Shipping Methods - Choose Store Location

[ESheaffer]

We run a employee apparel store for Ollies, when the employee gets to checkout, we want them to be able to select which store they work at for us to ship their items to. Currently, I have been going in and creating New Custom Shipping Methods for each one and naming them each of the stores. The problem now is that I just found out that there are roughly 200 stores across the East Coast, so if I keep doing it the way I am, there will be 200 little bubbles to select from listed in the Shipping Method area, one for each store location. That will look terrible and you would be scrolling for 5 minutes until you find your store.

Is there an easier way to do this? Can you make the Shipping Method area a dropdown at least? Any help or ideas would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks.

[elightbox]

No easy way. But you can do zones. some will pay a little more, some a little less.

[ESheaffer]

The thing is that it is all Free Shipping, the shipping was built into the pricing of the items.

So I guess the only way is to have 200 options to choose from in the Shipping Method area and have that be a huge list.

[Shift4Shop-Henry]

Hi ESheaffer

Just to help with the brain storming here, I wanted to ask a quick question about your situation.

Is the store only for Ollies employees, or does the store have a mix of other shoppers as well?
The reason I ask is because it might help the community here give better suggestions.

For example, since everything is free shipping anyway, then there's really no need to have shipping methods created. The main reason for having selectable shipping rates on the checkout process is so that the shopper pays you for shipping and you're not out of pocket for shipping to them. But as you mentioned, the pricing of the shipping is factored into the price of the apparel. so having them select a shipping method becomes sort of a moot point.

So, one idea I was thinking is to mark all the products as free shipping. Then remove any shipping methods you've created and set the store to use the "auto select shipping" setting (in shipping settings) so that it uses the store's built-in free shipping module instead. The store will automatically select this for the shopper during checkout and they'd be on their way. All you would need to do is specify somewhere in the checkout process that the shopper should enter their store address as the "ship to" location. (This can be done by editing the checkout template or adding it to the Titles and Content section of the checkout page(s). )

Another idea is to remove all shipping methods and just set the shipping settings to "Shipping will be calculated later" so the store doesn't even bother factoring shipping. Then change the store language for "Shipping will be calculated later" to something like "We'll deliver it to your store" or something along those lines.

Of course, both ideas sort of hinge on whether or not the store is exclusive to Ollies employees or a mix of shoppers; hence my question. :)

Any additional information we can get might help us come up with better suggestions.

[ESheaffer]

Yes, the store is only for Ollies employees. The employee has to enter in their Employee Number when selecting the options on each item.

I am going to login now and see if I can run with your first idea, that sounds like the best idea so far.

I will let you know what problems I encounter, and I am sure there will be some! Lol

[ESheaffer]

As I was going through different settings, I think I have figured out another way to do it.

I will select the Free Shipping on all of the items and delete all shipping methods.

I then created a required Checkout Question and I can make all of the store locations an answer, it created a dropdown menu and everything for it.

[Shift4Shop-Henry]

Yes, I can definitely see that idea working as well!
The free shipping on the items and the exclusivity to Ollies employees gives us a lot of wiggle room for out of the box ideas like that!
Please keep us posted on how it goes!

[ESheaffer]

Ive got it on there and it looks good! My only question is that when I am editing the checkout question, I check the required box and click update, but it is not saving. The 'required' box keeps getting unchecked when I click update. Any idea why?

Also, I have all of the Shipping Methods deleted, and the only box checked under Shipping Settings is 'Auto Select Shipping', but when you checkout, and enter your billing address (we have the shipping must be same as billing checked on), a Shipping method that says Free Shipping appears, but you still have to select it, I thought that it would be selected automatically.

[Shift4Shop-Henry]

Hi ESheaffer

Regarding the required checkbox, I found the same thing in my test store and I'm leaving a ticket for the developers.
In the meantime, it looks like - if the checkout question is initially marked as "required" while creating it, the checkbox stays on. It's only when you try making it a required question post-creation that the checkbox fails to stay on.

So as a work around for now while this gets reported, just create the checkout question once again. Copy/paste the answer options and make sure to make it a required question before adding it.

As for the Auto-select shipping checkbox. Let me test that further as well. The way that checkbox is supposed to work is if the store only has one shipping method, it's supposed to auto-select it. However, I just noticed that the information icon on that setting says something about it going to step 3 of the checkout so it might have to do with single vs multi page checkout... In any event, let me see if I can clarification as to why it's not working in this case.

[ESheaffer]

Thank you so much for all of your help! I was in a chat with them and they told me that there was a ticket started for this.

I used the work around for now.

As far as the auto select shipping method, it wouldn't be a huge deal if the customer still had to click on the Free Shipping, however if it would auto-select, it would make it that much easier and better.

Thanks again for helping me out on all of this!

[Shift4Shop-Henry]

Hi again, ESheaffer

You're very welcome! I'm glad to help!

So I looked into this a little more deeply and I think I found the culprit. The problem looks to be isolated to the non-HTML5 themes.

During my testing, I was using HTML5 themes and alternated between v1 checkout and v2. So, I took a quick look at your store and saw that it's using the v40001 theme. When I applied the same theme to my test store I observed the same effect where the radio button had to be selected by the shopper. In fact, any non-HTML5 theme that I was able to apply had the same effect.

Now for some bad news/good news.

The bad news is that the non-HTML5 themes are slowly being phased out of circulation since they're not the industry standard anymore and they're not mobile-friendly. People with non-HTML5 themes currently installed can still use them and keep them installed on their stores, but fresh installs of non-HTML5 themes is currently not possible.

So the bad news is that - since the non-HTML5 themes are being phased out - we probably won't be able to get a fix in place for this small issue any time soon. The primary focus is on the HTML5 themes.

The GOOD news however is that the very same theme (v40001) has an HTML5 counterpart (Just look for "v40001-html5" in the themes and styles section).

Same color schemes and layout, but with responsiveness added.
From looking at your site, it doesn't look like you had too many changes to the coloring of the site except maybe the background gradient image. So switching to the HTML5 version of the theme should be pretty easy in this case.

Either way, once the store is set with an HTML5 theme, the auto selection of that Free Shipping method should work without a problem as it did for my initial tests.