Plug Into Better Shipping Part 6: Rules Part 2- Getting Tricky

Last week we covered creating simple & effective shipping rules in Magento. We talked about why you need shipping rules, outlined a few basic rules and how to configure them in your Temando Shipping Extension for Magento.

The advanced rules engine is only available in professional plans and upwards, if you would like to upgrade, you can contact Team Temando.

To start let’s take a look at an example where shipping can fall down if rules are not used


Scenario
A home wares website offers free shipping as their latest campaign. They promote it via EDM and to their social networks. All items are included from sofas, lamps to decorative pillows and at a glance the post campaign evaluation data indicated that the campaign was not profitable. However upon closer inspection this was due to larger, bulky items being purchased as a part of the campaign. These Items included products with dimensions of 140x45x70cm, which are more costly to ship and therefore, reduced the average margin across the campaign.


Recommendations
An advanced rules engine like the one found in the Temando's Magento Shipping Extension allows you to exclude certain SKU’s from campaigns. In this example we would recommend that a little * is included advising customers certain large and bulky items will be excluded from the promotion. When configured in Magento, the rules engine will automatically exclude nominate SKU’s or categories from the campaign and will quote a nominated or dynamic shipping cost to the customer.


Results
A successful free shipping campaign!


What advanced rules can you create?

Time specific rules 
Want to replicate The ICONIC’s very popular 3hr service? Time specific rules allow you to do so.

Time specific rules allow you to offer specific delivery timings. For example, 3hr or Same day, it also allows you to apply conditions to specific products or product categories.

Pamper Hamper use a time specific rule to offer same day shipping to Melbourne Metro Postcodes

Flat rate shipping for specific zones 
Offer certain zones a flat rate price. This allows you to create a rule where all Sydney metro post codes will be marked as a nominated amount for example $9.99. 


Free shipping over a certain amount 
A step further to the basic free shipping rules is over a certain amount. You can allocate a cart value, once the customer reaches that cart value they will receive free shipping

Hunters and Gatherers offer free shipping to customers who spend over $149.95

Controlling what carriers service what areas 
You can control what carriers deliver to each zone. By setting up zones and defining IF THIS THEN THAT conditions, you can specify which courier company delivers to a certain zone. For example, if you have superstar feedback about Fastway Melbourne drivers you can specify in your rules engine that all Melbourne post codes are fulfilled by Fastway only. You could then specify rural Victorian postcodes to be fulfilled by TNT and so on.  


Where do I set up and manage my shipping rules? 

Handy Tip
Unlike the starter version, the higher plans allow you to label each delivery option instead of the Temando nominated names. For example instead of 'Couriers Please 1-5days $8.75' you can name the option 'Standard Delivery' A handy option to make your check out sleek and seamless. 

If you're interested in having a closer look at the rules engine and Temando's shipping extension - head to our Magento Demo Store. Or for detailed step-by-step instruction on setting up advanced rules in your Temando Magento Extension. Please refer to the Magento configuration guide.

Next week we will discuss adding extras at the checkout - especially for those social conscious customers.

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We're Hiring!

*Thank you for your interest, please note as of 23rd of June 2014 these positions have been filled. 

Want to be part of Team Temando? We currently have vacancies in our Brisbane and Sydney offices. We're looking for candidates with a passion for technology, who think they can put the T in Temando.

Brisbane

UI UX Designer Incredible opportunity to take a lead role in creative design and user experience. You'll own the design and user experience of all new products working in union with a small number of stakeholders and experts.

Learn more and apply

Linux Systems Administrator Provide day to day operational support and maintenance on Linux environments, including account management application deployment, script creation and performing tuning and backups.

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Sydney 

Marketing Coordinator Help to deliver our marketing program. This will involve getting your hands dirty with our CMS and email platforms and liaising with stakeholders across the business. As well as social media and event ownership.

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Plug Into Better Shipping Part 5: Rules Part 1- Creating Simple & Effective Shipping Rules

Whilst not everyone thinks shipping is cool, here at Temando we’re all about it. Providing your customers with the right delivery option at the right time can dramatically affect your conversion rates and even reduce your costs in the long run.

Why do you need rules? Shipping rules allow you to provide different shipping options and prices to your end customer. You can also apply different variables to the rule like product sku, postcode, time and demographics to control your shipping. Shipping rules enable you to execute your shipping strategy – so they’re pretty important to get right.

There are two levels of rules in the Temando Shipping Extension. Firstly, in the Starter module, you can enable basic pre-set rules. All other versions give you access to the advanced rules engine, where you can start to offer free shipping over a certain cart value or on certain SKU’s, as well as other rules. It gives you the ability to conduct shipping campaigns as well as takes into account heavier or larger SKU’s to ensure you don’t lose out.

This post covers the basic rules you can offer in all 4 plans.

