A General Guide to Setting Up Shipping Profiles

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Shipping is one of the most vital parts when setting up your online business. Understanding shipping basics can help you reduce your shipping costs and offer more options to your customers. For example, you could create a buyer incentive by offering your customers a free shipping rate at checkout if their order exceeds a specific amount! This is just one of many ways you can utilize shipping to entice customers to place a purchase.

Understanding Shipping Profiles

Before you set up your shipping profiles, be sure to look into our considerations for setting up shipping.

Shipping profiles will allow you to set up multiple shipping rules for your products or locations. You have the option to use the General Shipping Profile for each of your products or create Custom Shipping Profiles for specific products or collections.

You only need to set up the General Shipping Profile to have all of your products display the same shipping rates.

If you would like to offer different shipping rates for specific products, you will want to create Custom Shipping Profiles. For example, if you are selling Tshirts and Mugs on your online store and would like to offer different rates, you will need to create two Custom Shipping Profiles and add assigned products.

Note: The remaining products that have not been assigned to the Custom Shipping Profiles will be automatically added to the General Shipping Profile.

Adding Shipping Zones

Once you set up the General Shipping Profile or create a Custom Shipping Profile, you will need to add shipping zones. 

A shipping zone is a group of regions and/or countries that will share the same shipping rates. Your customers will be able to order products from the store only if the country or region where they want the order shipped to is included in one of your shipping zones. 

For example, if your business has a warehouse in Canada that ships anywhere to the United States for the same flat rate, then you can create a shipping zone that includes all of the States and charge the same shipping fee to all of your US customers.

Selecting Add rates on the fulfillment locations listed will allow you to Create your shipping zones for that address. Keep in mind that you can add multiple locations to an existing shipping zone. 

Add the regions and/or countries you would like to offer shipping to. If you would like to offer shipping to all areas of the world, add them to the shipping zone.

Adding Shipping Rates

Shipping rates are what you would like to charge your customers in addition to the cost of products that they ordered. You can choose to have a variety of shipping rates and methods to appear at the checkout, or you can offer one simple shipping option for your customers. 

Each shipping rate can have restrictions or rules in which the shipping methods are available based on the contents of the customer’s cart. The shipping rates can be flat, free, or calculated shipping rates that will display for your customers at the checkout.

Once you have successfully added the shipping zones to the shipping profile, we can begin to add our shipping rates by selecting Add rate.

Each rate can be set based on the weight or price of the customer's total order. Select Add Conditions to make the rate display Based on the item weight or Based on the total price.

• Flat shipping rate - Will allow you to have control over precisely what a customer is charged at checkout. For example, if you would like to charge your customers $8 USD for shipping each time a customer places their order, then you will want to set up a $8 USD flat shipping rate.
  
  
• Free shipping rate - Take any flat shipping rate and turn it into a free shipping rate by setting the shipping cost to $0. If you would like to offer free shipping on all orders, you can create a general flat shipping rate with a cost of $0.
  
  You can also offer your customers a free shipping rate for orders that meet a specific amount. For example, if you want to offer your customers free shipping on orders over $50 USD, then you will need to set up a priced-based flat rate of $0 for orders over $50 USD. This is a great way to create a buyer incentive for your visitors!
  
  
• Calculated shipping rate - Are shipping rates that are provided by a shipping company or apps that you can add to your online store. When a customer reaches the checkout, the cart information is sent to the shipping carrier or app, they return what you should charge for shipping. Carrier-calculated shipping rates allow you to pass on the exact cost of shipping an order directly to your customers.
  
  Depending on your Shopify subscription plan and location, there are certain shipping carriers that you can add to your store.
  
  Apps can also provide calculated rates if the shipping carrier that you ship through uses an app on the Shopify App Store.
  

The shipping settings that you decide to use will affect what your customer will see at checkout. Once you complete setting your shipping rates, you can place a test order to make sure that your rates are appearing appropriately and to get a better idea of what your customers will experience.

Every business is unique in the shipping requirements, so if you ever need a second opinion, then please don’t hesitate to ask your questions in this Shipping and Fulfillment board or contact Shopify Support.