How To Hide WooCommerce Shipping Methods — From Scratch To The Advanced Level Settings.

For online stores with more than one location or product, it is obvious to have different shipping methods for different conditions. With the right WooCommerce plugins, it is an easy-to-do task. Now, in all certainty, you might be willing to hide your WooCommerce shipping for a few conditions while showing them for other conditions.

Is it?

If yes, this tutorial will guide you through how to hide WooCommerce shipping methods for your e-commerce store. We’ve used Hide Shipping Method for WooCommerce Plugin in this guise. So, either go to the live demo link or download the plugin, if you want to follow our instructions while reading this post.

What will you learn in this tutorial?

We are going to explain the methods for –

• Hiding all shipping methods when free shipping is applied on your cart page.
• Hiding all shipping methods when free shipping or local pickup is selected on your page.
• Hiding one or more shipping methods from the cart page when the free shipping facility is available for the cart.
• Hiding one or more shipping methods when your cart satisfies a few conditions.

Looks an all-inclusive tutorial for hiding WooCommerce shipping methods, doesn’t it?

Read ahead to learn how to how it all, then. You can also scroll down to the particular section that solves your current problem related to hiding shipping methods, instead of reading it all.

Hiding All Shipping Methods if Cart Qualifies for Free Shipping

Why and when is it required?

Online stores frequently offer free shipping facility to their buyers. The criteria for qualifying to avail it could be proximity to the store/warehouse, product quantity in the cart, cart total, type of product being purchased, a sale, or anything similar.

You cannot deny from the fact that customers love free shipping and enabling this facility for your online store increases the sale.

Now, think that a customer’s cart has qualified for the free shipping facility, but you are still rendering all other shipping methods on his/her cart page that could be chosen.

If customer didn’t play much with this page and continues, all is well. But let’s consider the worst cases –

1. A buyer saw multiple shipping methods on the cart page and gets confused about whether or not s/he actually qualifies for the free shipping.

Result — an abandoned order.

2. A buyer mistakenly changed the shipping method from free shipping to something else, while knowing that the cart qualifies for free shipping. In the end, he or she has to pay a higher price.

Result — An unsatisfied customer. It could lead to a lost regular buyer or cancellation of the order later.

And, even if we ignore these cases, you will have to agree on our observation that a minimalist design with least elements on the checkout page (all relevant ones only) leads to the best user experience. Therefore, others hide shipping methods, whenever you let your customers avail free shipping for their cart.

How to Hide All Shipping Methods if Cart Qualifies for Free Shipping?

Note: We’re assuming that you have the hide shipping method for WooCommerce plugin already. If not, please use this live demo link to follow our instructions.

If installed the suggested plugin well, you will find a link to ‘hide shipping’ in your WordPress admin dashboard — listed in the sidebar. All you have to do now is –

1. Go to General settings.
2. Choose the radio button with value ‘Hide all other shipping methods when free shipping available on the cart page’.
3. Save settings and exit.

Yes, it was that easy!

Now, for the buyers who qualify for the free shipping perks, your store’s cart page won’t render any other shipping method.

Hiding All Shipping Methods if Cart Qualifies for Free Shipping or Local Pickup

Why and when is it required?

All e-commerce stores want to utilize their resources optimally. And, delivering in your area through your own professionals running around, or even through the suitable carriers, is one of the most resource-consuming jobs. So, local pickup is becoming an increasingly popular method of delivery nowadays.

It has two benefits –

1. Benefit For sellers

It saves time, resources and hassle of finding the customer’s location.

• Benefits for Sellers

For customers, it saves shipping cost. Sometimes, when in hurry or when a product is needed on a particular date, local pickup gives them the convenience to receive the ordered products as per their convenience. So, it’ll save them from extra charges they might have paid for the urgent shipping — in some cases. Overall, if the store is near, many customers picking up their order by themselves.

Now, if we go by previous settings for your online store, there is a problem!

While you have local pickup facility, most of the customers eligible for free shipping too. However, if you’ve enabled hide shipping for free shipping, local pickup shipping method will disappear too.

What’s the solution then?

Well, we’ve taken care of that.