Please note that the below 4 rules are the only rules available in the Starter plan. These rules can only be enabled and disabled, unlike the higher plans which allow you to create rules with IF THIS THEN THAT conditions and create rules on a more granular level.


Free Shipping - no charge to customer.

boohoo.com offer free shipping on all products

What: 
When this rule is enabled free shipping is displayed to all customers across all products


Why: 
If your shipping cost is built into your product margin or your strategy is to offer free shipping to stand out in a crowded market place.


Handy Tip:
#1 No dimensions are required on the product sku to quote the customer, however, dimensions are needed for Temando to quote the shipment. If you’re sending the same size packages, use the default settings we talked about in our earlier packaging blog article.


#2 If you have large bulky items we recommend not enabling free shipping. When free shipping is offered in a scenario where sending a kayak to Alice Springs is required, it can get pricey.

Fixed Price / Flat Rate - customer pays the same set amount.

featherandbuzz.com offer their customers a flat rate shipping price

What: 
When this rule is enabled the customer will pay a specified fixed price across all products. This can only be one nominated value in the starter plan.

Handy Tip:
#1 It is important not to give the impression that your shipping is expensive. Make shipping costs comparable to the cost of goods sold. A customer purchasing $5 napkins might not want to pay $9.95 for shipping on top of that.

Dynamic Pricing – Display all carriers or the cheapest or fastest or cheapest and fastest.
All:

Supercheap Auto empowers their customer through choice, displaying all quotes

What: 
This option will display all possible quotes from carriers that have been selected in the "allowed carriers" configuration setting. The customer then selects from the list of displayed quotes.


Why: 
This empowers the customer to select their preferred carrier and delivery time.


Handy Tip:
#1 You don’t have to have all carriers displaying, you can select only 1 i.e. Fastway, this will result in all relevant Fastway quotes being displayed to the customer.

Cheapest: Only the cheapest quote is shown.
What: 
Only the cheapest option for the delivery will be displayed.

Why: 
This will ensure your shipping costs are always competitive – relative to the postcode and dimensions of your shipment.

Handy Tip:
#1 Cheapest will often coincide with the slower services and are also referred to as standard shipping. Often the cheapest is a road service.

Fastest: Only the fastest quote is shown.
What: 
Only the fastest delivery option will be displayed to the customer

Why: 
Let your customer decide how urgent a purchase is. If they want it fast, make sure they can select an express option.

Handy Tip:
#1 Fastest is also referred to as Express shipping. This service will generally be 1-2days from metro to metro.

Cheapest and Fastest: The customer can choose between the cheapest or the fastest quote.
What: 
A combination of cheapest and fastest.


Why: 
Allows your customer more choice.


Handy Tip:
#1 On all dynamic options you can add a mark-up to the displayed price by either a fixed or percentage amount. This will help you turn shipping from a cost center into a profit center.

Next week we take a deeper look into creating shipping rules in the advanced rules engine. We also look at some of the cool campaigns you can create using shipping rules.

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Plug Into Better Shipping Part 4: Managing Multiple Locations in Magento

Do you have more than one warehouse or physical store? Are you shipping from all of these locations? Well, you should be! Temando helps online retailers big and small manage multiple locations and streamline their entire fulfilment processes.

Multi locations functionality is the ability to set up more than one sending location in your Magento store admin, whether this is from a warehouse, physical store location or a supplier. This gives you the ability to use your physical stores as fulfilment points, allowing you to send from different locations Australia wide.

Let’s walk through the below example: If your customer is in country Queensland, fulfilling the order from your closest fulfilment point with inventory helps to decrease travel time, as well as the cost, compared to sending the item from a Sydney warehouse. You can now speed up delivery times and avoid unnecessary freight costs.

Multiple locations and zones

It gets better – once you have your locations set up in your Magento store, you can also create some really smart rules. *We will look into creating shipping rules in our next 2 posts.  Multi location functionality is available in the Temando Magento Shipping Extension for plans professional, business and enterprise solutions. Business and Enterprise gives you the extra flexibility of adding sub accounts to each of the locations.

What’s a sub account and why would I need that? 

Sub accounts allow Temando to identify separate physical locations and bill accordingly. Some retailers prefer this to be transparent and separated-in a franchisee model for example. If you would like each location to be billed individually, but still have visibility over costs, this feature is perfect for you.

Setting up multiple locations 

There are 2 components of multiple locations that go hand in hand we call them zones and warehouses (don’t let the term warehouses confuse you, warehouses can be any fulfillment point i.e your store. We also refer to these warehouses as multi-location).

A zone is an area within a country which any given warehouse delivers to, it’s specified by postal code ranges.

Setting up a zone

1. Select Temando tool bar > Locations > Manage Zones from this admin panel select Add New Zone

2. Name: this is an internal reference 

3. Country: the country the zone is being created in

4. Postal Code Ranges

• To cover the whole country enter: 1:9999
• You can individually enter the postcodes separated by a coma
• To define a range use a colon like the example below

Colon used to separate ranges when defining postal code ranges

5. Don’t forget to confirm by selecting save

For a PDF list of Post Codes from April 2014 download this document. You can view the most up to date post codes here.

