Plug Into Better Shipping Part 5: Rules Part 1- Creating Simple & Effective Shipping Rules

Whilst not everyone thinks shipping is cool, here at Temando we’re all about it. Providing your customers with the right delivery option at the right time can dramatically affect your conversion rates and even reduce your costs in the long run.

Why do you need rules? Shipping rules allow you to provide different shipping options and prices to your end customer. You can also apply different variables to the rule like product sku, postcode, time and demographics to control your shipping. Shipping rules enable you to execute your shipping strategy – so they’re pretty important to get right.

There are two levels of rules in the Temando Shipping Extension. Firstly, in the Starter module, you can enable basic pre-set rules. All other versions give you access to the advanced rules engine, where you can start to offer free shipping over a certain cart value or on certain SKU’s, as well as other rules. It gives you the ability to conduct shipping campaigns as well as takes into account heavier or larger SKU’s to ensure you don’t lose out.

This post covers the basic rules you can offer in all 4 plans.

Please note that the below 4 rules are the only rules available in the Starter plan. These rules can only be enabled and disabled, unlike the higher plans which allow you to create rules with IF THIS THEN THAT conditions and create rules on a more granular level.


Free Shipping - no charge to customer.

boohoo.com offer free shipping on all products

What: 
When this rule is enabled free shipping is displayed to all customers across all products


Why: 
If your shipping cost is built into your product margin or your strategy is to offer free shipping to stand out in a crowded market place.


Handy Tip:
#1 No dimensions are required on the product sku to quote the customer, however, dimensions are needed for Temando to quote the shipment. If you’re sending the same size packages, use the default settings we talked about in our earlier packaging blog article.


#2 If you have large bulky items we recommend not enabling free shipping. When free shipping is offered in a scenario where sending a kayak to Alice Springs is required, it can get pricey.

Fixed Price / Flat Rate - customer pays the same set amount.

featherandbuzz.com offer their customers a flat rate shipping price

What: 
When this rule is enabled the customer will pay a specified fixed price across all products. This can only be one nominated value in the starter plan.

Handy Tip:
#1 It is important not to give the impression that your shipping is expensive. Make shipping costs comparable to the cost of goods sold. A customer purchasing $5 napkins might not want to pay $9.95 for shipping on top of that.

Dynamic Pricing – Display all carriers or the cheapest or fastest or cheapest and fastest.
All:

Supercheap Auto empowers their customer through choice, displaying all quotes

What: 
This option will display all possible quotes from carriers that have been selected in the "allowed carriers" configuration setting. The customer then selects from the list of displayed quotes.


Why: 
This empowers the customer to select their preferred carrier and delivery time.


Handy Tip:
#1 You don’t have to have all carriers displaying, you can select only 1 i.e. Fastway, this will result in all relevant Fastway quotes being displayed to the customer.

Cheapest: Only the cheapest quote is shown.
What: 
Only the cheapest option for the delivery will be displayed.

Why: 
This will ensure your shipping costs are always competitive – relative to the postcode and dimensions of your shipment.

Handy Tip:
#1 Cheapest will often coincide with the slower services and are also referred to as standard shipping. Often the cheapest is a road service.

Fastest: Only the fastest quote is shown.
What: 
Only the fastest delivery option will be displayed to the customer

Why: 
Let your customer decide how urgent a purchase is. If they want it fast, make sure they can select an express option.

Handy Tip:
#1 Fastest is also referred to as Express shipping. This service will generally be 1-2days from metro to metro.

Cheapest and Fastest: The customer can choose between the cheapest or the fastest quote.
What: 
A combination of cheapest and fastest.


Why: 
Allows your customer more choice.


Handy Tip:
#1 On all dynamic options you can add a mark-up to the displayed price by either a fixed or percentage amount. This will help you turn shipping from a cost center into a profit center.

Next week we take a deeper look into creating shipping rules in the advanced rules engine. We also look at some of the cool campaigns you can create using shipping rules.

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Plug Into Better Shipping Part 4: Managing Multiple Locations in Magento

Do you have more than one warehouse or physical store? Are you shipping from all of these locations? Well, you should be! Temando helps online retailers big and small manage multiple locations and streamline their entire fulfilment processes.

Multi locations functionality is the ability to set up more than one sending location in your Magento store admin, whether this is from a warehouse, physical store location or a supplier. This gives you the ability to use your physical stores as fulfilment points, allowing you to send from different locations Australia wide.

Let’s walk through the below example: If your customer is in country Queensland, fulfilling the order from your closest fulfilment point with inventory helps to decrease travel time, as well as the cost, compared to sending the item from a Sydney warehouse. You can now speed up delivery times and avoid unnecessary freight costs.

Multiple locations and zones

It gets better – once you have your locations set up in your Magento store, you can also create some really smart rules. *We will look into creating shipping rules in our next 2 posts.  Multi location functionality is available in the Temando Magento Shipping Extension for plans professional, business and enterprise solutions. Business and Enterprise gives you the extra flexibility of adding sub accounts to each of the locations.

