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!

I was recently featured in a newsletter as a Customer Spotlight for the ever growing Ecwid eCommerce software. Ecwid, which is combination of “ecommerce” and “widget” allows you to add an online store to basically any site out there.

Having inherited a very outdated and ugly looking ecommerce software that did not integrate at all the branding of our website, I took the lead in finding a solution that would allow us to firstly vastly improve upon the aesthetic, but also scale the online business. Indeed, that’s exactly what moving to Ecwid has allowed us to do. The move and a focused effort on growing the store has increased revenue approximately 250% over the last 2 years! And this year we’re already performing another 50% percent better on average during the same period as last year.

People from Ecwid reached out to me to discuss some of the benefits I saw in the service. The attached screenshot is from the March Newsletter highlighting the ease of use.

I love Ecwid and you will, too! Click here to Sign up for free today!

How can I change to default behavior of the “My billing address is the same as shipping” check box to off?

I’ve been using Ecwid as a my shopping cart for several websites and clients. It’s such a great shipping cart that’s fully integrated with basically the whole internet. I love the flexibility of it. There are a few issues that I’ve had a problem with, however. They haven’t been major problems, but annoying just the same. One of those problems has been that the billing box is checked automatically by default.

For people who might want to sell gift items for delivery, it is important to accurately collect both the shipping and billing information. The problem is that the “My billing address is the same as shipping” checkbox is checked automatically and the vast majority of people checking out, for whatever reason, do not uncheck the box to allow for a different billing address. Perhaps they’re just not seeing it, or perhaps it’s just a bad design/workflow. Needless to say, when a user fails to uncheck this box, it can cause extra time confirming with the buyer the correct information rather than just fulfilling the order. So, what I needed to do was make it so that the shipping information was not automatically passed through to the billing address unless the user checked the box. I needed the billing information to be blank, as illustrated below.

Ecwid Billing Button Default Off

Checking the box will auto fill the content from the shipping address.

So, here’s the raw code for how to turn this button off by default. You’re going to want to put this code just after the Ecwid implementation code on your site. (If you have jQuery already enqueued on your site, you won’t need the 1st line.)

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js"></script> 
<script>if (typeof(Ecwid) == 'object') {
  Ecwid.OnPageLoaded.add(function(page) {
    if ('CHECKOUT_PAYMENT_DETAILS' == page.type) {
$('input[type=checkbox]').prop('checked', false);
$("input[type=text]").prop('disabled', false);
$("input[type=tel]").prop('disabled', false);
$("select[name='country-list']").prop("disabled", false);
$("select[name='state-list']").prop("disabled", false);
$("select[name='state-suggest']").prop("disabled", false);
$('input[type=text]').val('');
$('input[type=tel]').val('');
$("select[name='country-list']").val('');
$("select[name='state-list']").val('');
$("select[name='state-suggest']").val('');
        }
  });
}
</script>

Unfortunately, this code will not work for you if you’re using WordPress. So I’ve packed up a file with a full explanation of how to implement this code on your WordPress site. Just click the “Download the Code!” button and you’ll receive an instant download. Please consider paying for the product if you think it will help your store. Many thanks and much appreciated!

Included in this file:

• WordPress friendly code
• Full explanation of where to implement this code
• Screenshots of the code implementation
• *Bonus: My explanation on how to clean up Ecwid code impentations

Download the Code!