Creating a warehouse

1. Select from the Temando Tool Bar Locations > Manage Warehouses > Add New Warehouse

2. General Information

• Status: is important to ensure is switched to enabled if you would like the warehouse to be considered as an option
• Location Type: If you are sending from this address continually we recommend always selecting Business (opposed to residential
• Priority: If you have 2 warehouses that service the same zone, this priority allows you to select which warehouse will be chosen. The priorities for warehouses are sequential and start at “0” (eg: “0” will take priority of “1”, “1” will take priority over “2” and so on)
• Stores allows you to select what Magento stores you would like this warehouse associated with

3. Address & Contact panel (immediately below General Information). The information required is:

Address Details

Street: Number and street address

City: Suburb. This needs to be specific to the postcode. For example if the postcode is 2011 – it has to be Woolloomooloo, it cannot be the default of Sydney.

Country

Region: State

Contact Details

Contact Name: Primary contact at this warehouse

Contact email: Primary Contact email address

Phone 1

Phone 2: Not mandatory but good to list.

Fax: Not mandatory but good to list

4. Assign your warehouse zones by selecting a zone, to select multiple zones hold CTRL and click

Assigning warehouses

5. Select yes or no for Extra Location Information items

6. Temando Profile is only applicable to users with sub-accounts with Temando

7. Assign pre-created Magento users the ability to view assigned warehouse/locations.

• This is key when defining what login can see what orders. i.e. Queensland store when assigned here cannot see Victoria stores orders. 

Make sure you save your settings!

Setting up zones and warehouses is the base for rules in the Temando Shipping Extension for Magento. It is important to define your shipping strategy and create zones and warehouses to align with this strategy.

Coming soon
Our team is working hard on adding features to the Enterprise plan, multi-location inventory management being one. This will give you the ability to assign stock/SKUS to each location.
Stay tuned for that future feature release!

Next week we will start looking at setting basic rules in Magento. 

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Plug Into Better Shipping Part 3: Packaging Configuration for Success

When sending different sized items - big, small and the in-between – it’s important to ensure you have correctly added you’re product weights and dimensions into the Magento system. These details assist in accurately quoting your parcel, whether it’s going from Sydney to Sydney in a satchel or its 3 parcels heading from the Gold Coast to Adelaide.

It is important to accurately enter the correct packaging configuration to ensure the courier company knows what’s being picked up and so Temando can return an accurate shipping price from your chosen couriers. By getting this right in Temando, you can avoid receiving ‘incorrect dimension fees’ from the courier company.

Packaging is also a great opportunity to reinforce your brand to your customer. How do you want your customers to feel when they receive your products? Get creative and focus on your customer experience.

How to set default packaging 
If all your products are sent in the same packaging i.e. you’re a fashion retailer and everything can easily fit an A5 satchel, you can skip setting up individual product details and simply add default packaging dimensions: 

1. Click Temando in the admin tool bar
2. Select Configuration Settings
3. Select Temando Settings 
4. From the Temando Settings tab select Packaging

Enter in:

1. Packaging: what packaging type will this item be sent in
2. Fragile: Yes or No
3. Length, Width and Height – be sure you enter these dimensions in the same format as you have defined in Temando > Configuration Settings > Temando Settings. All details must be entered as whole numbers i.e. 11.5cm should become 12.

For any items you do not nominate packaging details, Temando will look to this default packaging type, consider your shipping rules and use these details to quote the customer. 

* Please note if these details are smaller then what is actually sent the courier may pass on a fee to your Temando Profile, you can find out more information on fee’s via our FAQ’s section on the website.


How to set individual product packaging
If your products vary in size when packaged you will need to enter individual dimension and weights for each product: 

1. Go to Catalog > Manage products > select the product
2. Select Temando from the product information column

Enter in:

1. Packaging Mode: 

• Use Defaults will look to the set default packaging
• As Defined the system will use the individual Temando Product Information 

2. Packaging
3. Fragile: Yes or No
4. Length, Width and Height 
5. Don't forget to save!

Hot Tip  
Each product must have a weight saved in the product information. We recommend saving it in general in the individual product settings. The system will not look to default for the weight and will return an error message.

If you have a large number of SKU’s you would like to add individual dimensions and weights too, you can do this via a data flow batch import feature in Magento. For more information on this feature please speak with your developer or refer to Magento forums and blogs.


To wrap things up, make sure you;
1. Use packaging to display your brand.
2. Set a default packaging size and weight
3. Individually set packaging sizes and weights to ensure you are charged correctly. Failure to do so may result in fee’s applied by the carriers.


Next week we will be talking multi locations in Magento.

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