What’s a sub account and why would I need that? 

Sub accounts allow Temando to identify separate physical locations and bill accordingly. Some retailers prefer this to be transparent and separated-in a franchisee model for example. If you would like each location to be billed individually, but still have visibility over costs, this feature is perfect for you.

Setting up multiple locations 

There are 2 components of multiple locations that go hand in hand we call them zones and warehouses (don’t let the term warehouses confuse you, warehouses can be any fulfillment point i.e your store. We also refer to these warehouses as multi-location).

A zone is an area within a country which any given warehouse delivers to, it’s specified by postal code ranges.

Setting up a zone

1. Select Temando tool bar > Locations > Manage Zones from this admin panel select Add New Zone

2. Name: this is an internal reference 

3. Country: the country the zone is being created in

4. Postal Code Ranges

• To cover the whole country enter: 1:9999
• You can individually enter the postcodes separated by a coma
• To define a range use a colon like the example below

Colon used to separate ranges when defining postal code ranges

5. Don’t forget to confirm by selecting save

For a PDF list of Post Codes from April 2014 download this document. You can view the most up to date post codes here.

Creating a warehouse

1. Select from the Temando Tool Bar Locations > Manage Warehouses > Add New Warehouse

2. General Information

• Status: is important to ensure is switched to enabled if you would like the warehouse to be considered as an option
• Location Type: If you are sending from this address continually we recommend always selecting Business (opposed to residential
• Priority: If you have 2 warehouses that service the same zone, this priority allows you to select which warehouse will be chosen. The priorities for warehouses are sequential and start at “0” (eg: “0” will take priority of “1”, “1” will take priority over “2” and so on)
• Stores allows you to select what Magento stores you would like this warehouse associated with

3. Address & Contact panel (immediately below General Information). The information required is:

Address Details

Street: Number and street address

City: Suburb. This needs to be specific to the postcode. For example if the postcode is 2011 – it has to be Woolloomooloo, it cannot be the default of Sydney.

Country

Region: State

Contact Details

Contact Name: Primary contact at this warehouse

Contact email: Primary Contact email address

Phone 1

Phone 2: Not mandatory but good to list.

Fax: Not mandatory but good to list

4. Assign your warehouse zones by selecting a zone, to select multiple zones hold CTRL and click

Assigning warehouses

5. Select yes or no for Extra Location Information items

6. Temando Profile is only applicable to users with sub-accounts with Temando

7. Assign pre-created Magento users the ability to view assigned warehouse/locations.

• This is key when defining what login can see what orders. i.e. Queensland store when assigned here cannot see Victoria stores orders. 

Make sure you save your settings!

Setting up zones and warehouses is the base for rules in the Temando Shipping Extension for Magento. It is important to define your shipping strategy and create zones and warehouses to align with this strategy.

Coming soon
Our team is working hard on adding features to the Enterprise plan, multi-location inventory management being one. This will give you the ability to assign stock/SKUS to each location.
Stay tuned for that future feature release!

Next week we will start looking at setting basic rules in Magento. 

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Top 5 Fulfilment Tips For Retailers

“Shipping can be your key competitive advantage, and your market differentiator ” – Notes Carl Hartmann, Managing Director and CEO of Temando in the latest report from Power Retail – Fulfilment As A Profit Centre .

As today’s discerning consumer increasingly shops online, it’s more important than ever to get your fulfilment right. Below are 5 tips to help retailers deliver on fulfilment:

1.  Free Shipping &/or a clear base shipping value proposition

It’s a myth that people abandon because they don’t get free shipping – they abandon when they get unexpected charges at the last moment of a sales process.

2. Multiple Shipping Options at the Checkout

Consumers are increasingly after delivery options that suit their lifestyle, express shipping, timeslots, and collection options. The more you give the customer what they want, the more likely they are to convert.

3. Free or Easy Returns

 Especially for apparel merchants, free returns is actually an even larger influence on conversions then free shipping

4. Use multiple carriers

Every provider has different strengths and weaknesses, so it’s both more cost effective and more reliable to ensure that the right provider is used for the right destination (lane) and product.

5. Onsite Tracking

The biggest operational cost of an online business is the “where’s my delivery” phone call. By creating shared access to information between the carrier, customer and merchant – customers can be kept in the loop and calls of this nature can be negated.

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How to Create Effective eCommerce Product Pages [Infographic]

This is a fantastic infographic that I came across by Invesp.

Not surprisingly, the two most important features that influence a buyer’s decision are free shipping and free returns!

Infographic by- Invesp

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eCommerce Best Practices

Buying and Selling online is where it’s at. The world of eCommerce - or as the Temando team call it, the world of ‘dot com’ - gives you the ability to reach a broad range of potential customers. The question is: how do you make these people who browse the internet your customer, and how do you keep them?

Below are a few best practices for you to keep in mind when creating your dot com space.

