You can use shipping profiles to customize your shipping settings for your unique business
needs. There’s two types of shipping profiles, the general shipping profile and the custom
shipping profile. Keep watching to learn more about each profile and when you should use
them.
Hey everyone I’m Aly! So, what exactly do shipping profiles do? Shipping profiles help
you charge accurate shipping rates through shipping rules that you create. You can use
shipping profiles to set shipping rates for specific products or variants, and charge
different rates depending on where you're shipping your products to and from.
By default, every Shopify store comes with one shipping profile that contains the general
shipping rates for all of your products. The shipping rates created automatically for you
in the general shipping profile will vary depending on what country you live in.
If you offer the same shipping rates on all products using free shipping, flat rates,
or carrier calculated shipping, then the general shipping profile is all that you need.
Here’s an example of a basic shipping setup in the general profile. The Shipping From
section identifies what locations are available to ship products from. The AlyAthletics store
has three locations that are all retail stores, but you can also ship from your home office,
a warehouse, or anywhere you store inventory.
Next there’s the Shipping Zone which identifies where you ship products to. In this example,
there’s two shipping zones. One for the United States, and one for Canada.
After you create a Shipping Zone, the next step is to create shipping rates for it. This
example has free shipping for orders shipping to the United States, and a $5 flat rate for
international orders shipping to Canada.
In the section Not covered by your shipping zones , you see the countries we don’t ship
to. These are countries that are not included in the Shipping Zones.
Your general shipping profile will look different depending on your business needs. But the
general shipping profile is ideal for a business like AlyAthletics; which ships small items
and clothing that can all easily fit into traditional packaging and doesn’t have any
special packing needs.
Now let’s move on to custom shipping profiles. You can use custom shipping profiles to create
shipping rates based on product, location or a combination of both.
Let’s look at a few examples.
Product-based shipping profiles are the most common. Here we have a custom profile built
specifically for a heavy product. We built a custom profile for this because it has a
more expensive shipping rate than the other products in the AlyAthletics store.
When you add a product to a custom profile, that product is automatically removed from
the general shipping profile.
It’s also more expensive to ship this item to Canada, so we’ve created a separate international
shipping rate. One rate is for Canada, and one is for shipping within the United States.
A Location based shipping profile is another option. Here we have a custom profile that
has a shipping rate for items that ship from our warehouse in New York. And, another custom
profile with a different shipping rate for all products shipping from a retail store
in San Francisco. The cost of shipping from our San Francisco warehouse is more expensive,
so we charge more when we ship from that location.
An advanced option is to combine product based and location based shipping. Here we have
a custom profile with one product, shipping from three different locations, and each location
has its own shipping rate.
This example is a complex shipping setup that most businesses won’t need, but it’s available
if you choose.
While the possibilities with custom profiles can seem endless, it’s important that you
only create custom profiles if and when you need them. Best practice is to create a custom
profile when a product or location is an outlier and doesn’t fit within the general shipping
profile rules.
So what happens when a customer places an order with a product from the general shipping
profile and a product from a custom shipping profile?
When this happens, all shipping rates that apply from each profile are combined.
Here’s an example of an order with a shipping address to Canada. The order includes a t-shirt
from the general profile, with an international flat rate of $5. It also includes a medicine
ball from the custom shipping profile for heavy items, which has a $15 international
shipping rate.
Shopify combines these two shipping rates, and shows the customer a single $20 shipping
rate at checkout. Because multiple shipping profiles combine rates at checkout, it’s
ideal to only create custom profiles as you need them to avoid shipping rates stacking.
Next, you might be wondering what type of shipping profiles you need if you dropship.
Depending on what dropshipping app you use, custom profiles might be automatically created
for you.
Because each dropshipping app comes with its own unique set of shipping standards and practices,
it’s best to only use one dropshipping app in your Shopify store. This helps to avoid
shipping rates conflicting at checkout.
If you’re dropshipping with Oberlo, then subscribe now for an upcoming video on how
to create shipping profiles for Oberlo products. And if you’re using another dropshipping
app, read their support documentation to understand how their shipping works, and create profiles
based on your dropshipper’s instructions.
Now that you understand how shipping profiles work, it’s time to get started with your
own! Visit help.shopify.com to learn more about setting up your own shipping profiles
today.