[kickoff3pm]

Besides that, when displaying realtime shipping rates for "Individual Items" on the product detail page, you want to be real careful as the rates are not accurate & are often displayed much higher than the realistic shipping rate calculated within the Cart. For example, if your typical order is for single, high dollar ticket items such as 55" Plasma tv's, then you are most likely fine displaying the shipping rate on a per item basis. However, if your typical order consists of many individual items, or perhaps multiples of individual items, then the actual shipping rates a customer will pay will be calculated far more accurately at the cart level. So in this case you would be shooting yourself in the foot to display shipping rates on the product page on an individual single item basis.

In my experiance most customers are capable of working out that the more they buy the cheaper shipping often is.

I think each product type is different, if you sell large items often you have fixed costs and it is just 1+1+1 = 3.

Small items cost a lot in the uk to post it's killing things like magazines when a £5 magazine cost £3 to post. And its not till you get over about 2kg that you can save money by using service that resell postage. It's bloody daft that I can got to the postage office and pay £70 for a parcal to be sent or I can sit at home and pay £12 for the same parcal to be picked up by the same service and sent to same place.

[Struck]

I think each product type is different, if you sell large items often you have fixed costs and it is just 1+1+1 = 3.

Yes, it truly is all about the type of products you sell as well as the type of shipping calculation used in your store (if you are using flat rate shipping costs, then of course it makes no difference at all where the rates are displayed).

It would also depend at least somewhat on your customer base, if you deal mostly in b2c, then these customers are far less educated on the particulars of how volume shipping works vs. most b2b customer contacts used to purchasing in volume, and actually knowing what they "should" be paying for shipping.

[tbirnseth]

Good luck... Note that you won't have any template variables available to you in your html block to use for carrier, weight, service code, product, shipping methods available, etc., etc.

The reason for using existing functions are many.
1) Work/testing already done
2) results can be verified easily
3) User interface already exists for display. Keeps things consistent with what customers might see on other pages (like cart or checkout). Why have a separate "view" for estimation on the product page?

Anyway, takes more effort than I was willing to put into it for what I could get out of it.

Again, you're perspective makes it sound so easy... So I'd be very interested to see your solution and to get an idea of what it took (in hours) for you to develop. If you can do something robust enough to handle the variety of products and shipping configurations that are possible in less than 20 hours, I'd be impressed.

[kickoff3pm]

Good luck... Note that you won't have any template variables available to you in your html block to use for carrier, weight, service code, product, shipping methods available, etc., etc.

The reason for using existing functions are many.
1) Work/testing already done
2) results can be verified easily
3) User interface already exists for display. Keeps things consistent with what customers might see on other pages (like cart or checkout). Why have a separate "view" for estimation on the product page?

Anyway, takes more effort than I was willing to put into it for what I could get out of it.

Again, you're perspective makes it sound so easy... So I'd be very interested to see your solution and to get an idea of what it took (in hours) for you to develop. If you can do something robust enough to handle the variety of products and shipping configurations that are possible in less than 20 hours, I'd be impressed.

I'm not saying it's easy, we'll see.

I think the thing you miss is if your site is in competition it's very importent to show the customer you are doing everything possible to keep prices down. It's the very reason people splase banners like FREE DELIVERY accross their site.

Once into the buying choice the next step is to find out how much shipping will cost. The sooner you can give that information the sooner the custmer can complete their choice. A simple sign gives that info you don't need real time for that in most cases.

And if you convince them postage on your site is sensible then rather then going direct to the checkout then for that one product some will add more to their cart simply because you have convinced them. In this case showing any sign of your shipping costs is very importent even if it's just an image will a grapth showing weight sample 100gs, 500gs, 1kg with price to your default location.

Some sites in some types of business pump up shipping to try to con the customer into paying more - like on e bay - . One of my sites are in such a business and so it's even more importent for me to show shipping estimates because most of my customers will be thinking "yes thats seems cheap, but how much will delivery be?"

If you are selling the same items or types of items over and over it should be easy enough to give indications of delivery costs to customer before they get to checkout.

[Lazy]

Yeah also UK based and yes this is needed for a client

Again looks like cs cart not considering the end users needs

both the retailer and the retailers prospective buyers

did the ebay feed / hook up every get started ?

[Alt-team]

Hello everyone!

We have done "Estimate shipping cost" modification for one of our clients. Please see the details here http://www.alt-team....dification.html

I would like to notice that we are planning to release the "Estimate shipping cost" add-on within two weeks. Approximate cost of a ready-to-use add-on is $59.

Best regards, Alt-team

[Damir (WSA-team)]

Does anyone know how to have a shipping estimate on the product page (and not only in the cart or on checkout), so that the customer will be able to know the shipping cost at an early stage and not be surprised when he gets to the cart?

Dear guyrotberg,

You can use our "Product shipping cost" add-on.

Thank you.

PS. At this moment add-on cost USD 14.5 because today is "Black Friday"