Shipping FAQs

Will SiteBuilder ship products to my customers for me?

No, ShopBuilder does not do the shipping. ShopBuilder provides the shopping cart platform which is equipped with all necessary tools: to specify different shipping methods/companies in your online shop, or use standard carrier shipping rates for companies like UPS and Fedex – to make it easier for you to add these methods into your online store. But it’s up to you to physically send the products to the customer yourself by whichever shipping methods you have set up in your store.

Can I offer an option for in store pick up?

To offer a free pickup option to your customers at checkout:

  1. Go to the Store Control Panel, and click Shipping & Pickup. Click Add Pickup to configure the pickup option.
  2. Configure the following:
    • Detailed instructions for customers.
    • Pickup charge.
    • Ask for pickup date and time at checkout. Enable to allow customers to select a pickup time, and set your business hour to limit pickup hours.
  3. Click Add Pickup Option.

How do I create three shipping methods, a free one for picking up from our store, a cheap one for small items, and the third one for big items?

For this configuration, you need to do the following:

  1. Create two destination zones, one for the local pickup, the other one – for the usual delivery.
  2. Go to the Store Control Panel, click Shipping & Pickup.

Add two shipping methods:

  1. Local pick-up shipping method, for zone local pickup. The calculation type – Flat rate, shipping rate → 0.00.
  2. A shipping method for the second zone with the following settings:Select how you calculate shipping? → Custom table
    • Table based on → Weight
    • Rate based on → Range only
    • Set shipping rates → 2 rows:
    • Weight range: 0 -2 Per order: $X
    • Weight range: 2.01 – xxx Per order: $Y
  3. Make sure all your products have the correct weight.

How to charge $2.75 for 250lbs , $3.25 for 500lbs, and so on till $4.00 for 750lbs?

Proceed to System Settings → Shipping, click New shipping method button to create necessary shipping method.

You should create a shipping method with the following settings:

  • Select how you calculate shipping? → Custom table
  • Table based on → Weight
  • Rate based on → Range only
  • Set shipping rates → 3 rows:
  • Weight range: 0 -250 Per order: 2.75
  • Weight range: 250.01 -500 Per order: 3.25
  • Weight range: 500.01 – 700 Per order: 4.00

I setup shipping freight for each product and now I need to change shipping freight to ‘Use global settings’ to all my products. How can I do this change for all the products at once?

It is possible to update shipping freight for all the products at once using product import/export feature. Please refer to this article for instructions:

How can I update my products in bulk

How do I setup free shipping on all orders over $100?

You should use Custom Table shipping type. Proceed to the control panel, System Settings → Shipping to add a shipping method. Specify the following shipping rule:

  • Select how you calculate shipping? → Custom table
  • Table based on → Subtotal
  • Rate based on → Range only
  • Set shipping rates → 2 rows:
  • Subtotal range: 0 – 99.99 Per order: X
  • Subtotal range: 100 – and up Per order: 0.00

This rule will apply $X shipping rate for the orders less than $100, and free shipping to the orders over $100.

I only ship to one country. How do I restrict shipping to everywhere else?

If you want to ship to one particular country/region/area you need to restrict shipping to everywhere else, so that that your shipping methods would work for this particular area only. This is how it’s done.

First of all, you need to define a destination zone for the place you ship to. This will set limits to the coverage area. After that, configure the shipping method and shipping rates for this destination zone. In this case only those customers whose shipping address is covered by the destination zone will be able to go to the checkout. Otherwise Sorry, we do not ship to this location message will be displayed and the customer won’t be able to place an order.

Let’s say, you want to set up shipping for Australia only:

  1. Create destination zone.
    • Go to the Control PanelSettingsZones tab.
    • Click New zone button.
    • Enter Australia as the name of Shipping zone.
    • Click Add country button and pick Australia from the list.
    • Click Save button to finish shipping zone creation.
  2. Define shipping method limited for that zone.
    • Go to the Control PanelSettingsShipping tab → New Shipping method.
    • Choose Australia zone created on previous step from zones list.
    • Select the calculating method and customize it according to your needs and name it.

Or you ship to NYC only:

  1. Create destination zone.
    • Go to the Control PanelSettingsZones tab.
    • Click New zone button.
    • Enter the name of Shipping zone (for example, New York City).
    • Click Add country button and pick United States from the list.
    • Click Add states in right column and specify New York state.
    • Define New York City Zip/Postal Codes in order to constrict shipping area.
    • Click Save button to finish shipping zone creation.
  2. Define shipping method limited for that zone.
    • Go to the Control PanelSettingsShipping tab → New Shipping method.
    • Choose New York City zone created on previous step from zones list.
    • Select the calculating method and customize it according to your needs and name it.

