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In order to estimate shipping, you need the weight and dimensions of a product to ship, an origin, and a destination. They already know the origin, they need th

In order to estimate shipping, you need the weight and dimensions of a product to ship, an origin, and a destination. They already know the origin, they need the other two from you.

hx87 10y ago
If they have a functional inventory system, they know the weight and dimensions of the product, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code.
- jasode 10y ago
  >, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code. There can also be differences of shipping costs for delivering to a business vs a residential address. I've seen shipping costs go up by $3+ when shipping to a buyer's home address instead of his office. The zipcode isn't granular enough to differentiate that. I believe 2 factors contribute to the extra costs: 1) UPS trucks don't drive the residential streets as often as the main roadways where all the businesses are located and 2) many failed deliveries and repeated attempts because recipient isn't at home -- which costs more in gas, driver hours, etc
  - hx87 10y ago
    In that case, add a business/home selector or checkbox to the form. It's not that complicated. After all, if the information that I enter when I actually buy the item is precise enough to price the shipping, why can't I enter the exact same info without going through all the cart & registration BS?
- rz2k 10y ago
  Zones for shipping costs and time estimates are pretty large, so they could even give rough estimates until you input the exact address. Sales tax can differ from street to street, but even that could probably be guessed to within 1% based on your browser's location.
  - saosebastiao 10y ago
    When I lived in eastern Idaho, geolocation APIs regularly placed my location in Boise, over 300 miles away. They work fine for people in larger cities, but aren't precise outside of that. EDIT: also, internet proxies screw everything up.
    - bryondowd 10y ago
      Yeah, I live in NJ, but I work at a federal facility with an IP that geolocation places in DC. So I frequently see sites assuming I'm in DC when I access them from work rather than home, even though the two locations are actually three miles apart. So I certainly prefer when they just ask for a ZIP code.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  Sometimes a postal code is enough, sometimes it will be rejected by carrier APIs, especially in less dense areas like Alaska, where a postal code can span thousands of square miles. Lower 48 should be fine for the most part outside of the Rockies and some parts of the Midwest, but it isn't always obvious to determine. Plus, you get different costs when shipping to business or residential, or single address vs building with multiple addresses, etc. And weight/dimensions can be determined from a single item but they do not add up linearly with multiple items. Once you've got a 5kg item, adding another may add 5% to the shipping cost. Adding an additional 50g item may add 0%. If it has to ship via air, it could add 5% for a small item, or 500% if it is a large item, independent of weight. Since the first item in your cart typically bears the brunt of the share of shipping cost, they tend to ask for your full cart before estimating shipping, because extrapolating from the first item alone could paint a very misleading picture of how much shipping will cost for multiple items. There are solutions out there to help with pricing transparency, but they aren't as trivial as you make them out to be and I wouldn't expect a small eCommerce company to know how to do anything outside of directly communicating with carrier APIs.
  - hx87 10y ago
    You have strong points there, and it is indeed difficult or impossible for small eCommerce companies to do the calculations themselves. That being said, how much do carriers charge clients for API calls? Unless it's a ridiculous amount, if I have a complete cart, I should be able to enter the same info used for actual shipping to do a cost calculation without having to sign up for an account or actually start the checkout process.
    - saosebastiao 10y ago
      I'm not 100% sure about API pricing, but I would imagine they are free to make for businesses that actually ship things. It seems like one of those things you shouldn't skimp on as a carrier. And yes they should at least offer a no-signup in-cart shipping estimate. Most off the shelf eccommerce sites do. If not, they definitely want to spam your inbox with "come back, we miss you!" messages :)
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  Believe it or not, the origin is in question as well. Until the complete order is known, we can't make an optimal choice of which warehouse to ship from. We might want to get it to you faster by fulfilling it from the nearest warehouse, but if one of your products isn't in stock there, we may need to change strategy, selecting a different warehouse. That may not be the customer's problem directly, but if we try to hide it, then the difference is going to surface in the seller's expenses, and thus in the price.
  - saosebastiao 10y ago
    This is true. I actually worked with the "service" at Amazon that made these decisions. For a company with a single warehouse, or even multiple warehouses with equivalent inventory selections, you shouldn't face this problem. But with Amazon, where the entire inventory selection couldn't even fit in 20 warehouses, you end up with a terrible NP complete problem whose solution quality can make or break profitability on pretty much any product with less than a 10% gross margin. And I say "service" because you can't really fit into a service oriented architecture when you have solve times in excess of 5 minutes...the "service" is really just a way of dumping problems onto a queue to be passed downstream when done.
sbov 10y ago
We just take the middle ground. We charge one rate for shipping internationally, and one for shipping domestically. The charge is for the minimum shipping cost we have. We don't recover the full cost of shipping, but it's good enough for us.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  We don't recover the full cost of shipping, but it's good enough for us. You mean directly? Or are you subsidizing purchases for some business building purpose?? (I'm being picky, but look at the headline and article here. They make the incredibly sophisticated point that businesses have to cover their costs somehow if they want to stay in business)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sbov 10y ago
    Yes, directly. The site we run had free shipping at first. But for our given store, for the vast majority of our orders, the shipping costs come out the same. And from my experience, there's a huge difference in customer behavior between free and flat shipping. So, it really depends upon which part of the article you want to talk about. Brick & mortar vs internet stores? Well, the cost of shipping that isn't paid by the customer is very small for our site. At our current sales volume, it would probably be less than the cost of renting commercial space. Obviously, this may not apply to everyone.
bambax 10y ago
That is a bad pricing strategy. Shipping price doesn't need to be based on actual costs, it could be based on value. Or it could be averaged. Whichever way it's calculated, it needs to be based on something the customer cares about. What the customer cares about is shipping time, and maybe packaging / reputation of carrier. What the customer ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT CARE ABOUT is where your warehouse is located.
- dawnerd 10y ago
  I care where the warehouse is located in a lot of cases. If something ships from a location near me I know I'm getting it within a day. If something ships from the east coast it's going to be a while unless it's via air.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    So what you care about is shipping time, and location is a proxy for that if you don't have more trustworthy information.
    - dawnerd 10y ago
      Well yeah, but if the warehouse is on the other side of the country there's a higher chance for delays, especially winter time where bad weather can shut down airports and truck routes. I know I'm in the minority though. End of the day, as long as the item is delivered by the time they promise it doesn't ultimately matter I guess.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  For a well capitalized company that can afford to take well-researched risks, you're absolutely right. But shipping costs for some retailers can be $1 at the first percentile and >$100 as low as the 80th percentile. Any shipping pricing strategy that is purely policy or rule based has to have a very well analyzed foundation to it, or you risk wiping out your profitability with even a handful of poorly predicted purchases. Smaller retailers have a hard enough time pricing their products, let alone pricing their products under consideration of all of the possible shipping costs they could possibly face. So in the end they just defer on shipping price by passing it off to the customer.
gnopgnip 10y ago
There are flat rate shipping services in addition to the other options. Anything that fits in a padded flat rate envelope will ship for $6.10 anywhere in the US. There is no simple shipping answer that covers a variety of goods and makes everyone happy.

