Hello. I have a vintage and antiques company and offer a selection of larger items which require a mover. I want to have a shipping option to put “Shipping - Arrange with Mover”. I will offer a list of our local movers. I do not want the customer to think that shipping is “free” at checkout, which seems to be the only option. Does anyone have a solution to have a shipping TBD button? Thank you.
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Hey there, @AEL12345 ! Thanks for taking the time to reach out to the Shopify Community Forums with your question around shipping these larger items. My name is Imogen. It’s good to meet you!
Thanks for outlining your request here! Before diving into things in a bit more detail, I just have a few questions:
- Where are you hoping to present this ‘Shipping - Arrange with Mover’ option? Are you trying to present this in your checkout, or on your product pages for these larger items?
- You mention using ‘local movers’ - are these products only being sold to folks that are relatively local to your location?
Hi Imogen. I am trying to present this at my checkout when the customer is looking at the shipping. These products are being sold across my country zone (the US). I have several small movers who ship items across the country. Thank you.
Thanks for that information, @AEL12345 ! Have you already created shipping rates in ‘Settings > Shipping and Delivery’ that represent the rates these small movers would be charging for their services? This would be my first suggestion here, as you can create something called a ‘Shipping Profile’ that you can assign all of your larger products to, and then have specific shipping rates that will appear in checkout for only these products within the profile. This would be the easiest way for you to provide your customer’s an accurate shipping rate for these larger products. It could make sense to speak to these movers regarding the rates they would be charging you to move products of specific sizes, and then use those costs to help guide the shipping fees you want to charge customers.
If you’re keen on allowing customers to purchase these goods without paying for shipping, and then invoicing them for the shipping later, there’s a few ways that you can go about doing this. The easiest method would to be use Draft Orders for these specific larger items. This would allow you to create orders containing these larger items yourself on behalf of your customers, and then apply shipping manually to these orders once you’ve determined what that shipping cost is going to be. Then, you can email an invoice to your customer where they can pay for the product and the shipping all at once. This would be the suggestion I would lean towards using in your situation. You would need to create a product page template that would prevent customers from adding these products to their cart, and instead prompt them to email you regarding setting up the purchase so you can create the order on their behalf.
Alternatively, you could offer a shipping rate called ‘Shipping - TBD’ or something similar and charge no cost and allow the customer’s to place orders for these large items for the checkout. This lets your customer’s purchase your goods via the online checkout. However, this can lead into some confusion for your customers here as they may be expecting to pay whatever rate is tied to this ‘Shipping -TBD’ rate, and will be caught off guard whenever you invoice them for the shipping for this order. You would need to make sure that it is VERY clear to your customers that this workflow will apply to these larger products. Honestly I wouldn’t lean in this direction in how to facilitate this functionality, as the confusion it could cause may not be worth the hassle for you or your customers.
Hi Imogen. Thank you very much for these solutions. For the “Shipping - TBD” option. Could I use something like the terms and conditions app to say that shipping will be arranged separately so there is no confusion? Or create a pop-up banner of sorts if this option is selected? I plan to have a whole page dedicated to shipping larger items on the website. Thank you so much.
Thanks for following up, @AEL12345 ! In theory you could use a third party app to provide a terms and conditions box for your customers to engage with. However, depending on your Shopify subscription plan, you may not be able to feature this box within the checkout pages, but only on the cart page. This is because the coding for the checkout pages is locked down pretty tightly, and only some customizations are made available for this section of your Shopify Store.
An entire page dedicated to shipping these larger items is a fantastic idea and something you will absolutely want to do. I also recommend including information setting expectations around how shipping for these larger items will work on their product pages directly. The more opportunities you provide your customers to be informed of your shipping process, the less likely they will be caught off caught if you go the ‘Shipping - TBD’ rate route. I do want to say that there likely will be confusion, regardless of how well you attempt to inform your shoppers of this process. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with several merchants over my years here at Shopify, and no matter how foolproof you make things, it’s inevitable that someone will ignore the information you’ve provided, and get caught off guard. You could also use a third party app or custom coding to provide a pop-up informing customers of this expectation around shipping, but again, they may just click through it and don’t read it’s content. This is why I wanted to take the time to outline the draft order method for you here, as I strongly believe this is the most painless way for you to facilitate these orders for these larger items when you don’t know how much to charge for shipping until you hear back from these movers. Leaning into the idea of creating an entire page centered around shipping these larger goods, you could even customize this page to feature these larger products there specifically, and request that users email you about these specific products so you can create an order on their behalf and invoice for the entire transactions (cost of the product AND the shipping) all at once to avoid any confusion for your customers, and avoid headaches caused by that confusion for you.
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