Cart volume discount + specific product volume discount?

[fionnghuala]

Hi -- we've been talking in emails about the cart I am installing on an Irish site --- currency is euro, and we are using grams and kg for weights. Am trying the solution we came up with, i.e. taking smallest postal rate we need, and using it for our single postage unit (in this case it's 250g, which we are pretending is one ounce), then "fudging" the weights of the items to make them fall into the correct postal rate category, based on the Irish Post Office rate levels & costs.



It is working fairly well up to a point, for the first couple of weight/postage levels. But I am getting into trouble with the heavier items, which involve the 1kg postal rate for one item, and the 1.5 and 2kg categories for multiple items.



The Irish post office doesn't multiply the rates exactly by 2, 3, 4, etc. E.g, the rate for our base unit for domestic is 2.70 euro, and the postage for the highest level we are using (2kg) is only 7.50 euro. In fact, the postage is the same for 1.5kg and 2kg -- only 7.50 euro for domestic postage.



But, for example, some of our heavier items start out at 2.25 of our "pretend ounces" for one item only (that gets it the correct postage applied, or near enough.). Of course, 2 of them will weigh 4.5 pretend ounces... and that weight results in 4.5 times out base rate, making it 12.15 euro for shipping -- way more than the 7.50euro the post office actually charges. But up to 3 of this item will fit in our packet, for 6.75 pretend ounces --- and that will come to a whopping 18.23 euro for postage when the system multiplies 6.75 times our base unit!!!



I had an idea that we could automatically take some percentage off the cost of 2 or 3 of these heavier items, which, if that can be set individually on them, could be made to offset this too-high postal rate for those specific items.



1. Will that work? I think I saw in the forum that one can apply a volume discount to individual items (I think it was by percentage, although I wasn't completely sure if it was that or flat rate at the individual product level). In any case, it looked like something could be taken off. This could help me get the total cost back down again, although it might be kind of messy to view in the cart -- I guess it will show the discount, but also show the extremely high postage...



2. The thing is, my client would like to offer a cart level volume discount. For example, 10% off total purchases of 50 euro (or whatever) -- to encourage people to buy more things.



3. Can we have both? Can I try to offset the postal rate problem by making an automatically lowering the price on some of the individual items, while at the same time offering an overall cart level volume purchase discount? I would like both to be taken automatically, if that is possible.



4. If there is any other way you can think of that I can accomplish getting the postage down on those heavier items, I'd love to learn what it is...



5. I have put a lot of time into this but now wonder if I should cut my losses and try the flat rate now. You mentioned using flat rates, with a percentage added for subsequent items (I didn't realize that was available)... I assume there would be just one flat rate that can be entered for each item, i.e. we can't have one for domestic and one for international -- or can we?



If I can at least make flat rates work for Ireland/Ni domestic, I can aks my client to email international orders to let them know the extra postage to pay via paypal. So it could work after a fashion.



Just to confirm how that works, if the flat rate for an item was 6.00 Euro, and I a percentage that adds .75 per further copy of that item, the system will add .75 for the next, and .75 again for the third, equalling 7.50 euro. Correct?



And, I can do this for each product as I enter it, yes? Rather than there being some kind of blanket flat rate or percentage?



I truly need to get this up and running soon now. If I can get this postage thing worked out, it will be a breeze to get the buttons in and running... I have already tested that and the view cart, and that all looks good.



I look forward to hearing from you.



all good wishes,

Nikki

[E-junkie_Guru]

Honestly, I'm not following what you're trying to do with weight-based shipping rates and "fudging" the weights with decimal figures. It seems to me that trying to figure partial weights and somehow match that to a sliding-scale of actual postal-system rates that get cheaper with heavier amounts can only lead to confusion, and to actual Shipping charges applied to orders that are nigh-impossible to predict.



