The SupaDupa shipping module has been designed to be as flexible and easy to use as possible. It uses simple design and is organised to be intuitive giving you more power over what shipping methods are used for what products.
Shipping Presets
The shipping module consists of presets and shipping options. Each preset represents a set of products with similar shipping attributes. So for example all ear rings which are light and have a low shipping cost would be assigned to a preset called "Small Ear Rings" in contrast heavy items such as hard back books may be assigned to a preset called "Hard back books". This way you can control the shipping cost of similar products.
Here is a visual example of groups of similar items;
Shipping Options
Each Shipping Preset has any number of Shipping Options. Shipping Options are the different ways of shipping a product e.g. Standard shipping, Priority Shipping, Next Day Shipping. These shipping option are what the customer will see at the checkout.
Here is an example of how to setup Shipping Options in the back office;
And here is what you customers will see;
Setting up shipping options - how to video:
When you first come to edit or create your Shipping Options, you will notice three shipping options: standard, expedited and next day shipping which are setup as default, this is to help you get started. Each option shows the expected time in days the customer can expect to receive their order by.
You can of course edit these day ranges, as well as switching the toggle to enable or disable a particular shipping option.
You can create a new shipping option by clicking on the large plus '+' button - giving it a custom name and day range. i.e. 'Same Evening' delivery, which could have a shipping alternative set up for United Kingdom only.
Shipping Alternatives
Now we understand a Shipping Preset and a Shipping Option in we can start to bring them together and create Shipping Alternatives. Each Shipping Alternative lives within a Shipping Preset and along with other things has a Shipping Option.
Here is a list of what a Shipping Alternative includes and further down the page is a screenshot of a typical Shipping Preset, and it's Shipping Alternative.
The "Ship this item to" which is the shipping destination(s) that this shipping alternative applies to. That is which country or region you are prepared to ship to. PLEASE REMEMBER "REST OF THE WORLD" means WOLRD WIDE.
When you have overlapping countries and regions across different Shipping alternatives - the country will take priority over the region. i.e. If you have a shipping alternative for United Kingdom and another for Europe, it's the Shipping Alternative for United Kingdom that will be used if the customer has chosen to ship to the United Kingdom. Given this, it's recommended you create shipping alternatives for the regions you ship to, and only add countries if you want that cost to override the region's cost for a particular country or two.
The 'cost' or shipping cost for one item to ship. Remember this should be related to the Shipping Option you have in the alternative.
Next is "With another like this" which has been developed by the SupaDupa team through user feedback and careful consultation.
"With another like this" is how much it would cost you to ship the product with another product like this, which essentially means how much it would cost you to ship two products assigned to the same preset. This distinction is important, and plays an important part in the calculation of shipping in the checkout.
Whenever a customer is purchasing more than one item from the same preset the second items shipping cost will be calculated as the difference between the 'Cost' and the cost of 'With another item like this'.
So if the 'cost is $3 and the 'with another item like this' is $3.50, the difference will be $0.50. A customer who orders two items from this Shipping Preset will have a final shipping cost of $3.50. $3 + $0.5.
Similarly if a customer order 3 items from this Preset the cost would be $4. Here's the maths $3 (first item) + $0.5 (difference second item) + $0.5 (difference third item). The benefits of this is that many stores tend to ship items in one package and the cost of shipping 2 items is not double the cost of shipping 1 item. This way you can keep the cost of you shipping as low as you want and attract customers while not losing out on revenue.
The shipping option preference - this is an option from the Shipping Options above, for this shipping alternative. By default, customers shipping to your country (e.g United States) will be presented with two shipping options during checkout: Standard and Expedited. As such, there are two alternatives, with one for each.
i.e. If you are starting a shop in the United States for example, the default Shipping Preset will show as follows:
Setting up Shipping Presets and Alternatives - How to video
Free Shipping
We know that are different times of the year and with different promotion you will want to offer free shipping. We hope by now you would have discovered that SupaDupa is about simplicity and ease of use. Hence our Free shipping feature is seem less to use. As you have seen in the video above there is a Free shipping tab on the Shipping settings. Once you have selected it a option comes up for the minimum spend a customer must make in order to active the new shipping. Once this is set, you have the option of choosing the country that free shipping applies to. If you want free shipping through out the world please choose "Rest of the world".
