Serious Shipping Problem

[top23]

Hello all! I'm having a huge issue with shopsite manager and shipping. I have multiple shipping options per product that I have entered manually and use the base +0.00 so it defaults to what I have entered. Now, some of my products are free ground with no other option, some are freight only, some don't offer 2nd day or next day, but some do. The problem is that it offers not available methods as free or 0.00 shipping charges, even with the free shipping option turned off. I need to be able to turn off certain shipping methods per product. Is there a code I can enter on the product page that will make the shipping option N/A? In place of 0.00 I have tried putting N/A, n/a, na, NA, /, -----, ##, and the program just defaults back to 0.00 or FREE.

Examples:

Product 1 - Free ground shipping, 2nd and next day not available. In the cart it reads Ground-0.00, 2nd day-0.00(FREE), next day-0.00(free) ---What it should read Ground-0.00 next and 2nd- N/A

Product 2 - Can only be delivered by freight truck (entered as Shipping 3-6) with no ground, 2nd, or next available. Cart shows FREE SHIPPING or 0.00 on ground, 2nd, and next day as well as shipping 3-6 options. ---I need ground, 2nd, and next N/A and only options 3-6 to show.

Since I have so many options there is no default or blanket way to fix this in the shipping menu that I can find. These methods are not based on any kind of matrix, grid or zone. They are shipped through different carriers from different locations and suppliers. The shipping prices are from the mfg or supplier and are given to me. So bottom line, I either need a code to type in on the product page to make the shipping type not available or I need those check boxes that are on the shipping base configure menu moved over to the product shipping options so I can just uncheck that shipping option per product. Any ideas?

[Jim]

Shipping cost fields are numeric fields so they cannot contain something like N/A.

The Base and Base Plus shipping options allow a specific shipping value for each product, for each shipping option that you check as available. There is no way to disable the shipping options on a product by product basis, you can just change the price for the shipping option on the Edit Product Info screen.

Probably the only way you would be able to meet all of your shipping option critera would be to write a Custom Shipping Add-on and have it return appropriate shipping costs for the various items. Even then you would not be able to give the shopper multiple shipping options for some products and not for other products. The shipping options must apply to all items in the shopping cart together.

You could add javascript to limit the shopper checking out with some shipping options if certain products are in the cart. You can find sample javascript to do this on Lexiconn's forum: http://support.lexiconn.com/news/viewtopic.php?t=289 Note that you would need ShopSite Pro to be able to implement this type of code.

[top23]

I'm sorry but I do not agree. I feel this is to simple and basic of a problem and shouldn't require me to upgrade to pro and pay someone to write me some code. If I put 0.00 in the field and the free shipping option is NOT checked, then why would Shopsite default it to FREE???

Why cant I control the shipping on a per product basis? Basically what your saying is anyone that uses your product is limited to only one kind of shipping option dictated by the default site wide shipping menu.

You say that shipping cost fields are numeric, so how hard would it be to get one of your code guys to go in and default 99999 to make the field N/A in the cart? That would solve all my problems. I could go back through all 1300 products and change the shipping price to 99999 where the shipping type isnt available.

[Jim]

With the Base + shipping option you an give each of your products a specific shipping cost. The individual shipping costs will be the added together in the cart. To be able to have some products ship by one method and others by another method would require the ability to select a separate shipping option for each product. ShopSite does not provide that type of shipping calculation.

You could some what match what you want to do by using the Base method as you are but set the price for all shipping categories so if different items are added to the cart the shipping methods will still reflect the price. So for example item 1 that can be shipped by ground and you want it to be free you would put 0.00 for the price. for the three day day you put the price for three day shipping. If you have a next day method you put the price for the next day shipping charge. For Item 2 that can only ship by freight you put the freight rate in the ground shipping, put the freight rate in the three day field and put the freight rate in the next day field. Add text to the description of the freight product saying that the product must ship by freight and that the freight charge will be added to what ever shipping method they choose but the deliver time will not be the same.

