{"id":80,"date":"2010-04-28T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T16:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/productcart-com.web7.netsourceinc.com\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/28\/calculating-shipping-charges-when-multiple-drop-shippers-are-involved\/"},"modified":"2010-04-28T16:42:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T16:42:00","slug":"calculating-shipping-charges-when-multiple-drop-shippers-are-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/2010\/04\/28\/calculating-shipping-charges-when-multiple-drop-shippers-are-involved\/","title":{"rendered":"Calculating shipping charges when multiple drop-shippers are involved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One thing we&#8217;ve learned over 10 years of developing &#8220;small business&#8221; e-commerce software is that the needs of <i>small <\/i>businesses are not <i>small<\/i> at all. And rightfully so. They need and want to run a store that competes with every other online storefront, large and small.<\/p>\n<p>An area where things get very complex is <b>shipping<\/b>. At Early Impact we&#8217;ve worked hard trying to tackle a lot of needed features, such as printing fully functional UPS and FedEx shipping labels directly from the ProductCart Control Panel, and more work in this area is being done &#8220;as we speak&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>However, we can&#8217;t get everywhere. For example, so far we had not found a good solution to the issue of <b>calculating &#8220;sensible&#8221; shipping charges when multiple origination points exist within the same order<\/b>. This happens when a store uses multiple warehouses or multiple drop-shipping partners, and the same order can therefore end up containing items that are shipped from different places.<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/pc-shipping-addOn.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-152\" title=\"Shipping Add-on\" alt=\"Shipping Add-on\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/pc-shipping-addOn.png\" width=\"400\" height=\"343\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>For example: a customer buys 3 products: one ships from California, one from Florida, one from Texas, and the customer lives in Michigan.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How do you calculate shipping charges?<\/li>\n<li>Should the customer pay for the sum of the three shipments?<\/li>\n<li>Should the merchant pick up some of the cost, so the customer is not scared away?<\/li>\n<li>If so, how much?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As you have probably heard, many believe that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal-media.com\/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=312548\">shipping charges are the #1 reason<\/a> for people <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">not<\/span> to complete a purchase. So finding the right balance in the example above is crucial.<\/p>\n<p>Certified ProductCart Developer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redleafdevelopment.com\/\"><b>Red Leaf Development<\/b><\/a> decided to step in and developed a new add-on for ProductCart that attempts to find a sensible and flexible solution to this thorny issue.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ProductCart detects where products are being shipped from and calculates all shipping charges<\/li>\n<li>A smart algorithm is used to figure out how much to &#8220;discount&#8221; the price shown to the customer<\/li>\n<li>The merchant can therefore decide how to &#8220;split&#8221; the cost of shipping with the customer, protecting his\/her margins while at the same time trying to minimize checkout abandonment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At Early Impact <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.earlyimpact.com\/2009\/10\/productcart-add-ons-growing-family.html\">we&#8217;ve always believed<\/a> in the power of building a network of knowledgeable resellers and developers around our software. It&#8217;s why we have always pledged never to compete with them (e.g. we don&#8217;t offer Web hosting, Web design, and custom Web development services). Red Leaf Development is one of the many companies active in this great network.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check out Red Leaf Development&#8217;s new add-on to <a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.earlyimpact.com\/widgets\/thirdparty\/calculate_shipping_from_drop_shipper\">calculate &amp; discount shipping charges when products are shipped from multiple locations<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>View a list of <a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.earlyimpact.com\/widgets\/thirdparty\/thirdparty\">other ProductCart Partner Add-on&#8217;s<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i>Note: At Early Impact we have not directly tested this new add-on. So do not take this article as an endorsement or a product review, but rather just for what it is: a way for letting you know that this new add-on exists.<\/i><br \/>\n<i>Note (2): Early Impact does not receive any compensation of any kind related to the sale of partner add-ons.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing we&#8217;ve learned over 10 years of developing &#8220;small business&#8221; e-commerce software is that the needs of small businesses are not small at all. And rightfully so. They need and want to run a store that competes with every other online storefront, large and small. An area where things get very complex is shipping. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-add-ons","category-shipping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.productcart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}