Shipping Zones

Shipping zones are groups of places that you charge the same way. A shop puts the cities near its warehouse in one zone, the rest of the country in a second, and the countries it ships to abroad in a third. Each zone gets its own price and its own promised delivery time. That is the whole idea, and it is why a customer in a far village sees a different number at checkout than a customer two streets away.

Most shops start with one zone for the whole country, then find out the hard way that some areas cost three times more to reach. Couriers add a surcharge for remote addresses, and it often lands on the monthly bill weeks after the sale. So you lose money quietly, one parcel at a time. Linkysoft asks for last month's courier invoice before drawing a single zone, because the invoice tells the truth the map does not.

Inside a zone you choose how to price. A flat rate takes the same amount on every order, which is simple and easy for a customer to remember. Weight pricing charges by how heavy the box is, which suits anyone selling water, tools, tiles or other heavy goods. There is a third way, a price per item, useful when everything you sell is roughly the same size. Pick the one you can explain to a customer on the phone in a single sentence.

Free delivery above a certain amount is the part people get wrong. If your usual order is around five hundred and you give free delivery above three hundred, you are paying the courier on almost every sale. Put the line above your normal basket, never below it, and check it against the real courier bill and your margin. In Storek the free-delivery level is set zone by zone, because a free trip that is affordable in the capital can wipe out the profit on a parcel going south.

Test the rules with real addresses in your own checkout before you open. Order from a village, not only from the office. Linkysoft checks zone rules first on any shop web application it takes over, because a wrong zone shows up as lost margin long before anyone notices it. Review the zones twice a year. Courier prices move, and the map you drew last year is already wrong.