Zen Cart supports more than 30 shipping modules. At least 10 are default ones. Why do you need build your own shipping module?
Shipping Affects Each Order
You may noticed that, if you are selling tangible products, each order has to be shipped. To a typical successful Zen Cart store, do you know how many orders it needs to ship?
In Australia, I have around 20 clients, 3 of them are very busy each day. Usually, a busy store like this has to send out 9 to 20 orders per day.
That means 3500 to 7000 orders a year!
If each order they can save USD $1.00 in shipping cost, how much can it save? You don??t have to Einstein to answer this question. $3,500 to $7,000!
How much does it cost to build a best shipping module? I guess no more than $300. A simple shipping module may cost $120.
If you are the owner, will you be happy to trader $120 for $7,000? You don??t have to be Buffet to answer this.
Money Saving and Making
Now, we??ll talk a bit ??evil? things you may not be interested in. Handling fee, a hidden cost you can control.
In Zen Cart, shipping modules provided by third parties like USPS, AustPost, have no handling fee supported, while the other modules like ??Flat Rate, Table Rate, Zone Rate? have handling fee supported.
Since it all depends on you to set up this, it becomes your decision whether to Save Money or Make Money on handling fee.
We saw both.
Improve Your Business Profile
Shipping is really a tricky section of your business. You can save money or make money on it, and you can improve your business profile on it.
How?
Please check this live case: http://www.harvestwell.com.sg/
This is an online party supplier store. All customers are from Singapore, a small city in South Asia. Owner is Freddie, a savvy man who use ??Pickup Delivery Date and Time? to give customers more control of delivery date and time.
See, more control of delivery date and time! Not every online store can do that. It may be minor, however, this is a business advantage.
Please check another site: http://www.blackandwhitelab.com/
Place some products into cart, and view it, you will see a shipping calculator. This is nothing unusual. But do you know the secrets of the shipping cost? It was controlled by category. Webmaster does not have to change the shipping cost of each product, he only needs to put it into the right category.
Now, you should understand the benefits of custom shipping module: Save Money, Make Money, Improve Your Business Profile. The key is ??apply your business rules into shipping?, it will work as long as possible to benefit you.
Get Free Help !
