Monday, March 4, 2013

Setting Up Shipping on Supadupa

The host I use for OneStitchDesigns.com is Supadupa.me. Overall, setting up a shop is pretty easy, but there's one part that gets many people scratching their heads: shipping.

The hardest part about setting up your own website with Supadupa is the shipping.

Supadupa's shipping is calculated based on the weights you give each item or the price you set. You could do $10 shipping on a 1 lb item, or $10 shipping on an order of $90, whichever you want.

For this, we will be looking at shipping based on weight. 

Shipping is calculated on a base 10 system. Meaning 1 lb is 1 and 8 oz is 0.5.

here's a full chart to help you:
oz  =     actual weight  (what you should enter into the system)

1 oz = 0.0625 (0.06)
2 oz = 0.125 (0.12)
3 oz = 0.187 (0.18)
4oz = 0.25
5 oz = 0.3125 (0.31)
6 oz = 0.375 (0.37)
7 oz = 0.4375 (0.43)
8 oz = 0.5
9 oz = 0.5625 (0.56)
10 oz = 0.625 (0.62)
11 oz = 0.6875 (0.68)
12 oz = 0.75
13 oz = 0.8125 (0.81)
14 oz = 0.875 (0.87)
15 oz = 0.9375 (0.93)
16 oz = 1

Alternatively,  you could just use 1 as 1 oz and have 6 be 6 oz, 7 be 7 oz, etc. That may be easier for many people. If you use the metric system, substitute pound for kilogram.

In the US, we have a website where you can enter your package info and it'll tell you how much that package will cost to ship. Postcalc.usps.gov Bookmark that link, it's your new best friend! This page will tell you how much every sort of package will cost, and you can use the info to figure out how much to charge people for each weight amount. Keep this open while setting up shipping.

Now we go to enter shipping costs into your new website!. From your dashboard (or any page in the shop admin area) click shop settings, then click shipping

 Start by clicking the check box for North America, then hover over the empty bar to the right of where it says North America Your screen will look like this.


Click to "add a weight based charge." Now here, you will be adding shipping that covers all of North America (this is a regional charge), then you'll need to add other charges that override that for specific countries.

Once you have your shipping charges set up for all of North America, then you can start to set up the overriding charges for certain countries. If you live in the US, then you would need to over ride for the US and Canada (and maybe Mexico, I don't override Mexico- it's too close to the other countries to worry about).

As you can see, after you set up Canada shipping, you can also set up an override to certain provinces (you'll only need this if you live in Canada). You can do the same thing in the US, override for certain states.
Say you live in Miami, Florida, and you need to send 2 identical packages, one to Tampa, and one to Houston, Texas. Unless you use first class mail, or a flat rate priority box, the Texas package will cost more than the Tampa package. That's what the state/province specific overrides are for :)

There are no other countries that have the state/ province specific over rides, and you might only need them if you live in the same country.

Once your finished adding any country/ state/ province specific override charges, then determine if you need to uncheck any of the countries listed. If you cannot ship to a certain country, you will need to uncheck that country's box.


As you can see in the above screenshot, under the Caribbean, I have Cuba unchecked, because the US has a trade embargo against Cuba. Check trade sanctions for your country. Other common reasons for not being able to ship to a certain country are: that country's customs office won't allow your product into the country, and you just don't want to ship to that country for whatever reason.

Once you get outside of your own country's region, generally you can just put one set of shipping costs for each entire region (and uncheck countries that you cannot ship to). One exception I know of is when shipping from the US, Ruperto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean have much cheaper shipping than their neighbors, being US territories, so you'll want to set up overrides for those if you live in the US.

 IMPORTANT: Save often! This is a lot of work to lose if something goes wrong!

I hope this post helps! The screenshots above come from my own website http://onestitchdesigns.com.