Local Delivery

Step 1 – Define local delivery zones

Ecwid as a very developed system for defining zones. Zones can be defined by Region, Country, State or Zip Code. In your Ecwid dashboard, just navigate to “System Settings” –> “Zones”. In my store, I had a very well defined set of zip codes to which we deliver. In fact, we actually broke it down even further to 3 sub zones, depending on the distance to the store.

Here’s a screenshot of what my Zones look like in Ecwid:

As you can see, I’ve broken down the zones by store and sub-zones. The number represents the store and the letter represents the sub-zone. So, for example, Zone 1A presents “store 1, sub-zone A”. You can name these zones anything you want. The customer will not see your zone names, so you can be as descriptive as you like.

To create your new zones, just click the “New Zone” button. Name it to whatever you like and decide how you’d like to define these zones. Region? Country? State? Or Zip/Postal Code? Just remember that that options are “inclusive” rather than “exclusive”. Or in other words, it’s “both/and” rather than narrowing down to a specific location. For example, if you select United States as your country, all of the US will be included no matter what specific State or zip you might also include. So, for our case, because we only wanted local delivery to specific zip codes, I only entered in the zip codes and left the Countries and States empty.

Here’s an example of why you might need to use multiple options: Let’s say your brick and mortar store delivers to all of Connecticut, but only few specific areas in New York. In this case you would select Connecticut as the State and then list out the specific zips you also deliver to in New York.

Step 2 – Set up your shipping method

Once you have your shipping zones set up, the next step is to set up your Shipping Method. The “Shipping” tab is located right next to the “Zones” tab.

Go ahead and click the “New Shipping Method”. You are presented a popup window to help you customize this shipping method.

1. “Select shipping region.” Use the drop down to select the Zone that you just created in step 1.

2. “Select how you calculate shipping?” Select “Flat rate”. Then click the blue button that says, “Shipping rate and delivery speed”.

3. “Set a shipping rate.” On this screen, select how much you’d like to charge for delivering to this zone. As mentioned above, I have 3 sub-zones setup for each brick and mortar location. So I created a new shipping method for each of the sub-zones that I have created. Here’s how are sub-zones are broken down:

• Sub-zone A (close-range): $10
• Sub-zone B (medium-range): $15
• Sub-zone C (far-range): $20

4. “Set delivery speed.” Set the approximate amount of time it will take to deliver this product. Only a number or a range (e.g. “1-2”) is allowed here. It is possible to leave this field blank if you prefer. Click the blue “Name shipping method”.

5. “Name shipping method.” Remember, this name is for the customer. It will be shown on checkout. Here’s how I’ve named mine:

• Local Delivery – Zone 1A
• Local Delivery – Zone 1B
• Local Delivery – Zone 1C
• Local Delivery – Zone 2A, etc…

Repeat this for each of the zones you’ve created.

That’s it! You’ve just created local zones! Now, when customers enter in a zip code, they will only see the shipping option(s) for that particular shipping zone.

Here’s a screenshot of my store with different zip codes corresponding to the correct price.

Have questions, ask below!