How to inform customers about product fabrication time?

[fineedge]

How do we let customers know that the item they are about to buy takes, say. 3 weeks to make? We use another ecommerce platform at the moment and we can set the ship date on that at 3 weeks from time of purchase and the customer sees the ' three weeks production time' and expected ship date.

[Mac]

Hi, @fineedge! 

Thanks for reaching out in our Community forums and for sharing your concern, I’d be happy to help. 

I understand how important it is to inform your customers of the production time and shipping time of certain products. This will not only increase transparency, but also build trust and will set the appropriate expectations with the customer. With Shopify, there are many ways that you can communicate this information with your customers. For ease of viewing, here is a bulleted list that displays the native ways you can implement this: 

• The first suggestion would be to adjust your checkout language for processing times. This will allow you to adjust your checkout language in your theme's settings to add a message to your customers. You can do this by editing the Shipping method title field to highlight your processing times. 
• Another suggestion would be to update an existing FAQ, shipping information page, and shipping policy page with the updated processing times so that your customers are aware of the changes. 
• Moving on to the checkout page, you can adjust or remove the shipping speed estimates from your shipping rate. For instance, you can change the shipping rate from $5 Flat Fee (5-7 business days) to $5 Flat Fee (3-4 weeks). 
• Finally, if you would like to inform your customers through your product page, you can simply leave a note in the description or create a separate text box on the item pages that require the longer processing times. 

Alternatively, you can check out our App Store for effective third party solutions. These apps offer functionality that will automatically provide the estimated delivery time on a product to product basis. If you have any questions about the apps, or need a hand setting them up, feel free to reach out to the developers directly as they could provide some more information.  

Feel free to reply back to this thread with any questions or updates and we can continue our conversation further!

[fineedge]

Thank you that was very helpful.

Another question.  we have a flat pack product and we have cases where
one customer buys only 1 unit.  the box is say, X x Y x Z. that costs 20$ to ship anywhere in Canada.  If the person buys 2 of the same unit,
the box is now X x Y x 2Z, but the shipping cost is 28$.  It is not 40$ because of the weight and size and we have a second type of box that
fits those items.  Again if the customer buys 3 units, the shipping is now 36$ and not 60$ as would be expected.

How do we accomodate this in the shipping profiles?  We have this all figured out on etsy but we do not know how to replicate it on shopify.
Thanks

David

[Anindita]

Hi @fineedge,

When using multiple shipping profiles, if orders contain products from different profiles or locations, this will result in combined rates at the checkout and the higher rate is charged. This might be the scenario in your case. 

[fineedge]

No, I mean if a customer wants 3 items, they are charged 3x the shipping of 1 item which is not correct.   The actual shipping cost to us is far less than 3x