Simple Shipping Options

Option 1. Flat Shipping Charge Per Item

If you just want to use flat shipping cost for each item then just put ‘0′ in the ‘Base Shipping Cost’ option and specify the individual shipping cost in the trigger text (shortcode) for each product and you are done. For example, the following shortcode will place a button for a product that charges $2.00 for shipping.

[wp_cart:Test Product:price:10.00:shipping:2.00:end]

Option 2. Flat/Fixed Shipping Charge Per Checkout (no matter how many items in the cart)

If you just want to use a fixed shipping cost for the cart no matter how many items are in the cart then you can achieve this by specifying this fixed amount in the base shipping cost. Remember, the base shipping cost is only added to the cart if a product in the cart has individual shipping value specified (this way if a customer buys digital product he doesn’t get charged any shipping). Use an individual shipping value of “0.001″ for your physical items which won’t increase the shipping cost but will trigger the base shipping cost to be added as a fixed shipping rate. For example, use the following shortcode:

[wp_cart:Test Product:price:10.00:shipping:0.001:end]

Giving Shipping Discounts

What if you want to be a little more intelligent with the shipping cost calculation and want to use ‘Base Shipping Cost’ in conjunction with the individual product shipping cost to offer your customers a better shipping price? You can do that too.

The base shipping cost is added to the total of the individual products shipping cost. So for example if you had two products that costs $50 each and you want to charge $10 shipping for each item then someone buying both the products whould have to pay $100(product cost) + $20(shipping cost) = $120(total). That is not a very realistic shipping price since you are shipping both the products to the same address in one package so it will probably cost you $15 instead of $20.

How do you handle this situation?
You use a base shipping cost of $5 and indidividual product shipping cost of $5.

Now when someone buys both the products the shipping cost will be calculated as following:
$5(shipping for product1) + $5(shipping for product2) = $10(total individual products shipping cost)
Total shipping cost = $10(total individual products shipping cost) + $5(base shipping cost) = $15!

When someone buys one product the shipping cost will be calculated as following:
$5(shipping for product1) = $5(total individual products shipping cost)
Total shipping cost = $5(total individual products shipping cost) + $5(base shipping cost) = $10! (this is the shipping you wanted to charge for one product)

So, hopefully you can see that using the base shipping cost in conjunction with the individual product shipping cost you can be very dynamic in determining the total shipping cost for a purchase.

Visit the WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin Page.