You would be surprised to know just how popular Wix is in South Africa. Small to medium-sized eCommerce websites use it extensively hence our keen interest in looking at Wix shipping in South Africa.
According to the Woorank index, the top 3,689 websites in South Africa use Wix. 97% of these websites are mobile optimized and 96% are secured using the best SSL certificates. This makes them some of the most secure sites to shop online.
As an online shop owner, setting up shipping, delivery, and pickup regulations can be a technically complicated process without the right guidance. This article is meant to help you set up your Wix shipping South Africa as quickly and as seamlessly as possible.
Let us dive right in.
Wix Shipping and Delivery Methods To Consider
Shipping is one of the most important ways to give your customers a great shopping experience. This is why you should invest in making it as easy as possible. Before we get to know the various shipping methods you can use, let us look at the key influencing factors.
- International versus domestic shipping
This is largely informed by your target audience. It becomes easy to know how far you need to send your products. In addition, you can determine the delivery time and shopping fees. For starters, it is easier to do shipping domestically than internationally. You can easily transport your goods via road, rail for free or at low shipping costs. On the other hand, domestic delivery limits the scope of customers you can reach. At the end of the day, exposing your company to as many clients, both domestic and international, will lead to your business’s growth. Here are some of the factors to look into when you want to ship internationally:
- Evaluate the tariffs, taxes, and fees prices for the different countries. If you want to provide free shipping, you can know how to add this into the product pricing.
- Create a shipping policy that clearly explains to your clients the protocol to follow under certain situations.
- Look into the international merchant trade regulationsto understand how these vary from country to country. A duty calculator will come in handy in calculating different custom duties and taxes.
- Weight and size of your packages
Most of the courier services price their packages according to the weight of the package. The larger it is the more expensive it becomes. This way you also need to define your shipping costs depending on the number of products your customers purchase. One way to encourage higher purchasing power is to provide more shipping discounts for more products purchased.
With that in mind, we can now look at the various shipping and delivery methods that will work for Wix shipping South Africa.
Shipping Methods
You can provide a wide range of delivery methods so that customers can conveniently receive their packages.
There are many courier companies in South Africa that you can explore and determine the one that will work best for you.
- Flat shipping – there is only one fixed price regardless of the weight or size of the package. May customers prefer these terms since you can order more without having to incur more shipping costs. Companies shipping heavy items can conveniently use this method.
- Free shipping – this is the most lucrative method for your clients. Your ability to implement this method depends on the ability of your business to absorb the shipping costs.
- Price per product is a great option for companies that ship a wide variety of products that differ in weight and shape. You can organize your products into groups and set different shipping rules for each group.
This method works strategically for those selling dropshipping products since you can separate dropshipping products and other products with different shipping rates.
- Price per weight – here you charge according to the actual weight of the product. It is a favorable Wix shipping South Africa method when shipping heavy items.
Delivery Methods
Delivery methods are highly dependent on how fast the packages need to arrive at the desire destination. Here are some of the methods you can consider:
- Standard shipping – most of the time this is done by ground delivery and it is usually faster than regular shipping. It is one of the most cost-effective methods which also offers door-to-door delivery.
- AirMail – the package is speedily shipped from an overseas location but it is usually expensive.
- Express mail service (EMS) is the fastest delivery method, but the customer usually pays way more than standard charges.
- Door to door – customers love this method because they do not have to leave the comfort of their home to receive their package.
- Local pickup – packages are usually sent to a central place from where customers are given the address of this location to go pick it up.
Protip: Delivery methods differ depending on the courier you use. For this reason, you need to research the terms you present to your customers depending on the courier services you choose.
Having laid the foundation of what you need to know about Wix Shipping, let us now go into how you set up your Wix shipping South Africa.
The Step by Step Process in Setting Up Wix Shipping In South Africa.
- Setting up your regions
Wix stores automatically add two regions for you, that is the domestic one for your registered country and the other one is for the rest of the world, written as “international region”. Here, you can decide which countries or regions you want to ship to. Note the shipping rules that apply when you are selling to regions. Customers from countries that are not covered within the regions cannot check out products.
In addition, the two regions, domestic and international, offer free shipping by default. You can also determine whether you want the terms to remain as they are you want to add some shipping fees.
- Set up shipping rules for each region
After setting up the regions you want to ship to in the Store shipping tab, now you are ready to add the shipping rates for each region. You will notice that the shipping rates come for free by default. Also. you can set up local delivery and pickup later. Here are some key points to note:
- Select one shipping method for each region
- Within one region, you can provide more than one shipping option under the same rule.
- Different countries can have different rules
Protip: select one region at a time and select the shipping rule that works best for that region and is favorable for the type of products you sell. You can refer to the shipping methods highlighted above. To apply a shipping rule, click “edit shipping” next to the relevant region and select a rule.
- Diversifying on Shipping Options
On top of the standard shipping costs, you can provide your customers with a faster shipping option for a higher shipping rate. On the checkout page, customers can select the shipping option they prefer. You can always add more options by clicking on “add other shipping option”.#’
- Considering a Local Delivery Option
Depending on your customer preferences, you can use the local delivery option to provide hand-delivery within your region. In setting this up, you can click on “add local delivery” and use postal codes to define the delivery area.
- Provide a Store Pickup Solution
Local customers can pick their orders from a physical location. Click “local pickup” to set this up.
- Add Optional Shipping Options using Third-party apps
On top of the shipping, pickup, and delivery options you can create using Wix, you can add third-party shipping apps to your site to expand your shipping options.
In Conclusion
A high percentage of customers fail to check out their cart on experiencing even the slightest hitch during their online shopping experience. One of the most common hurdles occurs when selecting the shipping options. This is why you need to make Wix shipping South Africa a seamless and straightforward process as possible.