Adding product dimensions or measurements

[Sevenrice]

When adding a product under the shipping section of the product I can only add the weight and I am not able to add the product dimensions or measurements.

Is there a setting that has to be enabled? I have USPS calculated enabled and does not seem to matter.

Thanks.

[BrunoBerezaga]

Until today that is an important issue in the platform. Is not ready for international markets like Brazil where dimensions in products are mandatory for all carriers and flat dimensions are not a solution for a country with continental dimensions.

Today, some apps create metafields for that use but is not the best solution

[dankron]

Hard to understand how this is not fixed in Shopify yet, it's such a basic requirement on any e-commerce platform. Hard to understand why Shopify can't just add an extra 3 fields on their product database (H x W x L) next to the weight of the products.

[Ron-Anderson]

If I had to speculate, it's because, in the most general sense, product dimensions aren't required for shipping calculations. Yes, every major carrier in the world requires weight and dimensions to calculate dimensional shipping. That isn't the issue here. Carriers in general don't care about product dimensions - they only care about package dimensions. And Shopify provides those, albeit in a very limited way. Product dimensions are technically only a requirement for dimensional packing sytems, like our SmartBoxing system and other similar third-party solutions, to determine how products will fit into the available packages most accurately and efficiently. Since this isn't a general requirement for carriers, Shopify has opted not to provide these fields.

Where Shopify is limited is that they only provide a single default package size. Even though you can add multiple package sizes to your shipping settings, you can only set a single default size, which means a single set of package dimensions for every single order, regardless of what it is. And therein lies the real issue if the default package size doesn't make sense for the products being ordered. For any order requiring carrier calculations, Shopify is sending the total combined product weight - which the carrier requires - along with the package dimensions - which the carrier also requires, but doesn't know or care (for rating purposes) if those dimensions actually fit with the products being ordered, nor do they know if those products should be packed in 1, 2 or 10 boxes.

There are clearly several use cases where dedicated product dimensions are required by Shopify merchants, as this thread has shown. And whether or not Shopify has any intention of making them available is unknown. For the general purposes of sending carriers the two most basic requirements they have - total weight and package dimensions - Shopify currently provides these. 

[Echotonemusicau]

There is so much false information in this post its not even funny.
Regardless, the original point was shopify is the only website in the world
that does not have NORMAL meta fields for weight and dimensions. A default
box size is absolutely ridiculous. It shows the pure lack of
professionalism required in e-commerce.

We continue to urge everyone to do what we and many other sellers did.
Migrate to Big Commerce where all these issues are not an issue. End of
story.

no one should endure such nonsense for something as simple as having normal
meta fields like every website on the internet..except, yep you guessed it,
Shopify

Have a great day, guys.

[Ron-Anderson]

I do appreciate the feedback, thank you. I'm confused about which parts you felt were false. Perhaps you can clarify? If I misrepresented something, I do apologize. For clarity: I agree that dedicated product dimensions would be helpful. And I absolutely agree that having a single default package size creates plenty of issues for merchants. For dimensional shipping and carrier rate calculations, product dims specifically aren't required by carriers because they are getting weight and package dims from Shopify which is technically all they need for dimensional shipping. The 'default' package dims being sent by Shopify, in most cases, likely don't reflect reality, which is ultimately the issue.

[Echotonemusicau]

The point is do it normally like everybody else! No one cares about
dimensional shipping. NOBODY. Everybody cares about Normal shipping.

Don't be cheap. Get an IT guy to add normal meta fields so people can put
in the shipped package dims and weight in the listing. Period end of
story. No other discussion is needed.

It's been done that way since 1998 long before Shopify was around.

You can't justify this nonsense.

[Ron-Anderson]

Thank you for clarifying. Just so there is no misunderstanding, I don't work for Shopify, nor am I justifying their position. Like you, just trying to speculate on what their position is. We're a third-party solution that works on the Shopify (and BigCommerce) platform. Our system resolves this and many other issues, but we understand that using a third-party solution isn't always feasible, especially when basic functionaly for basic shipping requirements should be sufficient out of the box. We understand the limitations on Shopify can be frustrating to merchants, and I certainly won't debate that nor try to justify it. I absolutely agree with your concerns and I'm not sure why Shopify hasn't added in fields for length, width and height. I'm speculating it's because they feel they aren't required for dimensional shipping. That's all. Enjoy the rest of your day.

[dankron]

@Ron-Anderson I'm tired of seeing your replies trying to defend shopify with this lack of basic feature, the fact is it doesn't work PERIOD.

If you say Shopify offers the feature of package size, how do you tell what product fits on what box?

We have 1000s of different produtcs and each have a different size, and most of them already have an outer box that is ready for shipping all we need to do is print a label, sitck on it and ship it...

Let's say I enter on my stystem all box sizes we have for every single SKU, how am I going to set on shopify to say this product uses this box, that product uses the other box. You can only set one box size to calculate shipping, and this is completely STUPID

That's why it's important to have product dimensions on the system, like every other ecommerce solution has.

