Version 3.0.3.2/ Journal 3 - How best to manage International Shipping? Ideas please!

(V3.0.3.2/ Journal 3 theme/ www.kublox.co.uk)

Hi,
I was hoping some of you Guru's could help point me in the right direction for how to manage International Shipping on my website? I'm UK based and am currently only set up to deal with UK shipments (weight based using the Royal Mail extension, offering options for: i) next day delivery & ii) 3-5 day economy delivery.

How do people manage International Shipping on top of this? Is there one easy extension that works out all costs to all countries and then estimates this (weight-) based on the delivery address? Obviously if people are buying from abroad I need to disable the UK options.... and how on Earth do I work out weight based shipping to every country.. and then get my website to lookup which is applicable depending on delivery address?!..

Any suggestions on where to start with this? I'm a new business and things are fairly tough at the moment (...courtesy of Covid-19) ... so I really don't want to be losing any international interest in my product due to shipping constraints . A quick fix would be very much appreciated!!

Cheers

KT

There are numerous shipping extensions available on the OpenCart marketplace (though some of them may clash with Journal3, the latter is one of the worst themes).

Or you could use the standard weight-based shipping method coming with Opencart at Extensions > Extensions > Shipping > Weight Based Shipping. That one allows you to define prices for weight ranges for different geographic zones. A geographic zone is a collection of countries and/or regions which you can define at System > Localisation > GEO Zones

Thanks JNeuhoff,

Sadly I'm learning that there are a number of "quirks" with the Journal 3 theme!!

With regard to the geozones on the weight based shipping extension - is that then smart enough to determine one P&P cost based on the delivery address? and could I keep this in parallel to the existing Royal Mail extension that offers 2 options (1st/2nd class) for UK residents only?

Hope that makes sense.

Cheers

Katy

smith_ka wrote: ↑

Sun May 24, 2020 7:01 pm

Sadly I'm learning that there are a number of "quirks" with the Journal 3 theme!!

I highly recommend you to replace the Journal 3 with some decent theme, if it's still possible.

You could define UK-based geo-zone and use it for the Royal Mail shipping method, and another geo-zone (Rest of the World) with all the other countries you intend to ship to, and use that one for the weight-based shipping. You'd also have to configure the shipping rates once in the weight-based shipping method.

If you don't want to define weight-based rates for every country yourself, you could use a live rate method like UPS or Fedex. That will get the rate from UPS or Fedex directly, and display the cost to the customer. That's what most stores do unless your international rates are fairly simple, but it depends on your products.

JNeuhoff wrote: ↑

Sun May 24, 2020 8:23 pm

You could define UK-based geo-zone and use it for the Royal Mail shipping method, and another geo-zone (Rest of the World) with all the other countries you intend to ship to, and use that one for the weight-based shipping. You'd also have to configure the shipping rates once in the weight-based shipping method.

This is exactly what I've done and it works fab thanks!! Slightly labour intensive working out all the different rates but fortunately the couriers appear to charge exactly the same price (irrelevant of weight) to each defined Geozone which simplified the task! Brilliant! Job Done! Many Thanks!