If you enable a Free shipping option and you set the minimum order amount and the order meets that minimum, then that shipping option will Free in the shopping cart. There is no way to exclude certain items from the free shipping.

You could include the freight charge in the price of the product instead of adding it on as a charge during the checkout process. They you could check the box that says Shipping charges don't apply to the product so it wouldn't affect the shipping rates of other products in the cart.

There are many ways to work around issues, sometimes you just have to think outside the box.

[top23]

Your thinking along the same lines as I am, but its still not a solution.

"With the Base + shipping option you an give each of your products a specific shipping cost. The individual shipping costs will be the added together in the cart. To be able to have some products ship by one method and others by another method would require the ability to select a separate shipping option for each product. ShopSite does not provide that type of shipping calculation. " - Your over thinking this part. i dont need shopsite to calculate anything, i need it to make the option not available.


"You could some what match what you want to do by using the Base method as you are but set the price for all shipping categories so if different items are added to the cart the shipping methods will still reflect the price. So for example item 1 that can be shipped by ground and you want it to be free you would put 0.00 for the price. for the three day day you put the price for three day shipping. If you have a next day method you put the price for the next day shipping charge."--- There is NO 2nd or next day delivery available for items with free shipping, only ground. So 2nd and next would still show 0.00 or free.

"For Item 2 that can only ship by freight you put the freight rate in the ground shipping, put the freight rate in the three day field and put the freight rate in the next day field."--- close but i have 4 freight options and only 3 spots to fill if i do it this way.

"If you enable a Free shipping option and you set the minimum order amount and the order meets that minimum, then that shipping option will Free in the shopping cart. There is no way to exclude certain items from the free shipping."--- Correct, this is why i put 0.00 for the shipping price on my free ground items. i still need the next and 2nd day options to show as not available.

That last one about adding the price of the shipping to the product, well it would work if i didnt have any competition or if i wanted to hold the title for highest prices on the web. Lets just put a pin in that one for now and see if there is anything else that can be done.

It's clear that when Mr. Shopsite dreamed this up he figured we would only be shipping by ups, fedx, and usps. What about those of us that need other options? I know its April Fools but i wasnt joking about getting someone to default 99999 or 123456789 or something to show as N/A in the cart. Or just make the field alphanumeric. I just cant wrap my head around this. Has anyone out there ever seen any product shipped by any store in the world advertised as Ground-$18.99 2nd Day and Next Day FREE? Shopsite has thrown a default blanket over a complex subject and expects me to conform. Why? I guess its to hard to get a tech to drop in a line of code in my store. I know how to solve the problem on my end, i could go back and put in a custom option menu and make it for shipping Ground [Add $19.99];+19.99|2ND Day [Add $50.00];+50.00 etc. but you and I both know how much time that will take to do that on 1300 products. I have a seasonal store and the season started 3 weeks ago. My store is 99.9% done with only this one problem holding me up from starting my advertising. If creating that custom option menu is my only solution then i think my time will be better spent moving my site to a different cart provider that can handle the basic needs of a small business like mine. Lets not kid ourselves, theres 50 other cart providers that cost less or are free that offer more options. I'm already feeling negative toward your product due to the lack of cross selling tools in the manager version. A cross selling tool is a basic necessity for any estore yet i get none. If I cant get this shipping issue fixed it will be the "straw" that broke our business relationship and this will be the last quarter i pay for shopsite's service(lack of). Please dont take it personal Jim, i do appreciate your assistance here. I'm just trying to stress my urgency, i mean if i take 10 orders tonight, and the customers choose the 0.00 option then i either lose 10 sales or i have to cover the shipping cost myself. Did you see the article about the big dept store that had to honor their misprint yesterday and cost them big? Some of my White Glove Freight costs 350-400$, i cant cover that.