Once you have created the shipping methods bound to a destination zone, only the customers from this region will be able to place the order.

Can I change the order of delivery methods?

Yes, you can set any order in which the delivery methods will be shown to your customers. In the Store Control Panel, go to System SettingsShipping, click on Sort button and change the sorting as you wish by dragging and dropping the items. Click Save to save your changes.

Can my customers track shipments?

How to assign a tracking number to an order?

Troubleshooting

I’ve set up my shipping methods, but it doesn’t ask for shipping address and doesn’t show any shipping rates.

Most likely you have not marked your products as those requiring shipping, so the store treats them as intangible ones. All intangible products don’t require shipping address and shipping method selection at checkout. As a result the customer is not charged shipping, and the order does not contain any shipping costs.

To fix this issue, you need to put the This product requires shipping checkbox for all your products that need shipping. In order to do that, sign in to your control panel, proceed to Catalog → Products → product editor page, and make sure the checkbox This product requires shipping is checked.

In order to apply this change for many products at once, you can do a bulk update of the products via the product import feature: you will need to make an import that would assign weight values (any values, even zero weight will work) to the SKUs of the products that need shipping.

Real-time shipping rates I get are incorrect. They are bigger/smaller than they should be

Why do I get Sorry, we do not ship to this location error on checkout?

The error indicates that the shipping address submitted by the buyer is not in the list of zones where your store ships to. The solution depends on what shipping method type you are using.

For user-defined shipping

You should make sure you have configured your Zones rightly. Please refer to this article to learn about Zones setup:

Destination zones

For carrier-calculated shipping methods

In case of carrier calculated rates (like UPS, USPS, etc), the exact shipping zone for each method is defined by the carrier. The moment SiteBuilder displays the shipping rates it has connected to the carrier site to get the shipping rates. For a successful connection, your control panel must have correct details of your account registered as the carrier site.

The following troubleshooting steps are recommended at first place:

  1. Make sure shipping zones are setup correctly.
  2. Check whether your carrier account credentials submitted in the control panel are correct. For that, go to SettingsShippingCarrier-CalculatedAccount Details.You should contact the carrier support to ask them for these credentials.
  3. Test the method via the same Account details window: click Test method button and see if there are any errors.Usually the errors mean that the account details are wrong or your carrier account is in test mode which does not allow receiving live rates.
  4. Also in Account details you select a mode in which your merchant account works at present: Use negotiated rates and Use test server. You should ensure your account is in the mode selected here.
  5. Make sure you enabled the shipping services that provide delivery to your destination zones. For ex., you want to ship from US to Canada and turn on UPS Ground shipping method which doesn’t deliver to Canada. As a result, customer from Canada will receive Sorry we do not ship to this location warning.You should enable the shipping methods that serve the areas of your destination zones:In the control panel, SettingsShippingCarrier-calculated link.

I need a shipping carrier that is not listed. What should I do?

We will be glad to consider integrating this shipping carrier. To submit your requests, contact Support by clicking Help button in the lower right corner.

You can configure a method emulating the rates of the carrier manually via the control panel, System SettingsShipping. Follow the instructions above to add the methods.

PayPal Express Checkout doesn’t display any shipping at all

The exact shipping cost is only calculated after ShopBuilder knows the shipping address of the customer placing the order.

PayPal Express Checkout is not just a payment method – it substantially changes the checkout process by holding a few first checkout steps on their sites. Hence when a customer goes from your site to PayPal Express Checkout, the store is not able to calculate the shipping cost because no shipping address has been given yet. It will be known only after the first steps at PayPal Express Checkout.

Once the customer returns to your shop to confirm the order details and to place the order, the store will display all shipping methods corresponding to the customer’s shipping address.

Destination zone setup for UK

There’s a specific thing about destination zones for UK:

  • There’s no standard, finalized list of counties that are used in online stores. We have received many requests from clients to update the counties list and have made the ‘state’ field for UK country as input text field so customers type in the county name manually. Because of this, users may mistype and as a result, the submitted address won’t be covered by your destination zone.
  • UK shipping only requires postal code and address for a successful delivery. County name is not necessary.

Due to the above, we do not recommend using exactly the UK counties in the zones setup. A recommended solution for UK zones setup is thus:

  1. It needs to contain only country – UK. If you included counties as well, you should remove them, making the regions list empty.
  2. (Optional) To adjust postal codes for the UK zone if you want to distinguish shipping rates per specific locations within UK. Each zone has Zip/Postal Codes section for that. You can submit either a list of codes or masks (like 123***, there’s an explanation next to this section). As a result you should have a list of postal codes covering all places in UK that you’d like to ship to. Customers will have to submit postal code and ShopBuilder will calculate shipping rates considering these postal codes only.
Updated on 27 April 2022

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