shipping question

[web@ack]

Hi

We are about to launch a website for a customer but before we do, we need to finalise the shipping costs.

Now i am after a bit of advice really as we are a little stuck as to what and how we charge the shipping.

Basically the problem is our customer sells small items such as signs and plaques which won't cost a great deal to ship and will most likely be sent via the post. However they also sell large items such as dining tables & chairs and sofa's. Now the shipping for these is obviously going to be more expensive and they have found a courier that will ship these items for a flat fee of £50.

Now our customer is not really bothered about making money on the shipping. The problem is we cant go charging £50 for a sign, like wise we dont want to go charging shipping for each table and dining chair that is ordered because the postage will become too high and people won't place the order.

Has anyone had any experience with setting up items for similar products?

Thanks

Martin

[acompton]

This sort of setup has been described before in the forum and the solution is to select shipping by weight. Set the all small items to have a small weight (say < 1kg) and the large items to have a large weight (>= 1kg). There is also a default weight, so you could use this to set up the more numerous items. Then you only have to edit the less numerous items by hand.

Then set up the shipping tables to have two weight bands:
1. < 1kg postage is whatever they want to charge for small items.
2. 1kg+ postage is £50

Note the actual item weights are irrelevant. Its just a method for dividing the catalogue items into two (or more) groups.

Alan Compton
www.greenknightgames.co.uk
Great board games and cards games you won't find in the High Street

[wjcampbe]

Would it not be easier in this case to include an allowance for shipping into the cost and sell on the "includes free shipping" within 'defined area' basis?