Stop defending Shopify.... This is not the only post on this forum of people complaining about the lack of this feature and you seem to be the only one that is on their side. So, please stop embarrassing yourself and stop commenting the same BS over and over.

[SamWoodward]

Unfortunately due to this major issue my husband and I had with our business, we ended up building an entire workaround in excel to identify how to load shipping profiles by weight ranges. Ultimately, it's a lot of work to research which box is used for which specific products, but this should be known at some point to purchase shipping supplies in bulk, so a  must! Then have to identify if the box dimension weight or the actual weight of the product + the box is heavier because all carriers will take the greater of the 2 to calculate cost. We then categorized which states would fall into which zones shipping from California and built out multiple zones within our shipping profile so each range of weight for each zone would represent a more accurate rate according to what we see internally. Nearly 50+ hours went into research and building out this entire workbook, but it's been working for us. If you know a particular item fits in a particular box and it's a 18x18x10 box, it's ultimately rated as a 19.5lb box (rounded to 20lbs.) and if the product alone is 22lbs + the 2lb. box, the bill weight will be 24lbs. If you can run a formula for all sku's because you already have box details you can then identify which bill weight is used (actual or dimensional). Once you figure that out, you can throw those details into a pivot to see the true weights in Shopify, actually end up being billed at a higher lb. rate via your carrier, and you can set up flat rates for weight ranges...

I know this sounds so extensive and it honestly was, but I'd be happy to help anyone out with organizing this information because it's been so critical to figure out and can honestly say it's been saving us significant money and increased sales once we figured this out!

[Echotonemusicau]

Why even bother when On millions of sites on the internet you just put in
the shipping price in cause the meta field box is there? That's it.
This is the only website that has people go through this hell. ooof.

To put a merchant through this is INSANE and weird.
Not a professional Platform.

Merry Christmas To all. echotonemusic.net

[SamWoodward]

I couldn't agree with you more! We honestly didn't realize this was an issue until we built out the website and loaded inventory. I'm unsure why we didn't think to research the shipping issues... I assume we figured millions of merchants are using it, so it shouldn't be a problem, right? We had zero clue the implications this was going to cause. I've spent countless hours making modifications to ensure the out of box solution for us has worked. Mind you, I'm a financial analyst with a background in Finance/IT systems so I have a level of understanding that some may not have, and this whole concept has absolutely blown my mind.

We checked the latest updates getting ready to deploy for Shopify and this shipping issue doesn't seem to be anywhere on their radar. It's wildly unacceptable.

[BrunoBerezaga]

PLEASE Shopify! It's hard to believe that carriers and hubs needs to deal with that without any Pattern creating metafields or even creating features to adress that important issue.

We are Shopify Experts here in Brazil and I can say: it's 100% IMPORTANT to have those fields immediately 

[lazy3leather]

It looks like from some shopify threads I have been reading that shipping dimensions have been quite a large frustration for Shopify shop owners for a very long time now. I cannot understand why Shopify does not take requests/suggestions for improvement seriously from the shop owners who pay their salaries. falling on deaf ears. Suggesting that a request will be submitted is just a way to pacify the conversation/question. 

[dankron]

Typical tech support reply: "Thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate the input, and we will make sure to pass it on to the department that doesn't care."

It is a no-brainer, really; every frate company we deal with asks for package dimensions and weight. Every other online shopping platform out there gives you those fields for you to fill in on every product. It's really not that hard; 3 extra fields on the database; use it if you like... done!

But then you have morons here with NO real use experience, just developers that created a plugin for Shopify that jump up and down saying its ok not to have that. Sure, show me your store and the products you actually sell.

Anyone with a real webstore with products that vary in size and weight, specially bigger items will need those measurements to avoid over paying on shipping.

[Rufy_78]

Hello,

Has a solution already been found for the issue of volumetric weight?

In Portugal, some operators will use volumetric weight instead of package weight in 2025. For international shipments, all operators already use it.

[BulletproofTips]

This is NOT a fix but more of a HACK... Most of my products are small and will ship USPS under 4 ounces so my default package size works 95% of the time. However, I have a few items that must ship in a 30" or 36" shipping tube and Shopify does not calculate the correct shipping rate and I lose money on the shipping for these items. We use Pirate Ship for our shipping service since it integrates all orders from Shopify and eBay in one place. Since we cannot put dimensions for each product on Shopify for the few long items I sell, what we do is leave the default package size as is and make the weight much heavier than the actual product so the shipping rate is calculated much closer to the actual cost of shipping. An example is a 4oz small package that costs $4.50 to ship across country would cost $13 if I send a 1 lb 30" long tube so I make that item weigh 6 lbs on Shopify and it comes out to around $13 when I use the true weight and dimensions on Pirate Ship. 

I had to create a few demo shipments on Pirate Ship using different addresses across the country to figure out a higher weight that works as close as possible but once we did that, it's all set now. When we create the shipment in Pirate Ship for the actual orders we plug in the correct length, width and weights and it is usually within $0.50+- of the cost the customer paid on Shopify. Sometimes the customer pays a little more, sometimes a little less so in the long run it's pretty close which is much better than me eating $10 per order in shipping for these items.   Hope this helps.