[Jim]

A couple of comments in general.
1. ShopSite shipping was implemented long before the UPS, FedEx, USPS were in the product. So "Mr ShopSite" didn't implement the ShopSite shipping methods to make things harder. The UPS, FedEx etc were added to give additional shipping options which calculate rates based on weight, shipping destination, package size etc. Because all those methods may not meet specific shipping requirements the Custom Shipping API method was added so that merchants can create shipping options that match their exact needs.
2. How is ShopSite suppose to know which shipping options to not make available? You said you have 4 Freight methods, and 3 or more other methods. If a shopper puts multiple items in the cart how is the software suppose to know which options to not display? It would be possible with javascript to add code to disable checkout for certain shipping methods based on sku but since there is no way of knowing which items might need to be limited this isn't something ShopSite can just guess at.
3. We have tried at times to put in some special value such as your 99999 into a field to indicate that it had a special use. We thought that no one would ever need the value so we would be safe. Usually within a couple of weeks of releasing the product with that feature someone would report a problem because they needed to use that value and now it broke their implementation. So we try to keep fields specific to what the normal use is.
4. I know you need things to be perfect, but if your store is at 99.9% ready and you can't release because of that .1% you are expecting too much. Nothing in this life is perfect, we all have to deal with unexpected issues and ways to work around them.

Another suggestion for the freight options. Instead of trying to figure out a shipping method that will allow the freight items to work with all your other shipping options, why not use the Order options feature to add the shipping costs. You would set the price of the product to your normal price and set the shipping settings to No shipping for the product.. Then you would configure the product order options to have the freight shipping options for the product. You would set the first order option to say "Select freight shipping method;n" Then you list the other freight options and their prices like this.
Select freight shipping method;n
Freight1 $50.00;+50.00
Freight2 $75.00;+75.00
Freight3 $100.00;+100.00
Freight4 $125.00;+125.00

The ;n at the end of the first option indicates that the shopper cannot checkout without selecting an option. The ;+50.00 etc. will modify the price in the shopping cart to reflect the base product price and the selected Freight option. The receipt will show which freight option was selected so the shopper will know and your shipping department will also know how it is to be shipped.

If you use the order options for your freight items then you would only need to modify just a few of the item to add the order options instead of every product. The regular shipping method should meet the need for the vast majority of your products.

[top23]

I've spoke with my rep from my one of my suppliers and he is going to get me in touch with his tech guy to see if he can help me. I'm also expecting a call from someone at Shopsite, but seeing how its 430, the chances of that are getting slim. I will update this post with the results of my converstions. So far I find your solution to the freight acceptable and I will go back and make the freight menus in the item option area. You are right, there isn't that many of them and it shouldnt take me to long to make those menus. However, that still leaves about half my products with only the Ground option available but still offering 2nd and next day for free.


"If a shopper puts multiple items in the cart how is the software suppose to know which options to not display?" -- Because my designation of 999999 will tell it what to display. It can still treat it as 0.00$ as far as calculations go, but the customer needs to see that shipping option as NOT AVAILABLE so they won't choose it in the first place. OR make the field alphanumeric and tell it to default any letters to $0.00 on the back side. Either way I need the cart to show:

Ground - $23.99
2nd Day- Not Available
Next Day- Not Available

Right now it shows free:

Ground- $23.99
2nd Day- $0.00 (FREE!)
Next Day- $0.00 ( FREE!)

Now if FREE SHIPPING is NOT checked, why would it default to free?

"3. We have tried at times to put in some special value such as your 99999 into a field to indicate that it had a special use. We thought that no one would ever need the value so we would be safe. Usually within a couple of weeks of releasing the product with that feature someone would report a problem because they needed to use that value and now it broke their implementation. So we try to keep fields specific to what the normal use is." ---- Yes, I understand this completely and the last thing I want to do is mess up someone elses site, but I was under the impression the my store was on Shopsite servers and that the changes could be made to my store only. Sure I'd probably have to go through this any time theres an update to Shopsite but thats ok.


