Total Blue System Ecommerce

Offer shipping options specific to a type of customer

Show only the appropriate or relevant options; nothing more, nothing less to distract from the purchase process. That's a philosophy that's embedded in Total Blue System's shopping cart, especially concerning shipping method options. In a continuation of that idea, now your cart can present shipping options (like Next Day, 2nd Day, Standard, UPS Ground, etc.) specific to the "type" of customer.

• In other words, you can now limit which shipping choices are displayed to the shopper depending on the type of customer account he or she holds.

The immediate application of this new feature for some clients is to offer shipping that's tailored to the needs of dealers or wholesalers. The item quantities and item pricing for a customer of type "dealer" is unique from the normal retail shopper. Therefore, the pricing scheme for shipping will likely be unique as well. (In one case, a client has chosen not to calculate shipping costs for dealers during check-out; so their shipping cost totals are excluded from the online order process. This new feature enables such a configuration.)

Now you can create what we call a "shipping service" and restrict it to be available only to shoppers of a certain "user type." The User Types are definable by you within the Contacts module of the Admin Area. Assuming you've already configured a user type called Dealer, now you can create a shipping service just for those kinds of customers.

When such a customer comes through your shopping cart, signs into his or her account, and is then recognized as a dealer, the check-out experience that follows will be tailored to show shipping options for that type of customer.

Satisfy cravings for shipping cost info

If there's one question that comes to an on-line shopper's mind after "How much does it cost?" it's likely "How much will it cost to ship?" Of course, those questions are really the same: what's the cost to make this purchase? Total Blue System's Cart module now attempts to answer that question for shoppers -- only knowing the items to be purchased.

Shopper concerns about shipping costs prompt some merchants to offer free shipping. But often that's only a temporary promotion, and if not, then shoppers can conclude the shipping cost is baked into the product's price. Since a "free shipping" pricing scheme isn't often practical, some e-commerce sites will attempt to meet the shopper's craving by offering to forecast shipping costs. The answer is given after asking the shopper for his or her zip code. That's one route to take, but it's not optimal because it requires input from the shopper that slows the buying process. It also doesn't necessarily work for merchants selling into the United Kingdom and Western Europe.

In response to this situation, E-business Coach developed a proprietary algorithm for estimating shipping costs. These are communicated to the shopper without asking any information about the shipping destination, and before the cart check-out process begins. In collaboration with the merchant, the algorithm can be tuned so that what the shopper sees is higher or lower than actual estimates, depending on the selling psychology that's preferred.

For now, access to this feature is on a limited by-request basis. We'll be watching this beta test closely in the coming months, in particular measuring the impact on shopping cart conversion rates as a result of this new information given to shoppers.