Shipping can be quite a complex solution, and your website will be set up according to what you discussed with your salesperson when you gave instructions on your requirements.
The types of shipping modules we can include in your Drupal website are:
- A dollar value per item added to the cart once all items are chosen
- A dollar value per order added to the cart once all items are chosen
- You will have to include weight and dimensions of each item plus the customer must choose delivery address before they are shown the shipping cost. (This probably isn't appropriate if you have large items to ship).
Unfortunately, you can't choose some products with one shipping method and other products with another shipping method - the shipping method has to be site wide.
For some customers, you can make money on your shipping, while others may choose to loose a little on their shipping to get the sale. We recommend when you discuss shipping on your website, you call it 'postage and handling' or similar, so that the customer understands it includes more than just the postage or courier value. This way you can charge a little more so that you won't be out of pocket.
We also have certain systems available that allow you to get an individual quote, for example, E-Go Freight allows you to get a quote for shipping during the checkout process provided all the required information has been completed for your products and the customer has entered valid postcodes.
If you have a specific freighting system you wish to use and you would like to integrate it into your site this is certainly possible. However, we require that they provide an API to us to utilise and communicate with and here will be a development cost associated with this if the API meets the requirements.
Enabling the shipping-api adds the option to the transaction list screen to send the shipping notification email, if there is no shipping module installed then the option does not appear.
To select the shipping model that is best for you, it's important to consider how much of an impact it has on the purchase process for delivery to a customer.
