Shipping charges in shopping cart?

[Gibsondoyle]

Im trying to sus out the best way for us to implement shipping on our site.

We sell high end greeting cards and invitations, our current site shows the customer what they will pay for shipping at the basket, this is good, but we are working on our new Actinic site and shipping charges are only seen when you go to checkout, not too sure if this is ideal?

I've seen a few posts regarding this but is there a solution? I know there is an option to select request location information early but at the moment its greyed out.

[Mike Hughes]

In general, I believe the best way to deal with shipping charges is two stage:

1. Have the information about shipping charges clearly displayed on the website somewhere that is easily accessable.

2. Add the shipping charges during the checkout once the full package details are known and the customer is ready to decide what level of shipping service they want to use.

I'd say this is the best option even if you only have a single, fixed shipping charge. People really only want to be given information at two times:

a) Whenever they want it. (handled by the delivery info page)
b) When it's relevant or essential they're told about it. (i.e. during checkout)

Just because a customer adds something to the cart doesn't mean they want to be told about the delivery charges at that point. They might just be checking that VAT is included. or that the item is in stock, etc. They haven't necessarily made the decision to buy yet and telling them about the shipping charge is a bit like asking them for their address. It's presumptious and too early in the process.

Mike

[chickenhouseman]

We have this in the left hand margin on each page.

"Delivery Costs
Our delivery charges are based on the weight of the order and the delivery location. If you would like to see a total as you add items please please complete your address details after adding the first item. Charges start from £2.20 up to £7.99 for a 25 kg parcel delivered to a UK mainland address via our economy service."

As we now rarely get shipping cost queries or people claiming that we've added the carriage costs without them knowing it appears to work.