Shipping Suggeston

[leviathan]

Pardon me if this is not extremely clear, or if it has allready been brought up previously. It's a suggestion to help out with a lot of shipping problems people have, and it could really reduce the need for a lot of contributions meant to deal with individual concerns.

 

First, a bit of background.

 

I needed a store to sell just a few products, so, I wrote one. It handled basic things, such as a simple cart, tax calculation based upon destination, cc gateway integration with Authorize.net, and some other bits. It had one very cool feature with shipping, that I don't believe has been looked at.

 

I used an enumerated list for shipping options. Each option, had various costs or a table, or whatever was necessary associated with it. A product, could then display one or more shipping options.

 

In OSC, I would imagine that each product would have the ability to choose shipping options available to it. Rather than trying to create a shipping option to tailor to specific products.

 

For example. I have Item A and Item B. I want item A to go off a flat rate table ONLY. Item B, I want to use realtime USPS calculations.

 

With the item being able to have only certain shipping options available to it, it solves the following problems I have seen in here IMMEDIATLY:

 

#1: Free shipping, but only on certain items

#2: Giving a few items special rates due to their ackward sizes

 

I realize this can present a few problems, if someone gets a cart full of stuff that does all have the same shipping option available to it, but, that could be overcome by creating a package and shipping cost for each 'metohd'.

 

 

(IE.

$shipping_cost = 0;

foreach($method_cost as $method) {

$shipping_cost = $shipping_cost + $method;

}

 

This gives a total cost of shipping, based upon the totals calculated for each method. Simple code, that requires a lot of support behind it, but the idea would really open up some things.

 

For instance, the #3 issue that could be solved (without hacks/contribs) would be drop shipment items in the same cart as items you ship locally. They get charged one shipping fee, but you get the shipping charge for each item, should it be getting shipped from alternate locations. It would also allow you to take into account any discounts if they get several items from an alternate location.

 

I don't believe this would work too well as a contribution, due to the very heavy modifications required to core code. Although, it could be done to proove a thoery, if someone would be willing to assist me.

 

Of cousre, if the OSC Developers deem this a good idea, it could be added over the course of time. I can do a bit of PHP/SQL work, but I have had difficulty getting familiar with the OSC Coding structure. I'm too spoiled by a template system one of my network admins dreamed up. :)

 

Please, contact me at [email protected] if you are interested in doing a PoC with me. (Proof of concept). Nothing hardcore coding wise, just a rip apart of the code and putting in things just to get it basically functional. Once that's done, if it works as advertised, code can be cleaned up to OSC spec, and possibly released as a contrib.

 

Please, post your thoughts. I realize this was a horridly long post, so use snippits if possible. *smiles*

[rseigel]

Just a thought as this is something I need to be looking at when I finally finish the design aspect of my site.

 

The scenario I'll have is only being able to ship certain products internationally with the remainder just domestic (US). Would your ideas cover this as well?

 

The reason I'm going to run into this is that either certain vendors won't ship international (drop shipping) or some items are simply too large.

 

Thoughts?

[leviathan]

Just a thought as this is something I need to be looking at when I finally finish the design aspect of my site.

 

The scenario I'll have is only being able to ship certain products internationally with the remainder just domestic (US). Would your ideas cover this as well?

 

The reason I'm going to run into this is that either certain vendors won't ship international (drop shipping) or some items are simply too large.

 

Thoughts?

 

Absolutly. As OSC has the modularized shipping system anyways, it makes this task very easy.

 

A quick example, would be using the USPS Module. Use the contrib that just enhances the USPS shipping module for selectable methods, and ONLY choose domestic methods. Create a copy (takes a little work, but in the end pretty trivial) and select ONLY international.

 

Your product that you only want to ship internatonally, you select the international method. Ones for domestic, you have the domestic method selected. You could make a third copy, that would cover the rest of your products that could do either or.

 

I'm not sure how 'lack' of a delivery method would be handled, but, I figure you won't be able to check out! (have to be sure of this). So, if someone with a dometic address, chose your 'international only' product, they wouldn't get very far, and rightfully so.

 

There may be other, better ways to do the above without so many copies, but I'd have to really have a think. The idea here, is to keep it modular. Not hard-code anything in. Hard-coding 'domestic/international' into a product wouln't be good. Choosing a shipping method that was international only, would just put the burden on a system that is allready designed, and VERY functional.

 

On a final note, we're talking about more than one method being able to be selected as well. You may wish to offer fedex, usp, and usps for an item. So it would not limit that functionality that OSC currently has. It would simply eliminate the showing of all shipping methods, when they may not be necessary, undesireable, or inaccurate.

[leviathan]

I was just reading 'shipping from multiple origins' below. This method would be a solution for that as well. Regardless of 'why' someone would do that, it would work.

 

Say you have 3 drop-ship locations.

 

You create a shipping method for each of your 3 locations. Perhaps it's UPS, for example. You use the UPS code, and just make 3 separate ones. Hard code in the zip code of origin for each of the 3, so calculations are accurate, and have the products that ship from each of the locations only have that one shipping method available to it.

 

The user only sees 1 (one) shipping 'charge', but that's one thing that will have to be worked out in the details. If there is only on shipping method for a product, obviously, there is no user input required. I will have to think about 2 products each with 2 shipping methdos, where neither share the same method. the user would need to choose the desired method for each product. That could get ugly... but, if that's the only big snafu, it can be overcome.

[rseigel]

On your first point:

 

Each product would have to be set as to where they could be shipped - domestic, international, both, I suppose store pickup only would also be an option. The would require editing the products table a bit to hold those values no matter how you look at it.

