Hi Jewelcraft thanks for the reply, I looked at your shop and added your first item in the shop to my cart. The shipping cart for your first item that you have listed is 4.50. I then added the 2nd item in your shop to the cart and the shipping remained at 4.50. I then added the first 2 rows (total of 8 items) to the cart and the shipping remained at 4.50.

There will be a point that your actual costs for shipping will exceed 4.50 so you will be loosing money on the shipping.

What I want to do, and you can see an example of this from the sellers on Etsy.com, is charge a fee, 3.00 for example, for the FIRST item in the cart, then .50 for each additional item added to the cart beyond the first item.

It works great on the Etsy.com website

My shop shipping fees are set up as follows: DEFAULT 3.95, first field 0.00 second field (insured shipping) 2.00, third field (next day shipping) 5.00.
All "How to Apply Shipping" fields are set to "Add this amount to the shipping total"

So in my shop the shopper sees $3.95 for EACH item that is add to their cart, unless they want some special shipping as I mentioned above then it’s even a greater total. So what that amounts to is a buyer that has 5 pairs of earrings in the cart and they are being charged $19.75 for shipping.

I thought I would add this to the public topics. Reference my above question about combined or discount shipping charges, I asked the following question "Get Support" section:

Can you recommend a way to offer the customer combined shipping? Example: A customer puts in their cart an item that has a default shipping charge of $4.00. The customer goes back in your shop and puts another item in their cart and the default shipping charge of $4.00 is charged again. I would prefer a way to offer reduced shipping charges for the purchase of multiple items. So the first item in the cart would generate the $4.00 charge but every additional item that is put in that cart would only be charged .50 cents. How is that accomplished?

Cesar responded: "Unfortunately this type of shipping cannot be added to Shopping Cart Creator, but our developers are looking into this for a future addition."

Just wanted to make sure we are all understanding what is trying to be accomplished.

www.caseysjewelry.com

Yes i can see your point , and no doubt CC will address it in time

Set your default shipping to flat rate $3.50 and add a $.50 handling fee to each items page.

I don't think that would work.

As I see it, the default shipping rate of $3.50 as you mention, would be added to EACH item. And on top of that each item would be charged an additional $.50. So if my math is correct, each item would cost $4.00. So if a person bought 10 items, they would end up with a shipping charge of $40.00.

If this is correct....it's to much and that's not what I want to do.

Scott and Cesar have stated that reduced or combined shipping cannot be done at this time.

If I were looking for a quick and dirty way to implement something like this, I'd add the ability to define a shipping cap. Say, for example, you decide the most a customer should have to pay for shipping/handling is $12.00. You charge the aforementioned $4.00 per item, but when they buy ten items the $40.00 is capped at $12.00 in a single operation.

Even without looking at their code base I'd predict that would a much easier thing to implement in the sort term. Just saying.

As far as I can understand it it would work if you do it the opposite way; set the default shipping rate per item to $0.50, and then define an optional rate of $3.50 to be added to the total - wouldn't that work? Using your example from above it would be DEFAULT $0.50, first field $3.50(add to total) second field "insured shipping" $5.00 (add to total), third field "next day shipping" $7.00 (add to total)?

Just my two pennies worth :-)

Modified to say: This doesn't add a cap on the total if you sell hundreds of items, of course, but first two fields could be played with a bit.

Julie

Julie Haveland Beer, thanks for the input. I have been revising the shipping options for about 2 hours now. There has been some progress thanks to your suggestions. I invite you to look at the shop at www.caseysjewelry.com and as you will see that if you start added to the cart from the top left and using the UNINSURED option from the drop down box, those amounts are more in line of what my objectives are.

The problem that now comes in to play are the 2 other options in the drop-down box which are INSURED and FEDEX Next Day. I have used the "add this amount to the shipping total" "add this amount for each item in the cart" AND the "add this percentage to the shipping total". As you can see, as you add more items (use the bracelets or the earrings only) to your cart, the shipping charges really gets outrageous when selecting the INSURED or FEDEX options. Can you now give your thought on how to correct this and keep the shipping charges reasonable for those options?

Again, your first suggestion works for basic shipping charges and multi items in the cart.

Hi Bob, beautiful site and beautiful jewellery! How funny is that? I am a jewellery maker as well, although since I started making lampwork beads I have spent less time making jewellery and more time making beads for other jewellery makers If you want to take a peek you'll find it under www.dolmairicdesign.co.uk. I haven't "opened" my shop yet, since I want to finalise my website first, and I have to actually "make some stuff" to put in it first!

What I plan to do is to offer a flat postal rate no matter how many items the customer buys, so one option for domestic, and one option for international. I might offer an next day option as well. I feel this gives a very positive signal to the customer. If the customer spends so much money that I feel it warrants extra insurance in addition to the basic postal insurance I'll take that cost myself. I think of it as a discount for spending over a certain amount on my products. So my planned shipping options would look something like this:

Normal default per item: £0.00
Option 1: Normal domestic :£2.00 (add to total)
Option 2: Domestic Next day: £5.00 (add to toal)
Option 3: Normal International: £3.50 (add to total)

I am sorry if none of this is of any help!

Ooops, I hope I won't get told off for hijacking this thread with all this talk of shipping options:rolleyes: Just want to say thanks to the CoffeCup team, this is a brilliant software, so easy to integrate with Paypal and Google! Personally I want to keep the coffecup link at the bottom, I am very happy to promote your products! It's very easy to just add a little personal touch to the layout in the default css file without touching any of the programs. You have done a great job, and when the basic stock control arrives I shall be a complete happy bunny

Julie, Nice site. Love your lampwork. I don't know anything about css or altering the css file, perhaps someone could help me out with this task.