Calculating Freight Costs & Setting These Up On Your Website

The calculation and setting up of freight costs needs to be done correctly for two reasons; the customer is not over charged, and the business does not under charge the customer, having to pay the extra themselves. Also, as freight costs continue to rise, businesses are left with the hard decision whether to raise the freight costs charged to customers or absorb them themselves. 

Website World can detect rural delivery addresses and enforce any surcharge you wish.  Also, freight options can be hidden based upon customer type, letting you offer POA (price on application) to your wholesale customers if you wish, and hide free shipping offers from wholesale customers.

To help you make the best decisions regarding freight for your business, we have listed the ways in which you can calculate freight, courier options which can make the freight calculations for you and how to set up freight costs for your website within the CMS. 

Different Ways Freight Can Be Calculated

There are multiple ways in which you can calculate freight and many will depend upon the courier or shipping provider you choose to use:

• package size - length, width and depth
• package weight
• rural or urban delivery
• set price

Here at Website World, we can help you do this in five ways:

• Standard freight pricing matrix
• Address auto completion and address verification
• Rural delivery detection
• Integrated freight pricing
• Automated courier fulfillment

Detailed information on these five methods can be found on our Freight Calculator page. 

But wait, that's not all. There are several courier companies that our platform can integrate with. Using an API, we can connect your website with the account you have with your chosen courier company. Through the API, your website and your courier account will 'talk' to each other, passing information between themselves to calculate freight costs. Here are some of the options available to eCommerce websites hosted with us:

• GoSweetSpot - as NZ's biggest freight aggregator, GoSweetSpot act as courier and freight agents, accessing and analysing your freight options so you can save time and money. Orders can be pulled right from your website to the GoSweetSpot system, where they are processed, a courier ticket with tracking number created ready for you to print and attach to the parcel.
• Parcelport - with no cost to join, businesses with a Parcelport account can choose from multiple courier companies, calculate freight costs, print courier tickets, book pickups and track parcels. Orders made on your website are sent to your Parcelport account for Parcelport to do their magic.
• StarShipIt - offering paid plans, StarShipIt is ideal for businesses who ship large volumes of orders both in NZ and around the world. Automate almost every step in the dispatch process and reduce errors, time and cost by batch printing labels, picking slips, auto-address correction, customs document lodgement, package allocation to couriers and more.
• Aramex - full integration with Aramex ensures your customers get the best priced freight, and you get streamlined order fulfilment. There is the option for live pricing as well as default and customisable pricing.

Sometimes you just want the customers to pay a specific or cost for freight, so let's take a look at how to go about setting up your freight costs within the CMS.

Setting Up Basic Freight Costs for Your Online Store

It's often easier to learn how to do something new by watching a video, which we have shared below with you. But if you would like written instructions, you will find plenty of freight advice on our Help CMS site. 

Rural Delivery Detection Saves You Time and Money

One of the major benefits our eCommerce platform provides is the automatic rural delivery detection. When a customer enters their address, our CMS uses information from third party sources to identify if the delivery address is rural or not. This means that rather than relying upon the customer to correctly identify their address as rural or urban, the CMS will do so for them. As a result, customers will be charged the rural surcharge automatically, meaning you do not need to contact customers to ask for additional shipping payments or pay these yourself and be out of pocket. 

Address Auto Completion and Verification

You have the ability to customise how you would like the address formatted when a customer places an order. The CMS can auto complete delivery addresses first, then filter the freight options that match that address. Or you can select to have the freight options available first before entering the address. Also, our CMS will verify the delivery address of orders, and will notify you in the order notification if we believe there are any issues with a customer address. 

Further information is available on our freight calculation page, as well as through our video tutorials. Paid assistance is also available through our support team.