Do you have a furniture business? Or are you selling exquisite wines? Or do you run another business that has to deal with the shipment of heavy products? If so, then shipping methods based on the shipping weight may be an option for you.
Shipments for heavy products in most cases fall out of the weight limits of the usual shipping carriers.
Info
If you're not familiar with the topic of shipping zones and shipping methods, we recommend that you read the following articles first:Skip to:
- Prerequisite
- How to set up weight-based shipping
- Examples? Examples!
- How to delete a weight-based price range
Prerequisite
In order to use weight-based shipping, make sure that you have set product weights. If you haven't done that yet, you can do so directly at a product:
- In the sidebar of your cockpit, select Products.
- Select a product from the Product overview.
- Navigate to the card Shipping & pickup, and enter the weight in the field Shipping weight.
- Select Save.
How to set up weight-based shipping
- In the sidebar of the cockpit, navigate to Settings > Shop.
- Select Shipping & pickup.
- Add a shipping zone. To do so, carefully read the article on how to determine shipping zones.
- Add a shipping method. Follow the steps in the article Configure shipping methods.
- On the Shipping costs card, select the shipping option Weight-based prices.
- On the Shipping costs: weight-based prices card you can define weight ranges according to the weight classes you have defined for your products. (We'll give you a meaningful example in Examples? Examples!)
- Change the default weight in the To field to your requirements, and also specify the weight unit.
Note
If you don't specify a weight unit, it will default to grams. - Enter the respective costs for the weight range in the field Price.
- Change the default weight in the To field to your requirements, and also specify the weight unit.
- Select Add weight range to add further weight ranges by filling the fields To, and Price as it applies to your use case.
Note
As the weight ranges are calculated dynamically, the From fields are automatically filled based on the value you've set in the To field of the previous weight range. Add the different weight ranges in ascending order so that everything is set up in a neat and orderly manner. - Select Save.
Keep in mind the weight of the shipping box. Limit the total weight of a shipping range respectively.
Examples? Examples!
Imagine we sell wine. Each bottle of wine has a certain weight, let's say 750 g. The bottles need to be well packed to reach the customer safely. Depending on the order volume, we have shippings boxes that weigh between 0.5 kg and 1.5 kg.
We'd like to ship to Germany, but in our example world, there's only a shipping carrier available that has bulk prices according to the shipping weight, as follows:
- 0 kg - 5 kg > €4.95
- 5 kg - 18 kg > €7.95
- 18 kg - 24 kg > €10.95
Here's what we'll configure:
Why didn't we stick to the reference of our shipping carrier? Because we also have to consider the weight of the shipping boxes, that will fill this gap. For an order volume of up to 4.5 kg, a box weighs 0.5 kg, for a volume of up to 17 kg, a box weighs 1 kg, and up to 24 kg, a box weighs 1.5 kg.
Imagine a customer selected 12 bottles of wine, where each bottle has a weight of 750 g. This makes a total weight of 9 kg. Plus the shipping box of 1 kg makes it 10 kg. The calculation perfectly fits in the price range of our shipping carrier: 5 kg - 18 kg > €7.95.
Imagine another customer selected 6 bottles of wine, where each bottle has a weight of 750 g. This makes a total weight of 4.5 kg. Plus the shipping box of 0.5 kg makes it 5 kg. The calculation perfectly fits in the price range of our shipping carrier: 0 kg - 5 kg > €4.95
How to delete a weight-based price range
You can easily delete a weight-based price range by simply selecting next to the Price field: