. However, for shipping to Europe and further afield, click here to learn about how to create Country Groups that will enable you to do this.
[tips]When you have finished setting up all of your Delivery Methods, it’s a good idea to test that these are triggering correctly by following the steps in this Guide. [/tips]
[more]
- Delivery - Country Groups
- Delivery - Delivery Options for Unusual Products
- Delivery - Delivery Widgets on the Shopping Cart page
- Delivery - Offering Free Shipping and Reduced Shipping
- Delivery - Testing your Delivery Methods
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[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]