For the WooCommerce sellers who want local pickup as well as free shipping method to be shown on the checkout page when free shipping is available, this plugin still has an easy solution. You can hide all shipping methods when local pickup and free shipping are being applied on the cart. So, for free shipping, local pickup won’t disappear.

Now, in the next section, read how to enable it.

How to Hide All Shipping Methods if Cart Qualifies for Free Shipping or Local Pickup?

Note: We’re assuming that you have the hide shipping method for WooCommerce plugin already. If not, please use this live demo link to follow our instructions.

Here’s the quick procedure –

1. Navigate to the ‘Hide Shipping’ section, using the link in your WordPress website’s dashboard under ‘WooCommerce’.

• Go to ‘General Settings’ and choose ‘Hide all other shipping methods when free shipping and local pickup available on the cart page.’
• Save settings.

Now, even if your customer’s cart is eligible for free shipping alongside local pickup, you can let him/her chose between both. So, even if free shipping is an option, the customer still has the authority to choose whether or not he would like to utilize local pickup service.

Hiding Some Shipping Methods if Cart Qualifies for Free Shipping

Why and when is it required?

There are times when your buyer is eligible for free shipping, but you still want to hide just a few shipping methods. The reason could be the availability of multiple shipping methods that buyers might want to use, even if they are eligible for free shipping.

So, what will you do then?

In this scenario, it will be appropriate to hide specific shipping methods, instead of all, when the cart qualifies for free shipping. Using the hide shipping method for WooCommerce plugin, this task becomes super-easy.

How to Hide some Shipping Methods if Cart Qualifies for Free Shipping?

Note: We’re assuming that you have the hide shipping method for WooCommerce plugin already. If not, please use this live demo link to follow our instructions.

Using the above-mentioned plugin, you just have to follow the given steps –

1. Go to WooCommerce > Hide Shipping using your WordPress admin dashboard.

• In General Settings, choose the option ‘hide specific methods when free shipping available on the cart page’. It will add a new form field, named ‘select shipping method’ to your general settings section in the same dashboard.
• In the text field opposite to ‘Select Shipping method’, choose the method(s) that you want to hide when free shipping is applicable.
• Save settings.

For Example — We’ve marked ‘US — flat rate’ and ‘United Kingdom (UK) — Flat rate’ shipping methods as hidden when free shipping is available.

Once these new settings are configured for your shop, it’ll hide the selected shipping methods while showing the other methods.

Are you thinking what the benefit of doing so is?

If you have the options, such as ‘urgent shipping’, ‘Deliver within 3 days’, or ‘Deliver with gift wrapping’, etc. like methods, your store won’t lose related capabilities even if free shipping is applied. At the same time, you will be able to hide irrelevant methods without troubles.

Hiding one or more (or all) Shipping Methods as per Your Conditional Rules

Why and when is it required?

WooCommerce stores are very dynamic in nature, and therefore, perfectly suitable for the businesses trying to give tough competition in competitive domains or industries. So, for improving the customer experience and remove unnecessary cart components, it becomes critical to have a way to hide shipping methods as per the cart’s situation and not just when the free shipping is applicable.

By hiding the shipping methods for different conditions, you can customize the shipping methods’ list for your customers as per their cart’s scenario. Let us explain to you by a few examples –

1. When you want to hide a shipping method that works for cities in the UK & your buyer isn’t from the United Kingdom.

• When your buyer’s cart has less than 10 items of a category and you want to disable the shipping method that is feasible for bulk orders only.

Overwhelmed already? Don’t be, because the next section will give you quick insights into enabling basic & advanced type of hiding shipping rules.

How to Hide one, or a few, or all Shipping Methods as per your conditional rules?

Note: We’re assuming that you have the hide shipping method for WooCommerce plugin already. If not, please use this live demo link to follow our instructions.

For this, you have to choose ‘Conditional Hide shipping method Rules’ option from the General settings in WooCommerce > Hide Shipping section.

Before explaining how to hide a few or all shipping methods as per your specified conditions, we would prefer telling you that which kinds of conditions are accepted for this plugin. So, here’s a quick description –

Adding a Conditional Hide Shipping Rule

Unlike the past 3 methods that we explained, adding a conditional hide shipping rule isn’t similar to adding typical configuration to your store. Your store may have one or multiple hides shipping conditional rules for this very reason. And, for one of such rules, you can specify multiple conditions at once.

