How to Set Up Different Shipping Prices in WooCommerce?

How To Set Up Different Shipping Prices In WooCommerce
Author Bartosz Gajewski
Updated:
2024-09-26
Reading time:
4 minutes read
Category:
Blog

Shipping is a deciding aspect of any WooCommerce business, and offering the right shipping prices can significantly influence customer satisfaction and conversions. Offering different shipping prices based on various factors like product type, weight, quantity, or location can significantly affect your business. In this article, I will show you how to set this up and why it is so important. 

Setting Up Different Shipping Prices in WooCommerce

The viability of any online business is largely dependent on transportation costs. Distinguishing between profit and loss requires efficient management of these costs. It’s critical to comprehend how shipping costs affect your organisation while utilising WooCommerce. Shipping costs are influenced by a number of variables, including package weight, size, carrier preference, destination, and delivery time. By selecting the appropriate shipping rates depending on those factors, you may cut costs without compromising client happiness by being aware of these factors.

What should you know about shipping prices? Beyond the technical aspects, it’s essential to recognize their importance to your store’s success. At Octolize, we firmly believe that shipping can significantly influence e-commerce sales. It’s a critical point in the purchasing process where the quality of the customer’s experience often determines whether the sale is completed. To back this up, let’s consider a report from the Baymard Institute on why customers abandon their carts at checkout.

Reasons for abandonments during checkout

Almost half of the survey participants mentioned extra prices, including shipping, as a reason for abandoning their carts at checkout. This underscores how vital it is to set appropriate WooCommerce shipping prices to prevent cart abandonment and boost sales. Understanding this allows you to craft a strategy that preserves your profit margins while providing customers with a compelling reason to complete their purchases.

How to Customise Shipping Prices Based on Products in WooCommerce?

To set WooCommerce shipping cost based on a product, you’ll need the Flexible Shipping PRO – an advanced WooCommerce table rate shipping plugin. It offers powerful, but easy-to-use shipping calculations based on weight, cart total, product count and much more. One of its many features is of course product based shipping.

Flexible Shipping PRO WooCommerce
99.00

The best Table Rate Shipping for WooCommerce. Period. Create shipping rules based on weight, order totals or item count.

View Details or Add to cart
100,000+ Active Installations 30-day money back guarantee
Last Updated: 2024-09-26
Works with WooCommerce 9.0 - 9.4.x

It’s basically a table rate shipping plugin, which is a great solution to replace limited WooCommerce flat rate shipping method.

Configuration

Once you install and activate the Flexible Shipping, you can configure it. To do that, just simply go to WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping. There, select the WooCommerce shipping zone which you want to add the feature to.

Then, add a new WooCommerce shipping method in the shipping zone. Click the Add shipping method button:

Add shipping method: Flexible Shipping

Choose the Flexible Shipping and confirm with the Add shipping method button.

Now, you should have your shipping method added and activated. It’s time to configure it.

new flexible shipping method

You can set it’s Title and Description and any other available feature like WooCommerce advanced free shipping over amount. After you set that up, scroll down to the Shipping Cost Calculation Rules table.

Shipping Cost Calculation Rules table

In the conditions field, select Product. shipping cost based on product

Then, select one of your product and set it’s cost.

shipping cost based on product

You can set different shipping price for each product.

different shipping price for different products

If you want to When you configure all the shipping rules based on your shipping charges, Save changes.

Why Choose Different Shipping Prices for Your WooCommerce Store?

Choosing different shipping prices for your WooCommerce store can greatly enhance both customer satisfaction and store efficiency. Offering varied shipping rates based on factors such as product weight, dimensions, or delivery zones ensures that customers pay fair and relevant shipping fees. For instance, it wouldn’t make sense to charge the same price for shipping a lightweight item like a t-shirt as you would for a large, heavy piece of furniture. Differentiating shipping prices allows you to better manage operational costs and improve the overall shopping experience.

Tailored Shipping Prices Create Fairness and Transparency

By implementing a strategy where shipping prices vary based on the specific attributes of a product or customer location, you offer a more transparent checkout process. Customers are often frustrated by one-size-fits-all shipping fees that seem disproportionate to their purchase. According to studies, unexpected shipping fees are a leading cause of cart abandonment. With tailored shipping prices, customers can see shipping costs that make sense for their purchase, which can reduce abandonment rates and boost conversions.

Encourages Larger Orders and Repeat Business

Using different shipping prices can also encourage larger orders, especially when you offer incentives like free shipping over a certain order value. Customers are more likely to add extra items to their cart if they know that the shipping cost remains reasonable or is waived entirely once a threshold is met. This not only improves the average order value but also enhances customer loyalty, as shoppers appreciate the flexibility and transparency around shipping fees.

Optimising Profit Margins and Shipping Efficiency

From a business perspective, choosing varied shipping prices enables you to protect your profit margins. Shipping large or heavy items can be costly, and if you offer flat-rate shipping across your store, you risk absorbing high shipping costs for these items. By adjusting shipping prices based on the specific needs of each order, you can ensure that the price customers pay aligns more closely with actual shipping expenses. This approach helps keep your store’s operations cost-effective while maintaining competitive pricing for customers.

Conclusion

Offering different shipping prices in your WooCommerce store helps strike the right balance between customer satisfaction and profitability. Tailoring shipping fees based on product attributes, delivery location, or order size ensures a smoother checkout experience and drives long-term business growth.

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