In order to estimate shipping, you need the weight and dimensions of a product to ship, an origin, and a destination. They already know the origin, they need the other two from you.

hx87 10y ago

If they have a functional inventory system, they know the weight and dimensions of the product, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code.

jasode 10y ago
>, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code. There can also be differences of shipping costs for delivering to a business vs a residential address. I've seen shipping costs go up by $3+ when shipping to a buyer's home address instead of his office. The zipcode isn't granular enough to differentiate that. I believe 2 factors contribute to the extra costs: 1) UPS trucks don't drive the residential streets as often as the main roadways where all the businesses are located and 2) many failed deliveries and repeated attempts because recipient isn't at home -- which costs more in gas, driver hours, etc
- hx87 10y ago
  In that case, add a business/home selector or checkbox to the form. It's not that complicated. After all, if the information that I enter when I actually buy the item is precise enough to price the shipping, why can't I enter the exact same info without going through all the cart & registration BS?
rz2k 10y ago
Zones for shipping costs and time estimates are pretty large, so they could even give rough estimates until you input the exact address. Sales tax can differ from street to street, but even that could probably be guessed to within 1% based on your browser's location.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  When I lived in eastern Idaho, geolocation APIs regularly placed my location in Boise, over 300 miles away. They work fine for people in larger cities, but aren't precise outside of that. EDIT: also, internet proxies screw everything up.
  - bryondowd 10y ago
    Yeah, I live in NJ, but I work at a federal facility with an IP that geolocation places in DC. So I frequently see sites assuming I'm in DC when I access them from work rather than home, even though the two locations are actually three miles apart. So I certainly prefer when they just ask for a ZIP code.
saosebastiao 10y ago
Sometimes a postal code is enough, sometimes it will be rejected by carrier APIs, especially in less dense areas like Alaska, where a postal code can span thousands of square miles. Lower 48 should be fine for the most part outside of the Rockies and some parts of the Midwest, but it isn't always obvious to determine. Plus, you get different costs when shipping to business or residential, or single address vs building with multiple addresses, etc. And weight/dimensions can be determined from a single item but they do not add up linearly with multiple items. Once you've got a 5kg item, adding another may add 5% to the shipping cost. Adding an additional 50g item may add 0%. If it has to ship via air, it could add 5% for a small item, or 500% if it is a large item, independent of weight. Since the first item in your cart typically bears the brunt of the share of shipping cost, they tend to ask for your full cart before estimating shipping, because extrapolating from the first item alone could paint a very misleading picture of how much shipping will cost for multiple items. There are solutions out there to help with pricing transparency, but they aren't as trivial as you make them out to be and I wouldn't expect a small eCommerce company to know how to do anything outside of directly communicating with carrier APIs.
- hx87 10y ago
  You have strong points there, and it is indeed difficult or impossible for small eCommerce companies to do the calculations themselves. That being said, how much do carriers charge clients for API calls? Unless it's a ridiculous amount, if I have a complete cart, I should be able to enter the same info used for actual shipping to do a cost calculation without having to sign up for an account or actually start the checkout process.
  - saosebastiao 10y ago
    I'm not 100% sure about API pricing, but I would imagine they are free to make for businesses that actually ship things. It seems like one of those things you shouldn't skimp on as a carrier. And yes they should at least offer a no-signup in-cart shipping estimate. Most off the shelf eccommerce sites do. If not, they definitely want to spam your inbox with "come back, we miss you!" messages :)
CWuestefeld 10y ago
Believe it or not, the origin is in question as well. Until the complete order is known, we can't make an optimal choice of which warehouse to ship from. We might want to get it to you faster by fulfilling it from the nearest warehouse, but if one of your products isn't in stock there, we may need to change strategy, selecting a different warehouse. That may not be the customer's problem directly, but if we try to hide it, then the difference is going to surface in the seller's expenses, and thus in the price.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  This is true. I actually worked with the "service" at Amazon that made these decisions. For a company with a single warehouse, or even multiple warehouses with equivalent inventory selections, you shouldn't face this problem. But with Amazon, where the entire inventory selection couldn't even fit in 20 warehouses, you end up with a terrible NP complete problem whose solution quality can make or break profitability on pretty much any product with less than a 10% gross margin. And I say "service" because you can't really fit into a service oriented architecture when you have solve times in excess of 5 minutes...the "service" is really just a way of dumping problems onto a queue to be passed downstream when done.