• General Configurations for a Conditional Hide Shipping Rule

To start with, a conditional hide shipping method rule is capable of letting to make your shipping methods hidden on these (alongside many other) basis –

1. Start date
2. End date
3. Day of the week (for example — Wednesday)
4. Start Time
5. End Time

• Types of Rules allowed:

While the above-stated conditions can still be added to your method rule, WooCommerce store owners can create 2 types of rules for their each conditional hide shipping method:

1. Basic Rules
2. Advance Rules

What are basic rules for Hide Shipping for WooCommerce Plugins?

Basic rules could be of five types –

1. Location Specific Rule, such as, the ones based on country, state, postal code or zone (as created using WooCommerce settings).

• Product Specific Rule, such as, the ones based on the Product name, product’s category, SKU, tag or variable product.
• Attribute Specific Rule, such as, the ones based on color or size of items on the cart.
• User Specific Rule, such as, the ones based on the user name or user role.
• Cart Specific Rules, such as, the ones based on cart subtotal (before or after the discount), cart weight, cart quantity, cart shipping class or the coupon applied on the cart.

What are advanced rules for Hide Shipping for WooCommerce Plugins?

Note: You will have to choose the value of ‘Apply Extra Rule’ as ‘Advance Rule’ in order to get started with the creation of advanced rules.

When you have to hide the shipping method(s) for a particular range related to an attribute, you will need to add multiple basic rules to achieve the same. So, instead, use advanced rules. These rules take the minimum and maximum value for a particular parameter. The parameters, for which you can create advanced rules, are –

1. Product Qty
2. Product Weight
3. Product Subtotal
4. Category Subtotal
5. Category Weight
6. Total Cart Qty
7. Total Cart Weight
8. Total Cart Subtotal

• Few More things about your Conditional Hide Shipping Rule Method

1. For the set of basic and advanced rules (separately), you can choose if you want the configuration to work when just one rule matches, or when every rule matches. This can be done by using the dropdowns given in each section and selecting the desired value for this dropdown (accepted values are ‘All rules match’ or ‘Any-one rule match’).

• You can also decide whether to apply to hide shipping settings when conditions in either of the set of basic and advanced rules are matched or of both sets. For this, choose ‘AND’ or ‘OR’ from the dropdown menu, present in the section ‘Apply Shipping Rules match between Basic Hide Shipping and Advanced Hide Shipping’.
• When your shipping methods are not compatible with this plugin, you can still use the values of those shipping methods and hide them. Learn how to find the WooCommerce shipping methods’ values.

If you’ve read everything thoroughly, you must be aware of the capabilities of conditional hide shipping rule methods — theoretically. So now, let us give you a few examples –

Example 1 — Hide a Shipping Name for a particular duration

Look at this screenshot –

In this, we’ve marked the shipping method named ‘United Kingdom (UK) — Flat Rate’ hidden for Monday and Wednesday from 8 AM to 8 PM when the shipping date is between November 6 to November 28, 2019.

Example 2 — Hiding a Few Shipping Methods as per basic rules

In the basic hide shipping rules section, click on ‘Add Rule’ and create the desired rules as per your needs. Here’s an example –

Example 2 — Hiding a Few Shipping Methods as per advanced rules

Once you’ll enable the ‘Advance Rule’ through ‘Apply Extra Rule’ section, you will see the space for adding advanced rules. In this new section, you can add advanced rules using its multiple rows and tabs, as –

The Final Word

Hiding unnecessary elements from the checkout page increases the clarity and decreases the ambiguity for your buyers. Not just it makes your cart page look neat, it improves the sales too. Therefore, always hide shipping methods and other design/functional components that are irrelevant for your online store or its pages as per the condition.

Pro Tip: Check out features of free and pro versions of hide shipping method for WooCommerce plugin to figure out whether the free version is enough for you, or you will need the advanced plugin for your store.

Originally published at https://www.thedotstore.com/ on 17 January, 2020