TLDR: ShipStation allows you to process orders from Magento 2 ecommerce <> ShipStation
as an add-on MageShip as new shipping method allows you to show ShipStation rates during cart & checkout
More details here https://mageship.io
An intro to obsolete shipping methods
60 % of cart abandonment reason is due to ‘Extra Charges’ being to high during checkout, this includes (tax fees, processing fees, shipping fees). Based on that compiled study conducted by Baymard’s institute cart abandonment can be avoided by offering fair and transparent prices to customers.
Tax fees issues can solved easily as the rates rarely shifts, not requiring much maintenance this is often one-time setup. (Using TaxJar will most-likely fix your tax data issues)
Processing fees issues can be solved by incorporating the fees in your product prices already or by negotiating with your payment processor.
Shipping fees on the other hand is generally the higher ‘Extra Fees’ cost shown to the customer.
Shipping Rates
Customer #1 is shopping for a SD memory card (0.1 lbs) should not pay the same shipping price than customer #2 shopping for a battery charger (0.9 lbs). The solution would be to offer shipping rates based on weight in order to offer fair prices. To achieve that, Magento 2 merchants will often resolve into using Table Rates.
Table Rates Shipping Method
Table rates will allow custom shipping rates to be entered and referenced during a customer checkout in order to cross-check a few IF That Then This logic.
I.E. IF (cart weights under 1lbs) Then (USPS rate) This ($7)
In our example we can see that the customer buying an SD memory card (customer #1) will end up paying the same shipping cost than a customer buying a battery charger (customer #2).
While the Merchant isn’t losing money on this sale, they are over-charging customer #1, which might have them dropping the checkout process altogether.
How to fix over-charging a customer? You can define an additional rule for product with lesser weight.
I.E. IF (cart weights under 0.1lbs) Then (USPS rate) This ($3)
This will result in showing the proper shipping rate for customer #1. This will drastically increase your chances of this customer completing their purchase.
To resume: The solution is to offer fair tailored prices during checkout. This requires some investigating from the merchant to determine that more fair shipping rates conditions needed to be offered.
Tables Rates limitations
Merchants are required to keep their Table Rates up-to-date: As new product weights are entered in Magento, or more shipping carriers options to their account.
This can quickly become overwhelming to administer and does require a lot of time and resources in order to keep the Table Rates up-to-date.
We can see that it would be helpful in this case scenario, having the shipping rates automatically adjusting the Table Rates according to the weight. But this is not a solution available working with Table Rates in Magento 2.
At least, there is a solution available. If you were never a fan of Table Rates to begin with, we can ditch the Table Rates altogether!
We can now show Live Calculated Shipping Rates based on carriers that you already use, in real-time!
This done based on the cart weight vs the shipping destination, shipping locally or internationally. The solution is named MageShip – unlocking the shipping rates out of the box.
MageShip as new shipping method
How does it work?
Have you already simulated a carrier quote or label through their website or via ShipStation quote calculator?
MageShip works the same way. But all the heavy lifting are done in the background of your store programatically (which means zero data manipulation is needed from your end.)
- First you will need to connect your carrier account to MageShip, then install the MageShip module on your Magento 2 store.
- You will see your connected carriers in Magento 2, allowing you to select the shipping services that you want to use store-wide!
Once MageShip is enabled on your store, rates calculation are done on the fly for the customers during Cart & Checkout process.
Conclusion
Offering transparent shipping rates to your customers, will drastically increase your conversion rate during checkout, while saving merchants and users valuable time at the same time!
Do you want to see a Live Demo of MageShip? Watch this 20-minutes pre-recorded video presentation now
MageShip website: https://mageship.io
MageShip free extension on Magento Marketplace: https://marketplace.magento.com/maurisource-mageship.html
