Snowden Industries

Recently we had a client who's shipping rate chart looked something like this:



This was a unique case, as clients typically calculate shipping by weight.

As a cool work around, using Business Catalyst's user define shipping options in the e-commerce setup, we came up with a simple solution.

First off, if you have not setup custom user defined shipping options in Business Catalyst before, we suggest watching this tutorial at kiyuco:
How to setup user defined shipping options within Business Catalyst

Using a similar method, we assigned custom "weights" to each product that actually reflected an amount related to a price range.

Since our client had a unique shipping rate structure, we used custom weights to come up with a customized shipping solution.

For example, a $21.00 product would be assigned a weight of 2100. A $13.50 product would be assigned a weight of 1350, etc.

The end result was a custom weight chart that was directly tied in with their price ranges and looked something like this:
 

Now, if the total ends up as 4300 pounds worth of product, that actually means $43.00 and therefore would fall in the $40-$59.99 range, or an $11.95 shipping charge.

Obviously these weights may sound absurd, but as mentioned earlier, since the client had no need or interest in calculating by weight, we were free to specify any amount we want. These #'s are completely invisible to the end user.

To setup the actual user defined option in BC, we applied it as follows. You can see the minimum weight is actually the minimum price in the range... or 9000 instead of $90.00 while the maximum weight is 11999.99 instead of $119.99.

As our client has specified in their shipping rate chart, this range has a shipping price of $21.95.

This is just one of the many terrific examples of how you can easily customize the e-commerce features of Adobe Business Catalyst.


If you have not yet tried Business Catalyst, you can signup for a trial with GoSiteWave. A preferred BC partner!

In the upcoming July 6th update to Adobe Business Catalyst, there is a lot to be excited about.

The most major addition being recursive modules, or (modules inside of modules). This will allow individual modules to be inserted into content holders for the first time.

Other examples include:

• You will now be able to put products or catalogs right inside blog posts
• You will now be able to insert modules inside web-app list or detailed view (webform module, catalogs/products, literature items).