ecommerce specific requirement

[hotchy]

Iv been looking for a eCommerce site for a new start up im going into. However i need one specific requirement when setting up delivery settings and product attributes. I need to be able to assign a weight and volume of each product (LxWxH) and then put in a maximum delivery weight and maximum volume so once one is reached the delivery rate goes up.

This reason is because some products are small but heavy and could easily go over maximum weight allowances for couriers, where as some are big and light (and cheap) So cant just set it by weight, need the volume too or £30 worth or large light things would run into hundreds to post.

I must be missing this somewhere surely? Most do weight but don't specify volume, iv even asked a couple sites and just get linked to there delivery settings pages. Once this is sorted i can bash on.

[The Moose]

Look into your carrier's volumetric weight calculation, do that for each product and you can use the same system.

[marshalla]

Most of the popular off-the-shelf ecommerce systems seem to have Volumetric or Dimensional Weight plug-ins available.


e.g. http://webshopapps.com/dimensional-shipping.html
http://addons.prestashop.com/en/8827-dimensional-w...
http://codecanyon.net/item/table-rate-shipping-for...

Edited by marshalla on Tuesday 8th March 15:38

[hotchy]

Perfect! Thanks alot! I never even thought to look for add ons.

Edited by hotchy on Tuesday 8th March 16:23

[Lund]

hotchy said:

Perfect! Thanks alot! I never even thought to look for add ons.

Edited by hotchy on Tuesday 8th March 16:23

Not that I'm a fan of Wordpress, but WooCommerce is the most well-rounded, well-supported & (I find) easiest for our clients to manage. Being a start-up I would lead with a bespoke Wordpress website with Woocommerce plugin - you'll get most bang for your buck and it's a great place to start. I would tend to avoid Shopify, Big Cartel etc (but that's not to say they're no good) as Ideally you want to go down the bespoke CMS route.

Be sure to implement as many measures of security as necessary to protect your website & customers details (.htaccess password, firewall, secure admin passwords (P.S don't use 'admin' as a username) & restricted FTP access etc.)

Wordpress is prone to hackers at the best of times, so be sure to keep upto date with updates & plugin updates - try keep plugins at a minimum and uninstall what you don't need.

Once you've become more established you want to look at a Magento website.

Hope this helps.

[hotchy]

Lund said:

Not that I'm a fan of Wordpress, but WooCommerce is the most well-rounded, well-supported & (I find) easiest for our clients to manage. Being a start-up I would lead with a bespoke Wordpress website with Woocommerce plugin - you'll get most bang for your buck and it's a great place to start. I would tend to avoid Shopify, Big Cartel etc (but that's not to say they're no good) as Ideally you want to go down the bespoke CMS route.

Be sure to implement as many measures of security as necessary to protect your website & customers details (.htaccess password, firewall, secure admin passwords (P.S don't use 'admin' as a username) & restricted FTP access etc.)

Wordpress is prone to hackers at the best of times, so be sure to keep upto date with updates & plugin updates - try keep plugins at a minimum and uninstall what you don't need.

Once you've become more established you want to look at a Magento website.

Hope this helps.

The goal is to build a fully bespoke site eventually, but as a complete novice with coding (discounting my days as a child where i made many neopets websites haha, yes 16+ years ago)I was looking at an all in one sort of build that i can migrate from if need be in the future once the budgets bigger etc.

Now back to thinking about the dimensional weight, would it be possible to work out the weight/dimensional weight for each product and which ever is greatest use that as the "weight" meaning the package cant get over filled, costing me money on a second postage box.

For example. My largest box the courier can take is 80x40x45 which is 29kg volumetric and it can weigh 29kg.

Now someone orders 5 items that measure 30x30x30 but weights 1 kg but its volume weight is 5.5kg, so ill input product weight as 5.5kg, so 5 of these is 27.5kg, just fitting in the box?

Leaving 1.5kg of volumetric weight left, they also order a 1x1x1 item, weighing 5kg so id have to put its true weight in. This would theoretically take them over 29kg, but it doesnt really, as im allowed i could easily fit that into the box, as the true weight is only 10kg now and within the same original dimensions. Yet the shopping basket would now be into the next shipping cost due to the volumetric weight of the first 5 items.

Is it just a trade off, that you cant do anything about? Or do these add ons take that all into account, allowing the maximum amount into the box?

Or am i looking at it all wrong? My man maths go as far as, "yes wife, we can afford that new v8 as we do town journeys now and not motorways"



edit. The volumetric weight is only greater in one small section of products, the rest its the actual weight.

Edited by hotchy on Wednesday 9th March 17:29

[DSLiverpool]

Op for such specific requirements use a small webby as your going to spend ages doing something you don't know about when you could be building the business.
Some webbys work on a revenue share agreement - mine does - it means you get a professional solution and ongoing partnership for very little up front.