Either way, I will update this post after I have spoke with everyone and hope to have a solution. Thanks for your help Jim. Sorry I got snippy on my 5am post.

[top23]

Sorry its taken so long to get back. This is where I finally landed: "Unfortunately, it is not possible to set different shipping amount for each product as you have explained in the comment on Apr 1, 2013 6:57 PM . Please note that, the shipping which you will configure in ShopSite applies for all the products uploaded to the store." It's no surprise really, but its taken close to 2 weeks to get that. How can you expect every customer you service to fall under such a massive default blanket? My only choice is to write a custom shipping code or hire someone to do it? I guess the ad that sold me on shopsite-"never have to write any code" should read more like this-never have to write any code as long as you pay someone else to do it for you.

So this is what I did on my end to fix it: I made the custom menus for freight in the item option menu and used the "n" to force a choice, so all that is working now. Only problem with doing it this way is that now tax is calculated on the freight as well. I find this to be less of a problem than giving it for free so it works for now. Next I had to completely turn off 2nd and next day delivery options on ALL my products and added "contact us if you need faster shipping" to the cart. So I had to remove shipping options on about 60% of my products so the other 40% are not offered for free.

I still stand firm on the fact that if I do NOT have FREE SHIPPING checked, it should not default to free. Shopsite should give me the flexibility to choose what shipping type is available on a per product basis. I tried to make it easy and asked for a default code or something along those lines because I know how difficult it would be to add it on a per product basis. The excuse that it would mess someone else's site up is wrong. I went back and checked the field size after you posted that and found the field could hold a huge number, so if you can direct me to one of your customers that has a store that charges shipping amounts more than $999,999,999,999,999.00, then I will shut up about it. If not, then we have a great default number. Also, the excuse that shopsite cant calculate a Not Available shipping type doesn't make sense to me either. Nothing from nothing is nothing, pretty simple to me. No calculations need to be made, shopsite is currently treating it as $0.00 which is fine as long as the customer sees SHIPPING TYPE NOT AVAILABLE for the amount, not $0.00. Or better yet, removes that type all together for that product. Its all about what the customer sees.

If you were shopping and saw shipping for what you were buying listed as:
Ground- $20.99, Next Day- $0.00, 2nd Day- $0.00, what option would you choose? I'd choose $0.00 cuz hey, it will get here faster and its FREE!!!

I think Ground- $18.99, Next Day- Not Available, 2nd Day- Not Available is much more clear.

So bottom line, Shopsite code cant be changed even if there is an error in it. You have till my paid for quarter is up to get it fixed or I will teach Shopsite a new calculation= -1 paying customer. As stated before, I am disgusted with the lack of cross selling tools in Shopsite as it is, and the one you do offer only in the pro pkg isnt customizeable and only shows in the cart. Well, i want them on the more info page, where i feel they should be, and where just about every other cart provider on the planet puts them. So this added to the shipping problems is enough to make me move.

[Jim]

I still stand firm on the fact that if I do NOT have FREE SHIPPING checked, it should not default to free.

It is not saying that it is free, it is saying that you have entered a value of 0.00 for the shipping option(s). If it were using the free shipping feature it would use the text that is configured on Commerce Setup > Shipping in the Free Shipping configuration section field Shipping Option Name:. I believe I mentioned in a previous post that you must enter a value for each shipping option in the ShopSite shipping method that you select. Since you haven't entered values that is why you are seeing the 0.00. I also mentioned that javascript could be written for the shopping cart to make it so the shopper could not checkout with certain methods based on the products that are in the cart.

The excuse that it would mess someone else's site up is wrong. I went back and checked the field size after you posted that and found the field could hold a huge number, so if you can direct me to one of your customers that has a store that charges shipping amounts more than $999,999,999,999,999.00, t

What I said was not an excuse, it is just just a good idea to not use odd values in a field as a way to indicate the that a different action is to be taken on the field. But if you would like to use the shipping field value of 999... as a way to not get a shopper to choose a certain shipping option you could do that and then they would not see the 0.00.