I had only suggested, and thought you were just going to go with, setting your Rates as the price of sending "up to 250g" to a Domestic vs. International destination, and then classifying products into 250g categories, so that any product weighing 0-250g would count as Weight = 1.0, any product weighing 251-500g would count as Weight = 2.0, any product weighing 501-750g would count as Weight = 3.0, etc. -- and no in-betweens -- so of course you would wind up ahead on actual shipping costs in many cases but would just pocket the difference to cover your materials/labor for packing/handling.



We have no method to support a sliding scale of weight-based shipping rates so that e.g. total weights above 1kg would get a cheaper shipping rate, and above 2kg would get cheaper yet, etc.



If you want to go with flat rates, the easiest thing you can do is determine what cost each individual item alone would ship for Domestically, set its Weight as equal to that shipping cost, set your Domestic rate to 1.0 and your Int'l rate to some multiple of that (e.g., 2.0 if you want Int'l to cost double, or 1.5 if you want Int'l shipping to cost only 50% more, etc.).



You can set automatic Cart Discounts triggered by minimum thresholds of order total or order quantity, and you can create successive thresholds so that, for example, ordering at least €50 would get 10% off, at least €100 would get 15% off, etc.:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.discounts.htm

[fionnghuala]

hi, Tyson.



Thanks for this. I guess I got into the sliding scale idea both because that's what the postal rates are like in reality and because, when the system did not round up my .5 pretend ounce weight to the whole unit, but gave me half the unit instead. I figured it would like that with the rest, too.... sigh... I actually thought it was supposed to work like that, once I discovered it did not round up the .5 to 1.



I agree it would be okay to charge a bit more for postage when things work out that way, but not if the postage comes out to double what the real postage would be. I just know my client won't accept that.



(I guess I didn't completely understand what you were suggesting, either, on the calculations,. I might try it just to see, and make a few buttons in just the way you describe above, to find out what happens (but I'd have to use some half numbers like .5's because several of the products will in fact ship more than one for the same postage. But there is still that problem that the Irish post office charges the same for 1.5 and 2kg... anyhow, maybe something would get clear by trying it.)



Regarding the flat rates, that sounds more promising to me now, reading what you say. I will have to go in and try what you describe, but it sounds like it could work (I have not seen the flat rate screen yet, so I can't visualize the options there). So I will go there and follow your directions. Here's hoping! I only have 16 products at the moment to enter these values for.



Question: As it happens, the 250g international rate is 1.3 times the domestic rate, and the other levels are about 1.25, which is close enough. Can I be that precise and put 1.3 or 1.25 for my international rate, or do I have to use "rounder" figures like 1.5, 2.0 ?



Anyhow, thanks. I'll try your suggestion.



The automatic cart discounts feature seems pretty straightforward to use. So, that should be okay, then.

[E-junkie_Guru]

There isn't really a "flat rate screen" per-se -- you just set each product's "Weight" to equal the flat-rate cost of shipping that item Domestically, since your Domestic Rate would be set to 1.00 in Cart Shipping Settings. Then you would simply set your Cart Shipping Settings Int'l Rate to some "multiplier" of the Domestic cost, so e.g. an Int'l rate of 1.25 means your Int'l flat rates will be 1.25 times (=25% higher than) your Domestic rates (and yes, you can specify rates with up to two decimal places and no need for rounding, so 1.3 or 1.25 would work fine :^).

[fionnghuala]

Hi, again. >:0)



Okay -- I have the cart working

http://futafata.com/English/Ceannacht-draft.html

and after I fiddled with the combinations of flat rate and used the Regular and Small tube "cost", too, to give me another variable (I finally came to understand that!) --



I have it so the extra postage seems mostly to be around 1-4 euro (occasionally more) and some of the order configurations I tested even put the postage right on the money. I have written my client about it, and hopefully he will feel okay about calling the extra p&p charges, when he sees how it is all working in the cart.



Thanks for your help -- I finally got something that seems to work within reason... I hope my client agrees! :-)



I have another question, but it doeesn't involve shipping costs. It regards the use of accented characters in the product names for the cart.