sbov 10y ago

We just take the middle ground. We charge one rate for shipping internationally, and one for shipping domestically. The charge is for the minimum shipping cost we have. We don't recover the full cost of shipping, but it's good enough for us.

maxerickson 10y ago
We don't recover the full cost of shipping, but it's good enough for us. You mean directly? Or are you subsidizing purchases for some business building purpose?? (I'm being picky, but look at the headline and article here. They make the incredibly sophisticated point that businesses have to cover their costs somehow if they want to stay in business)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sbov 10y ago
  Yes, directly. The site we run had free shipping at first. But for our given store, for the vast majority of our orders, the shipping costs come out the same. And from my experience, there's a huge difference in customer behavior between free and flat shipping. So, it really depends upon which part of the article you want to talk about. Brick & mortar vs internet stores? Well, the cost of shipping that isn't paid by the customer is very small for our site. At our current sales volume, it would probably be less than the cost of renting commercial space. Obviously, this may not apply to everyone.

bambax 10y ago

That is a bad pricing strategy. Shipping price doesn't need to be based on actual costs, it could be based on value. Or it could be averaged. Whichever way it's calculated, it needs to be based on something the customer cares about. What the customer cares about is shipping time, and maybe packaging / reputation of carrier. What the customer ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT CARE ABOUT is where your warehouse is located.

dawnerd 10y ago
I care where the warehouse is located in a lot of cases. If something ships from a location near me I know I'm getting it within a day. If something ships from the east coast it's going to be a while unless it's via air.
- vidarh 10y ago
  So what you care about is shipping time, and location is a proxy for that if you don't have more trustworthy information.
  - dawnerd 10y ago
    Well yeah, but if the warehouse is on the other side of the country there's a higher chance for delays, especially winter time where bad weather can shut down airports and truck routes. I know I'm in the minority though. End of the day, as long as the item is delivered by the time they promise it doesn't ultimately matter I guess.
saosebastiao 10y ago
For a well capitalized company that can afford to take well-researched risks, you're absolutely right. But shipping costs for some retailers can be $1 at the first percentile and >$100 as low as the 80th percentile. Any shipping pricing strategy that is purely policy or rule based has to have a very well analyzed foundation to it, or you risk wiping out your profitability with even a handful of poorly predicted purchases. Smaller retailers have a hard enough time pricing their products, let alone pricing their products under consideration of all of the possible shipping costs they could possibly face. So in the end they just defer on shipping price by passing it off to the customer.

gnopgnip 10y ago

There are flat rate shipping services in addition to the other options. Anything that fits in a padded flat rate envelope will ship for $6.10 anywhere in the US. There is no simple shipping answer that covers a variety of goods and makes everyone happy.