New Shipping Options

 Hi everyone – I’m happy to announce some new free shipping options which are rolling out of our experimental features ‘sandbox’ and are now into a live BETA.  

They are entirely optional right now so if you don’t want to ‘kick the tires’ you don’t have to.  To be super clear, there’s nothing at all you need to do.  We didn’t change anyone’s existing settings, rates, or anything about their items.  

At a high-level there are three features of note.  First is the ability to set different shipping services and prices.  Second is a newly enhanced shipping calculator.  And third is the ability to set a preference for how and where your packages are dropped off (or picked up) for shipping.  There’s a lot to cover here so I’ll take these one at a time.

Different shipping services and prices:  for each item you can now set multiple shipping services to give buyers more choice.  Want cheap shipping?  We have an option for that.  Want to offer expedited shipping?  We have an option for that too.  Each choice comes with the ability to set your own price of course.  For example, if you want to set one item at $5.00 for USPS Parcel Post and offer UPS 3-Day for $15 you can do that too.  By default your item detail pages will list the least expensive option.  Want to take a look?  Just edit any of your items and explore the options in the drop-down menu after the ‘buyer pays fixed price option.’   

If you want to offer your buyers a second choice (or third…) just select ‘Specify additional shipping service choices’ and a new menu selection will appear.  Be sure to click ‘save this item’ when you’re doing adding any new options.

New shipping calculator: we’re happy to offer an improved version of our shipping cost calculator at no cost to you.  For those of you who opt to use calculated shipping we now offer estimated costs to ship your packages to three geographical areas for multiple shipping methods (speeds) for USPS, UPS and FedEx.  As many of you know, calculating shipping costs for different carriers, package sizes, and destinations, is, well, hard.   There’s a reason many of our competitors don’t even bother trying.  However, we’re keen on giving it another go as know it’s important to some of you.  

To use the new shipping calculator just select ‘buyer pays calculated’ in the shipping details when editing any item.  From there you can choose UPS or FedEx, enter your item weight and approximate size to get an array of estimates to different regions.  The calculator factors in your zip code to estimate costs.  Want even greater accuracy on your costs?  Check out the package drop off (or pickup) preferences below.

Pick up or drop off?  Available at the very bottom of the ‘Advanced Settings’ page is a set of preferences for drop off or pick up for UPS and Fed Ex.  Obviously, getting a carrier to do a one-off pick up at your home (not regularly scheduled) is the likely the most expensive option.  For example, rates for UPS can vary by up to 30% depending on drop off type.  Set these preferences and they too will be factored into your shipping costs.  

Wondering what all the fuss is about?  Calculated shipping isn’t for everyone.  In fact, less than 5% of our merchants use this feature currently.  So, if you’re content enough with the current options feel free to ignore this blog post and the new feature.  Of course, if you’re this far down the page it’s probably a little late for that.  Thanks to everyone for their patience as we worked on integrating this exceedingly complex feature.  If there’s one thing we know for sure – this feature isn’t and probably will never be perfect; certainly not to the penny.  We probably should have called it the ‘Shipping Estimator’ instead, but there’s no going back now.  

If you have bugs or feedback regarding any of these features please be sure to be as specific as possible in your emails to support.  

- Alex