Need help choosing shipping carriers?
We do recommend that is is helpful for you as the store owner to research and be familiar with the shipping price bands, so that you can factor this into your product margins.
  • But In some situations you may be too busy to research and find costings for the various shipping suppliers – so please ask if you would like us to research the various options and setup your shipping costs on your behalf – this will incur additional admin charges.
  • The selection of shipping rate prices and updates to prices is not included in your website design cost
  • Initial setup of your chosen shipping rate system is included in your website design cost, but you will need to then enter the prices, depending on your choice of Shipping system on the website.

How to choose your shipping carrier

  • In general most clients use Royal Mail shipping to post items, but you may find other carriers offer better prices for larger items and bulky orders -eg: Parcelforce, MyHermes etc.
  • Once you have chosen your shipping carrier,we will guide you in entering the pricing details for your chosen carrier.

Your Alloy Shop website comes with 2 shipping options by default:

  1. Flat rate shipping – All items ship at the same flat price each, or all full orders have the same flat rate price  Eg: Every order is £2.99 shipping, OR every item is £2.99 shipping each. This system works well for companies with a wide range of products that are similar weights and dimensions.
  2. Class shipping – Product shipping classes allow you to group similar products for shipping. They work in much the same way as product and post categories.Different groupings or classes of items have their own flat rate shipping costs each. For example you could input the following classes and a price for each: small parcel, large parcel, small box, large box. Then every product in the store needs to be assigned a shipping class, you can then specify  a price for each shipping class at checkout the shipping costs for all items will be combined.  You can also specify a handling charge to be added to all order totals. This system works well for small websites with only a few products.

Optional Website Shipping System Upgrades

  1. Advanced Weight Based Shipping (£80 setup + £30 year subscription for the price feed) This shipping upgrade enables weight based shipping calculations to be calculated at the checkout, with interactive shipping calculator. You will need to enter the weight bands and associated costs for them to be input into the system. International shipping price bands can be specified with this system. You will need to enter rates in the following format: 1.1kg – 2kg = £1.59,  2.01kg – 3kg = £2.49
  2. Royal Mail Shipping Prices   (£60 setup + £30 year subscription for the price feed) – Simply enter the weight an dimensions of all products when setting up, then this system will calculate all shipping prices based on Royal Mails most recent pricing feeds including international prices.
  3. Royal Mail & Parcelforce Shipping Prices  (£70 setup + £40 year subscription for the price feeds) – Simply enter the weight and dimensions of all products when setting up, then this system will calculate all shipping prices based on Royal Mail and Parcelforce’s most recent pricing feeds