1.   Shipping - give options and be upfront

Recently, after searching for an outdoor setting online and settling on one I liked, I was shocked to get to the checkout and be slogged with a $200+ shipping cost. This was almost the cost of the product itself. It is important to be upfront with your shipping costs. Regardless of whether your store offers flat rate or dynamic shipping cost (i.e. shipping cost is dependent on customer’s postcode), cost needs to be clearly communicated with the user. Adding a shipping calculator at a product level assists in this transparency.

Communicating shipping costs is key, but so is providing the customer with options. Some customers may want to pay for a premium service to receive their goods earlier whilst other may be happy with a slower, ‘general road’ service. Temando allows the comparison of various freight services whether it be same day, overnight or general road.

Anaconda's checkout with shipping calculator for the customer to calculate costs prior to checkout.

2.   Keep it Simple, Stupid

Like a bricks and mortar store, your website needs to be well laid out and aesthetically appealing to drive customers to the check out. Cluttered product pages with too much going on can be distracting and lead to unconverted sales. Use the pages to highlight the product and its features, but don’t get too crazy. Animations and flashing images can often distract from the product. And not all devices show flash! Be precise with product descriptions. Visually, clean crisp lines are ideal. 

Customers are going to be deterred from buying if the process is complicated. Ensure you map this process prior to development.

This motto is across the board and not industry selective, so don’t forget to keep it simple, stupid.

3.   Provide Quality Images

Selling items intangibly can be a difficult task if quality images are not provided. The way you present your items can get a visitor across the line and convert them to a buyer. Having pictures play a major role means that you should invest in the images you have displayed on your site. Keeping the images consistent and well-presented will encourage sales.

When it comes to online shopping, pictures play a major role.

Feather and Buzz, homewares website- is a great example of good quality images. 

4.   Username OR Email Address?

Allowing your users to use your website with an email address rather than a username is preferable. Usernames can be difficult to remember, and can be a pet peeve of the buyer. When they are buying a product, allow users to create their profile with an email address.

5.   Visible Contact Information

Despite online shopping being widely accepted as a retail environment, there are still some hesitations of customers on the legitimacy of websites. Displaying contact details clearly helps to reinforce confidence in the consumer to purchase from your website. This does not necessarily mean providing your contact number but having a clear contact page - whether that is via phone or email. Should a customer have questions or issues they can easily and confidently contact you.

Bing Lee have their contact details clearly visible in the header, as well as live chat.

6.   Editable Cart Page

Give the customer the ability to add and remove items from the cart page. From personal experience, it can be a frustrating and sometimes a negative experience when you are required to go back or refresh the page when you simply want to edit the contents of the cart.

Ksubi allows you to remove or update the quantities of the products in your shopping cart.

 7.   Search Field:

Whilst not a key component of a website, giving users the option of a search field can be viewed as beneficial. Some users come directly to your site in search of a particular product. Rather than hunting your website, this option allows them to search for the product directly. This search function should be inserted in the header of the page (in most cases on the right hand side of the header).

Harvey Norman has a clearly visibly search bar for customers to search the product database.

8.   If you like this, you’ll love that

A great addition to a website is ‘Recommended Item’ feature, if executed correctly. A bad feature for a website is a ‘recommended item’ feature that displays irrelevant products. Linking purchased products and providing similar ones to tempt the consumer further is another way of engaging with your consumer.

The Iconic make use of the recommended item feature- love wedges!

9.   Avoid Hidden Charges

Hidden charges can leave your consumer with a negative view of your eCommerce site. If these charges are added at the checkout they are generally the last part of the interaction with your site. Providing clarity with product and payment methods upfront will avoid this negative connotation. There should be no hidden charges - it’s easier to retain a customer than gain a new one.

10. Payment Options

Not everyone feels comfortable paying by credit card, so ensure your online store has more than one method of payment. Research the payment options available in your sector and area (Australia, US, Europe).  Remove any barriers to purchase by giving your customers payment options.

Supercheap Auto offer Credit Card & PayPal as payment methods.

11. Simple and Easy Checkout

Temando’s data shows that a one-page checkout process increases conversions.  Only ask for the important and necessary information – asking for irrelevant information will frustrate the customer and can lead to shopping cart abandonment.

Ensure that previously entered data is automatically entered when the customer has logged in (e.g. shipping address).

Your one-page checkout should include shipping address, delivery options and payment gateway.

Tony Bianco has a sleek and clear checkout.

12. Responsive Pages

The booming uptake of handheld devices such as tablets and smart phones makes online shopping much more easily accessible. No longer do people just browse the internet from their desktop, it’s often done from their smart device whilst on the bus or watching TV. Make sure your website is responsive to the varying devices. Keep in mind that these devices are touch screen so links and buttons should be designed to accommodate this. Hot tip from around the traps - make sure you can still access the normal website from the mobile version!

Responsive websites are becoming the norm and the necessary.

These points are only skimming the surface of the best practices for your online store. The online environment is a quickly adapting one. eCommerce site owners should continue to keep their fingers on the pulse and up to date. Give us your feedback on what has worked for your site - or maybe what didn’t work so well!

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