I'm sorry that you feel that there is not enough customization in the shipping options. I believe ShopSite allows more ways to configure shipping than most shopping carts do.

[robm]

...As stated before, I am disgusted with the lack of cross selling tools in Shopsite as it is, and the one you do offer only in the pro pkg isnt customizeable and only shows in the cart. Well, i want them on the more info page, where i feel they should be, and where just about every other cart provider on the planet puts them...

FYI, ShopSite's cross-sell feature in Pro does support cross-sell on more info pages. Reference:

http://www.shopsite.com/templates/cookbook/global-crosssell.shtml
http://www.shopsite.com/popups/moreinfo_product_cross-sell.html

and from the "What's New" section for version 10 SP1:

Code: Select all

Cross-sell Products on More Info Pages (Pro)
Cross-sell products can now be placed on an item's "More Info" page. Global Cross-sell Products can now be placed on any page.

Rob
LexiConn - ShopSite Hosting

[top23]

Thanks Rob for bringing that to my attention. I am at the mercy of what I'm told and what I've read. When I see this- "•Display cross-sell products on the shopping cart screen" ,
http://www.shopsite.com/pro.html (just one of the many places I've seen it), it tells something different. I've been told the same thing by my provider. All that aside, my point was that a cross selling tool is a basic requirement of any store and that it should be available on the manager version as well as the pro. It is really the only feature the pro version has that I need and I cant see spending twice as much for the 1 feature. It's not like I'm trying to get it for $0.00 or anything, I've offered to give them an extra $5-up to $10 more a month just for the one feature but I'm told it doesn't work that way.


Jim-- "Since you haven't entered values that is why you are seeing the 0.00." We have circled back to my original question here. Please tell me the value for NOT AVAILABLE SHIPPING METHOD and I will gladly enter it. I was going to use the 999999999 as a deterrent but I had 2 problems with that. The first was that the cart had a critical overflow error, lol, and the second was that it looks shady and prolly wouldn't pass BBB standards(just guessing). Thats why I was asking if someone could make an exception code. Back in my day, at the end of the calculation code for that field we could tell it -if 9999999999999 is entered, display it as "Not Available", calculate it as $0.00. You know that isn't exact code, just trying to clarify what I'm asking for. I saw something on Rob's site that I felt might be what I need- http://support.lexiconn.com/news/viewtopic.php?t=289 Is this the javascript you are talking about? I noticed the post is kind of old so I didn't know if the info was still good or not as I'm sure Shopsite has been updated several times since that post.

[robm]

...I saw something on Rob's site that I felt might be what I need- http://support.lexiconn.com/news/viewtopic.php?t=289 Is this the javascript you are talking about? I noticed the post is kind of old so I didn't know if the info was still good or not as I'm sure Shopsite has been updated several times since that post.

Yes, that code is still good, and does work in a ShopSite store. It may require ShopSite Pro though to be able to achieve your goals with regards to hiding shipping options.

Rob

[Jim]

As mentioned before there is not option to not display certain shipping methods. They will all be displayed so if you want the shopper to not pick an option just price it with a somewhat reasonable but high price and they probably won't select it.

Regarding your question about the "critical overflow error" with 99999999999, the price and weight values in ShopSite are 32 bit signed values so the maximum any number can be is 2147483647. The number of decimal places is dependent on the currency setting in the locale. In the US where we have 2 decimal points for currency the maximum amount would be $21,474,836.47 (21 million +a bit) in countries where they no longer use decimal places (like Japanese Yen) they could have 2,147,483,647 (2 billion). We haven't had any ShopSite stores selling items that approach those value yet so there isn't a need to increase it to something higher.

Yes the code on Lexiconn site can be used to prevent checking out if certain fields are selected. As Rob mentioned it requires ShopSite Pro to be able to add the javascript to the shopping cart code.