Zen Cart not flexible enough for products that .....

I have some items that will ship USPS or UPS, but some that will be drop shipped. From all the posts I have read, it is impossible to do both with Zen Cart.

Also, If you have more than one category of product that you want to sell online (this is the purpose of having an online store:yes:) with different weights, it is impossible to set number of packages individually. You have to do one method for all with Zen Cart. There is no way to select one method for some categories and then another method for the other categories. I wish I had researched the shipping flexibility (or lack thereof) of Zen Cart prior to spending three months designing it and getting everything ready to go online. It seems that shipping is a big issue in the forums that cannot be addressed :frusty:. If anyone knows of a flexible shopping cart that allows more custom capabilities for shipping....please let me know.

G

I wish I had researched the shipping flexibility (or lack thereof) of Zen Cart prior to spending three months designing it and getting everything ready to go online.
Why do people worry and work on how it looks before investigating what it will do has always been a mystery to me??

maybe a better solution is just to use a zone and table weight and use an average...

Remember that Humans ( Clients ) are inherently stupid. if you give to many options they get flustered......

remember the old acronym K.I.S.S

That's also the reason why most stores provide only 4 shipping methods to choose from at max. More than that and your customers may give up at that step.

kobra:

Why do people worry and work on how it looks before investigating what it will do has always been a mystery to me??

I am hoping my post might save someone else the mistake.

To me, it would be a whole lot easier if Zen Cart had shipping options within the category or product setup from the admin. For example, if I sell 3 lb memorial lights that I need real time quotes for, I could select a radio button on that products setup page that is titled UPS or USPS or whatever. Even real time rates would work for the title. If I have solar lights that I need to drop ship, I could select that option. If Zen Cart allowed for Category or product shipping customization, then it would eliminate the need for a "shipping" section from this forum. People keep asking the same questions over and over and they don't get answers because there aren't any. Then there is the that dbltoe guy that feels he must answer people by belittling them and antagonizing them as if they are stupid for asking the question. When there is no answer to most of the questions that are being asked because Zen-Cart is not capable.

Up until this shipping issue, I have been extremely satisfied with Zen Cart and the support on here. But shipping is the mechanism that allows for an online store to exist. I guess if a store sells one product, then Zen-cart would work great for them.

G

yellow1912:

That's also the reason why most stores provide only 4 shipping methods to choose from at max. More than that and your customers may give up at that step.

I would only have one shipping option for all products. But the option would be different for 3 different catagories. Each category would only have one shipping option.

G

well you could actually just use different product types then out in switches in your shipping mods to ONLY display if this is met,

but the argument about zen cart and shipping,
I cant think of ANY commercial cart that will do the kind of shipping that you want to do,

people try to make shipping way to hard,

standard,
fast
fastest

is all thats needed for any store..... more than thatt it gets way to complicated and yes customers go Oh crap what do I do now....

GraniteMan44,

I do not know if you are familiar with Cabela's or not....but if so look at how they ship....by dollars spent and ranges(table rate/price) and with few exceptions this is what they do.

Now they actually make money on shipping and do not really care about the clothing items or others etc as they have already made their profit through shipping.

Merlinpa1969:

well you could actually just use different product types then out in switches in your shipping mods to ONLY display if this is met,

but the argument about zen cart and shipping,
I cant think of ANY commercial cart that will do the kind of shipping that you want to do,

people try to make shipping way to hard,

standard,
fast
fastest

is all thats needed for any store..... more than thatt it gets way to complicated and yes customers go Oh crap what do I do now....

I did see one post that mentioned a way to do what you said, and that would work for some. But for example, I have a 3 lb memorial light that costs me $12.xx to ship per box. If a customer orders two boxes from me, the real time USPS cost is $14.xx for the both boxes put together. My actual cost would be $24.xx to ship them both. To solve that problem, I set the max. weight for a package in the "shipping/packaging" to 5 lbs, but when i tested my granite vases (which range from 10 to 40 lbs), it broke the 20 lb vase into 4 packages charging 4 times what it would cost. If there is a way to work around this, I am all ears. Thank you.

G

Merlinpa1969:

well you could actually just use different product types then out in switches in your shipping mods to ONLY display if this is met,
I agree that most make this too hard and you , GraniteMan44, are oversimplifying this.

You state you want this by category - say 3 cats - now what happens if a shopper buys items from all 3 cats? what method gets used then?

Or if you use 3 different methods I the shopper will be upset that I am being nicked 3 times on the base charge through 3 different shippers and think of you and your shop as fully unprofessional

The secret that everyone is telling - don't use real time quotes - You know approx. what it costs to ship each item, right? Use the per weight unit and then the "weight" you input will be the cost to ship it.

kobra:

I agree that most make this too hard and you , GraniteMan44, are oversimplifying this.

You state you want this by category - say 3 cats - now what happens if a shopper buys items from all 3 cats? what method gets used then?

Or if you use 3 different methods I the shopper will be upset that I am being nicked 3 times on the base charge through 3 different shippers and think of you and your shop as fully unprofessional

In seven years of having an online store, I have never had anyone purchase from more than one category. When customers purchased from me, they were looking for a specific product.

If the shipping was flexible and setup in the category/products then the shipping would already be given and the customer would have no choice in the shipping. The rate would already be added to the price. I tried setting up shipping in the attributes but those don't get itemized on final checkout. On my old site, I had to research each products shipping cost to establish the price. At checkout, it would simply consolidate all the products shipping costs into one number. In the shopping cart, it lists each product, subtotal, total shipping and then grand total. That was done using straight html, so it was a little more flexible.

G

Kim:

The secret that everyone is telling - don't use real time quotes - You know approx. what it costs to ship each item, right? Use the per weight unit and then the "weight" you input will be the cost to ship it.

I was hoping this would be easier than that :(. Going through and changing the "weight" for each product every year to keep up with rising costs of shipping can be a daunting task.

G

In seven years of having an online store, I have never had anyone purchase from more than one category. When customers purchased from me, they were looking for a specific product.
I have not done this for that long but have customers that purchase from about 50 different cats and most often than not from serveral cats in a single order. And why one Cart script can not be everything for everyone

Going through and changing the "weight" for each product every year to keep up with rising costs of shipping can be a daunting task.
AS you have these segregated into cats one can use a sql script to increment the weights for all items in a cat by some %

kobra:

AS you have these segregated into cats one can use a sql script to increment the weights for all items in a cat by some %

Do you know what that script would be or where I would put it? That is interesting. Thank you.

Do you know what that script would be or where I would put it?
It would be an adaptation of the statement below where you replace the multiplier with your desired % and your category ID number

You keep this in a plain text file locally and insert as a sql statement when you want to increment the weights

Need I remind you to backup FIRST before doing any DB work...

update products set products_weight = products_weight * 1.05 where category_id = XX;

kobra:

It would be an adaptation of the statement below where you replace the multiplier with your desired % and your category ID number

You keep this in a plain text file locally and insert as a sql statement when you want to increment the weights

Need I remind you to backup FIRST before doing any DB work...

update products set products_weight = products_weight * 1.05 where category_id = XX;

Where in Zen Cart code would I put that?

G

Where in Zen Cart code would I put that?

KoBra:

You keep this in a plain text file locally and insert as a sql statement when you want to increment the weights
Not in the Zen Cart code at all - Just a sql statement that you use when you need to