Setting up shipping and delivery rules properly
Shipping settings look like a technical detail, but they affect your margin and your cart abandonment directly. There are three models, and here is how to pick one.
Shipping is the setting people underestimate most in e-commerce. Get it wrong and you either lose money on every order or lose the customer at checkout.
Three models
1. Flat rate
Every order pays the same amount. It's the easiest model to set up, and the most sensible one if your products weigh about the same.
When you sell something bulky, you pay the difference yourself.
2. By weight or volume
Couriers work out volumetric weight as length × width × height / 3000. Something large but light can cost more to send than something small and heavy.
This is the most accurate model, but you have to enter dimensions for every product. That's manageable with fifty products and tedious with five hundred.
3. Free shipping
You build the shipping cost into the price. This model lifts conversion the most, because "free shipping" has a direct effect on the decision to buy.
For it to work, your margin has to be able to absorb the shipping cost.
How to set a free-shipping threshold
Most shops set a threshold, such as "free shipping over 300". Don't pick that number at random.
Look at your average basket value and set the threshold about 25% above it. If the average is 240, set it at 300. Customers then tend to add one more item, and the average basket value goes up over time.
Set it too high and nobody reaches it, so it stops encouraging anyone.
Show it in the cart
Customers should see how far they are from the threshold, for example "add 34 more for free shipping". That one line raises basket value and removes the surprise at checkout.
State the delivery time
Put a line like "dispatched within 1-3 business days" on the product page. When the delivery time isn't clear, customers either message you before ordering or give up.
Then stick to the time you gave. Being a day late does more damage than saying three days in the first place.
Set up returns from the start
Write up your returns terms and link to them from the payment page. Online buyers have a legal withdrawal period, and stating it plainly builds trust.
Sort out the practical side too: who pays for return shipping, what condition the item has to be in, and how many days the refund takes. If you don't write these down, you'll be negotiating every return from scratch.