The Irish language (among a lot of others, of course) is peppered with accented characters, and they are very important to the language. But I found I had to take them out of the product names for our cart, because it was showing symbols instead of the characters. It passed them to Paypal, too, so they showed up on the payment pages (even though paypal does not inherently have a problem with the Irish accented characters)



I have several Irish clients with sites on U.S. servers... we fixed simiilar problems with email in Irish, etc, from these domains, by the hosting services making sure Unicode 4 UTF-8 was operating on these servers.



You no doubt already know that Unicode 4 UTF-8 contains all the characters needed for all the European languages as well as English... Is the reason for the problem with the cart that Unicode 4 UTF-8 is not operating here? Or is it something else?



If Unicode 4 UTF-8 is not operating, could it possibly be added? This would be good for other potential European clients for e-junkie, too, of course, not just this Irish one...



If it is some other cause for the problem, is there any way to fix it?



Thanks a million, Tyson, for all your help

[E-junkie_Guru]

I will assign your UTF-8 encoding concern to our Lead Developer's attention, as that would be a matter for him to address.



And you're welcome. :^)

[fionnghuala]

Hi, Tyson,



Thanks for passing my UTF-8 question on.



My client seems basically happy with the cart so far (he's testing it out), and he likes the way it looks, so that is great.



He had one concern, which I am indcluding here. It, too, relates to the cart itself. But I will add it to my thread here, anyway, as it's all about this same client and project... you may pass this along as well, but may be able to answer it.



He found the zip code thing confusing. I did, a little bit, too when I first tested the cart (and I tested it with a few different ship to countries), but I had already noted a thread with someone else in the forum about zip codes, which helped me realize what was going on -- you'd explained to the other user that countries e-junkie knows do not use zip codes have a "none", while countries you are not sure about or know they have a zip code have the box left blank, and people in those countries should know by now and either put in the zip or use the magic 00000.



My client did not understand the "none", but he knew to put in his 00000 -- but he felt concerned not everyone in Ireland would realize to do that. He asked if we could put a note there, saying:

Más i bPoblacht na hÉireann atá tú, cuir 00000 sa bhosca seo.

Residents of the Republic of Ireland, enter 00000 in this box.



I realize the cart text is not likely something I can affect, and I can explain that to him, as well as the bit about the 'none'. Maybe we can put a note on our page or something... (unless there is actually a way we can have his note in the cart....<g>)



But, I had a different concern about this, too --- from a different angle on it



In testing the cart, I opened new ones a few times, in different browsers for example. Each time I started a new cart-- I found that initially it did not show my shipping cost (and our cart defaults to shipping to Ireland).



When this happened the first time, I sat and wondered why no shipping, and looked the screen over. My zip code box said 'none'. Okay, I remembered reading about that... then I noticed the little grey note beside the zip code box, saying something like "update cart after filling in zip code". I didn't need to fill any thing in, so I had not updated the cart. But I suddenly intuited that I should go ahead and update anyhow... lo and behold: there was my shipping cost!



I feel more concerned about this than whether the zip code box says none or needs filling.



I think either the shipping should just show for the default country from the outset, or the note should say something that causes people to update the cart no matter what, like "to see the correct shipping amount, make sure your country is selected with zip code filled in if needed, and update the cart".... or -- "Fill in your zip code and update the cart. If your country does not use zip codes and the zip box says 'none', just click 'update'; but if the field is blank, please enter 00000, and then update."



This may be a "wish list" type of comment, but I do think it will be an issue for some customers. My client and I are both reasonably saavy, and I know many folks are and have seen it all -- but I think it it wouldn't be any harm to have a slightly more directive note, anyway, because there are still "newbies" out there who might be having a go at ordering online for the first time... I am not saying "dumb it down", simply suggesting a user-friendly little change to the note could help.



Thanks again,

>:0)