How to Create Shipping Profiles
SureCart has an important feature called “Shipping.” It allows you to charge customers for shipping based on where they want their orders delivered.
To make this work for your products, you need to create “shipping profiles” and this article will show you how to create a new shipping profile.
Let’s get started!
What is a Shipping Profile?
SureCart includes a default profile called “General.” But you might be wondering, “Why would I need an extra profile in the first place?
Well, think of a shipping profile as a way to organize where you ship your products and how much you charge for shipping.
When you set up a shipping profile, you can specify the products you want to include, the shipping zones you want to cover, and the shipping methods you want to offer for those products. We explained this process in detail in the article “Managing Shipping Zones, Methods & Rates in SureCart.“
By default, SureCart provides a General profile, but you might have specific shipping requirements or want to offer different methods for certain products. That’s where creating additional profiles comes in handy.
If you have any doubts about the terms used or how to manage shipping zones, methods, and rates, refer to the above-mentioned article for more guidance.
Why would you need an additional profile?
If SureCart comes with a default profile, why should you need another one?
The answer is that in most cases you don’t. But an additional shipping profile would be useful when you want to offer different shipping options for specific products or deliver to specific regions.
We’ll understand this with an example.
Let’s say a store sells both lightweight items and heavy furniture. To handle shipping differently for these product types, the store owner can create a custom shipping profile for heavy furniture products.
This allows them to set up separate shipping methods, rates, and zones tailored to the specific needs of these items.
Moreover, if the store owner wants to offer special shipping options to customers in certain regions or countries, they can create a custom shipping profile for those regions. For instance, they might want to provide faster shipping or unique rates for international customers.
By having additional shipping profiles, you can precisely define shipping options based on various product types and geographical locations and your customers can choose the option that suits best to them!
How to set up a new profile
In this step-by-step guide, we will walk you through the process of configuring a shipping profile. We’ll understand how to create a shipping profile with the help of an example from the above scenario. Let’s say, you have a furniture store and you want to create a new profile for specific items using SureCart’s intuitive interface.
Let’s get started!
- To begin, from your SureCart dashboard, click on the “Settings” menu.
- Next, select the “Shipping” menu from the options.
- To create a new profile, simply click on the “Add New Profile” button. This will allow you to add a new profile with the settings you need.
- Enter the desired name for your profile, for example, “Heavy Items”, and then click on the “Add New” button to save it. This will apply to the new profile with the given name.
- Click on the “Add Product” button to add the products that you will be shipping under this profile..
- In the dropdown menu, you’ll find a list of all your products. You can search for a specific product or scroll through the list to find it. Once you locate the product, click on it to select it.
Here, you’ll see all the selected products. In our case, we only selected one product but you can select as many products as you want.
- Click on the “Create Zone” button to specify where you want to ship this product.
- Enter the desired name for the zone as you prefer. For example – North America.
- Choose the countries from the drop-down menu where you want to ship this product, and then click the “Next” button to continue.
- Choose one of the available shipping methods from the list or create a new one.
- Enter the price you want to charge for the shipping.
- Select how you want to charge the shipping fee for these products. In our case, we will select “Based on item weight” but if you can choose the shipping fee based on your needs.
It will open two options where you can set the minimal weight and the maximum weight.
- Click on the dropdown menu to select the unit of mass you want to work with. In this case, we selected “Kg” from the dropdown menu. But you can choose the unit that you prefer.
- Set the minimum weight of the product for this shipping to be applied.
- Now, set the maximum weight of the product for this shipping to be applied, and then click on the “Add” button to save your changes.
Congratulations! You have set up your shipping profile for your heavy items.
Now, when your customers buy the products that come under the heavy item profile, they will see the shipping price for the product.
A shipping profile is a way to organize where and how much you charge for shipping. While a default profile is available, creating additional profiles is beneficial when you want to offer different shipping options for specific products or regions.
So that brings to the end our article. We’ve explained everything related to shipping profiles and how you can easily set them up in SureCart.
But if you still have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us! We’ll be more than happy to assist.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I add more than one shipping profile to one product?
No. A product needs to be only in one profile.
We don't respond to the article feedback, we use it to improve our support content.