Now this is setup we can go on to discussing how the free shipping is calculated. Free shipping applies to the cheapest shipping option within a preset. If a preset has multiple options for different countries then the free shipping will be assigned to the cheapest option associated with the country the customer selects at checkout.
If you have multiple products all across different presets then the Free shipping will apply to the cheapest option that is identical across the presets.
Creating a new Shipping Preset
If all your items cost a similar amount to ship, you may find a single shipping preset is all you need. But in the case where you have some items that cost a lot more ship than others, you can create a second preset and have products assigned to it. Here's a step-by-step on how to achieve this, touching on a few important aspects to Shipping along the way:
Start off by clicking the green 'New Preset' button that you'll find at both the top and bottom of the Shipping page. This will reveal a new shipping preset template, in a similar setup to your default.
Here you'll want to give your new shipping preset a name before deciding on the shipping setup you would like: including where you'd like to ship to, the shipping options you want to allow, and the costs for products assigned to this category. Let's say you're a furniture designer based in Paris, France for example. You may be creating a new preset for your larger furniture items. You may decide that the heavy, larger items that you assign to this new preset cannot be shipped to anywhere in the world (so you'll have no 'Rest of World' shipping alternative), and that you only want to ship to Europe, with Standard Shipping as the only option. You may also want to offer a lower shipping cost when a customer is based in France, given that it's likely to cost you less to ship internally.
In this scenario, only two shipping alternatives would be necessary. One would be a 'Standard Shipping' option to Europe, with your chosen cost, and the other would be a 'Standard Shipping' option, shipping to 'France' with a relatively lower cost. So start by clicking the delete 'Trash' icon on all but the top two shipping alternative (rows) in the new shipping preset.
For the first shipping alternative, change the destination to France. You can do this by clearing any existing destinations using the 'X' cross button - then using the green '+' button, and choosing 'France' from the dropdown. Do the same for the second shipping alternative, choosing 'Europe' instead.
Now specify the costs for each - given a cost for shipping to France, and a cost for Europe, which will likely be higher. The second column, 'with another like this' is how much it would cost you to ship two items. It may cost you €20 (euros) to ship a single chair to anywhere in Europe, but only €25 to ship two as one package. Therefore, in the shipping alternative row for Europe, the cost would be €20, and the cost 'with another like this' would be €25. The shipping calculation in the checkout uses this value to work out the maginal cost, which will be multiplied for any additional units ordered. In this case, the marginal cost would be €5 (that being €25 - (minus) €20 = €5). If for example, a user orders 4 chairs, the shipping cost would be €35 (that being €20 + three extra items at €5/each to ship).
When happy with the new preset, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the green 'Save Changes' button. You are now ready to assign products to this preset, let's jump into that now...
Assigning products to a preset
There are two methods of adding an item to a preset:
A. Through the product edit page, or B. via the 'batch edit' shipping section.
When adding a new product, or editing an existing product, you can select the chosen preset for this item by selecting from a drop-down. If you have many items to move between presets, you can use the batch edit preset. To access the batch edit section, go to the shipping section in your back office (Shop Settings tab > Shipping), and click the 'Batch Edit' button, next to the shipping preset whose products you want to manage. This will take you to the batch edit page which looks like this:
From this page, you can move multiple products from one preset, into another. To do so, simply click the check boxes for the applicable products (or click Select All if you'd like to move all products), then select the shipping preset you'd like to move these products into, from the dropdown at the top. Finally, click 'Save Changes' to apply the move.