 

2nd point:

 

That sounds like it might not be the best approach. What about a store that has literally 100s of drop-shippers (which I do - with more on the way).

 

Let's assume for a moment that a shop owner decides that they want to charge $5 flat rate for each item or group of items from each shipping destination. Now let's assume that Mr. Customer comes along and just so happens to order 25 different items all that just happen to all be from different drop-shippers (unlikely but still possible). Are you really going to expect that customer to pay $125 in shipping? Somehow I doubt it. :wink:

 

To be honest I'm not quite ready to begin working on this - I really have to get the design complete first (a week at most likely). It is something that I do need to implement somehow though in the future so it's good to hash it out here a bit. :D

[leviathan]

On your first point:

 

Each product would have to be set as to where they could be shipped - domestic, international, both, I suppose store pickup only would also be an option. The would require editing the products table a bit to hold those values no matter how you look at it.

 

Excellent point. But, the products table would only need to hold an array. A product could have any number of shipping methods available to it. As for the internal design, I don't know what the array would be named (to ensure if you removed a method it wouldn't break things) but that can be dealt with.

 

2nd point:

 

That sounds like it might not be the best approach. What about a store that has literally 100s of drop-shippers (which I do - with more on the way).

 

Let's assume for a moment that a shop owner decides that they want to charge $5 flat rate for each item or group of items from each shipping destination. Now let's assume that Mr. Customer comes along and just so happens to order 25 different items all that just happen to all be from different drop-shippers (unlikely but still possible). Are you really going to expect that customer to pay $125 in shipping? Somehow I doubt it. :wink:

 

To be honest I'm not quite ready to begin working on this - I really have to get the design complete first (a week at most likely). It is something that I do need to implement somehow though in the future so it's good to hash it out here a bit. :D

 

Well, that's the thing. You don't give each drop shipper a shipping method if they don't need it. If you want to charge $5 flat rate for each item or group, between your 25 drop shippers. Give those 25 drop shippers ONE shipping method. Simple as that. It gets a quantity, and bases shipping that way. That's the elegance of this, you can do literally whatever you want!

[rseigel]

Another situation to consider....

 

Mr. Guest from Somewhere, Planet Earth puts items in his shopping cart. Some are ok to ship internationally - some are only ok for domestic (I'm not even going to go into the implications of in-store pickup on this one). Mr. Guest heads for the checkout and suddenly - poof - becomes Mr. Romero from Italy. Now what? Obviously the items that can only be shipped domestically can't go to him. Do they simply disappear from the cart? Is Mr. Romero informed first (obviously there should be a blurb about where it can be shipped to on the Product Information page but we all know how well customers can read :roll: ) Does Mr. Romero say "screw it" and just abandon the cart?

 

No answers...just complications... :?

[leviathan]

Another situation to consider....

 

Mr. Guest from Somewhere, Planet Earth puts items in his shopping cart. Some are ok to ship internationally - some are only ok for domestic (I'm not even going to go into the implications of in-store pickup on this one). Mr. Guest heads for the checkout and suddenly - poof - becomes Mr. Romero from Italy. Now what? Obviously the items that can only be shipped domestically can't go to him. Do they simply disappear from the cart? Is Mr. Romero informed first (obviously there should be a blurb about where it can be shipped to on the Product Information page but we all know how well customers can read :roll: ) Does Mr. Romero say "screw it" and just abandon the cart?

 

No answers...just complications... :?

 

Well, I am inclined to say this is a separate situation entirely, the more I think about it. Remember, shipping is calculated based upon methods.

 

I believe that dealing with domestic/international 'exclusive' products, may require another module or contribution that is totally separate from the one I propose. My proposition, is meant to eliminate inaccurate shipping methods from being displayed for a product, not to eliminate products based upon a choice of destination. :)

[rseigel]

See...now I went and complicated things a wee bit too much. :roll: :D

[Deskdirect]

I've quickly figured out that I need to learn php coding!

 

I have customers that order fragile items from my store. They want the option of including insurance and or delivery confirmation.

 

I think a contrib of shipping options not tied to any particular shipping method would greatly improved all the shipping contrib. This contrib would give the admin the ability to set items like USPS insurance fees, USPS delivery confirmation fees, UPS extra delivery fees, etc.

 

Right now I have these options listed as catalog items (which my customers can't seem to understand) because I can't figure out how to include them as options in the checkout process. If this options would show up in the checkout process giving my customers the option of chossing them - it would be a load off my mind.

 

If anyone can figure out how to incorporate these shipping options in my store while using I'm using the "Table Rate" based on the total order price I would appreciate it.

[loxly]

This only addresses one issue, but what if you have a required attribute for items that can't be shipped internationaly? Or part of every product description that says 'Shipping internationally: Yes/No" I'm glad I saw this thread, because these are issues I need to deal with also and hadn't thought of yet!

 

Second, maybe for large items, again, use the required attribute to add additional shipping charge, maybe there could be 2 options? "Overweight via UPS, Overweight via USPS"? Just brainstorming here.

 

Debbie

[rseigel]

These are actually things I'll address in the drop shipping thing. Thanks for the reminder. :wink:

[Deskdirect]

I think a contrib of shipping options not tied to any particular shipping method would greatly improved all the shipping contrib. This contrib would give the admin the ability to set items like USPS insurance fees, USPS delivery confirmation fees, UPS extra delivery fees, etc.

 

rseigel, I don't know how much my suggestion has to do with Drop Shipping if anything; but I hope what your working on will at least give me the options I need.

 

I'm looking forward to your contrib. Thanks!