Understanding Table Rate Shipping — With Examples using WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping Pro
Every WooCommerce store owner may have used a Shipping plugin to make shipping easier for his store. Be it plugins that support single carriers or multi-carriers, there is only one thing that they lack — Personalization. All these plugins provide pre-defined shipping rates based on factors that are mostly limited. But today, a WooCommerce store owner sells products with different shapes, sizes, type, and quantity. Hence they require a way to personalize their shipping based on multiple factors. Table Rate Shipping allows store owners to choose from a range of different factors and gives them the freedom to make their own shipping rules.
Table Rate Shipping Factors
As we already discussed, that table rate shipping allows shipping personalization based on various factors, now let’s see what exactly are those factors.
Product Weight
The most common factor to consider is the product weight. Almost all the shipping plugins consider product weight when it comes to shipping rates.
But what makes the table rate shipping different is the fact that not only the total product weight but the store owners can even consider additional unit weight to calculate shipping.
Product Quantity
One of the major factors that most of the plugins ignore, is the quantity of the products in the cart. But thanks to table rate shipping, the store owners can make shipping rules based on the number of products in the cart. And just like weight, the option to calculate shipping for every single product added to the cart is also there.
Cart Value
There are instances when a shop owner likes to provide discounted shipping based on the cart value of the customers. Now, who doesn’t want to make his customers happy, right? Table rate shipping allows shipping calculation based on the total cart value as well as the additional per unit increase in the value of the cart.
Shipping Address
Shipping charges based on shipping location is something that WooCommerce provides out of the box. But apart from Free and Flat-rate shipping based on Shipping Zones, there is nothing much you can do there.
Table rate shipping allows vendors to charge personalized shipping rates for particular shipping zones too. But the option to manage shipping based on Country, State, City or even the ZIP/Postal code, adds to the versatility.
Product Category
You can easily setup product categories in the form of shipping classes. But table rate shipping goes one step beyond by allowing the vendors to set up their shipping rates based on the product categories or shipping classes that they have configured.
Table rate shipping has made it possible to personalize WooCommerce shipping by allowing store owners to configure shipping rates based on the above factors. Also, there is a wide scope for the WooCommerce store owners to use these factors in collaboration with each other.
Shipping Rules Table
As the name suggests, using table rate Table Rate Shipping, the vendors can have a set of rules based on the above factors, contained in a shipping table. Out of these shipping rules, the shipping cost is calculated based on the conditions set in the rule.
Take a look at the shipping rules below:
- Provide $15 shipping charges until the weight of the products doesn’t exceed 5 lbs.
- Provide $20 shipping charges if 3 products are purchased together.
- Provide Free Shipping if the shipping address is in California.
Now all the above shipping rules can be represented easily in a tabular form, as shown below:
Now let us assume, a customer from Kansas added 4 products weighing 1 lb each to his cart page, he will be charged shipping cost based on the shipping rules stated above. Hence he will pay $15 for shipping.
Creating a shipping table also proves to be useful in case of multiple shipping rules or a large shipping scenario. All the shipping rules organized properly in a tabular form is way better than having some pointers about each and every shipping rule available.
Shipping Calculations
Now since we are all aware of the factors on which table rate shipping calculates shipping, let us dig deeper into the way it calculates shipping cost.
Considering the above shipping rules, it’s interesting to think what will be the shipping cost if the customer adds 3 products weighing 1 lb each, into the cart..? Will he be charged $15, because of the total weight or $20, because he had bought 3 products together..?
While working with table rate shipping, one of the most important things to keep in mind is what happens when more than one rule is satisfied. It provides an option to select among Minimum or Maximum shipping rates in case of multiple shipping rules are satisfied. So based on the preference, the store owner can charge minimum ($15) or maximum ($20) for shipping.
A plugin for Table Rate Shipping
WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping Pro by PluginHive is one of the best table rate shipping plugins. It provides a simple solution for all the WooCommerce store owners who are looking for a table rate solution. So far this plugin is actively used by more than 3,000 store owners across the world.
This plugin is compatible with WooCommerce v3.0.1 to v4.9.1. And you can easily get your hands on this plugin by clicking here.
Let us see how WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping Pro deals with the shipping rules. Consider the shipping rules below:
- For all the shipping in California, provide Free Shipping
- For all the countries except the USA, if the total weight of the products in the cart is up to 3 lbs, shipping cost is $10.
- For all the countries except the USA, if the total weight of the products in the cart is more than 3 lbs, the shipping cost is $10 and $0.5 for every unit weight added.
- For all the shipping in the USA (except California), the shipping cost is half of that in case of international shipping.
Now here is how these rules are listed in the table, using WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping Pro,
Summary
So this was all about Table Rate Shipping and how it has helped a lot of WooCommerce store owners in personalizing their shipping scenario. In this article, you learned about the Table Rate Shipping and how WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping Pro can serve as the best shipping solution.
You might also want to check out this interesting comparison between two Table Rate Shipping Plugins here.
