International Shipping!

International shipping has arrived. You requested it... we delivered. There are many considerations which you should be aware of when shipping overseas. This article will describe how you can enable your Quick Shopping Cart to ship internationally.

International Checklist

The following is a checklist to consider when configuring International Shipping:

Configure which countries you will support (Merchant Supported Countries). This is the fundamental step that drives others.

Exclude products that will not or cannot ship to foreign countries.

Configure a Shipping provider capable of shipping internationally.

Review any "Free Shipping" coupons to see if they apply to other countries.

Preview and Publish

Each of these items is described below.

Merchant Supported Countries

You (the Merchant) have the power to pick and choose which countries you want to sell to. To pick your countries, select Preferences from the Storefront menu and go to the "International Shipping" section.

The countries in the Available list are available for your site to support. The countries in the Selected list are the countries that your site currently supports. The Selected countries appear in the Country drop-down control on the Billing/Shipping Addresses page in your storefront's checkout process.

Add Countries by selecting one or more countries in the Available list and click [>>] to push these into the Selected pane. To remove countries, select one or more countries in the Selected pane and click the [<<] button. To select more than one country at a time, hold down the Control (Ctrl) key on your keyboard while you click on countries in the list.

Click the Save button at the bottom of the page to save the countries you have selected. You have now configured the countries to which your site can ship.

You can always test your settings before you publish by opening the Preview window. This allows you to see what these new settings will look like before you publish. After publishing, your site can ship to the new countries.

Excluding Countries for Products

Depending on what you sell, you may not want to ship, or are prohibited from shipping, some of your products to certain countries. Quick Shopping Cart provides the ability for you to prevent products from being shipped to certain countries.

Select Products from the Catalog menu and then click the product name that you want to edit. Go to the International Shipping section and click the Modify selected countries link to display the list of countries that your site supports.

After clicking this link, you can select countries where this product should not be allowed to ship. After publishing your selections, your storefront prevents customers from shipping this product to the excluded countries.

Remember to press the Save button to store your settings.

Shipping Options

In order to actually get the products to the international customers, you will need to configure a shipping carrier that is capable of delivering your product to the customer. Currently, there are two shipping options that support international shipping: UPS and Custom. To modify your shipping options, select Shipping from the Processing menu and then select Edit or Enable next to the option you want to modify.

UPS

In addition to completing the normal UPS configuration, you must select one or more of the following International UPS Services:

• UPS Worldwide Express
• UPS Worldwide Expedited
• UPS Worldwide Express Plus
• UPS Saver
• UPS Standard

Custom

In addition to completing the normal Custom Shipping configuration, you can apply surcharges for specific countries or regions to provide a more granular level of control over shipping charges. The following picture shows how you can add surcharges to specific countries or regions to cover more expensive destinations than those in the continental US.

Coupon Configuration (Custom Shipping only)

If you have "Custom" Shipping enabled, some Free Shipping coupons can be very costly if you ship from the US and are shipping to another country. These coupons by default will not apply to other countries unless you enable them.

Quick Shopping Cart allows you to apply Free Shipping coupons to non-US countries. After ensuring you have Custom shipping enabled, select Coupons from the Promotions menu and then click the Add New Coupon link.

Storefront

After all of your settings have been saved and published, your International Shipping configuration is complete. There are some changes to the checkout process to be aware of.

Address Pages

When the shopper selects a different Country in the address page, the following changes automatically occur:

• Shopper is presented with an updated State/Province list relevant to the country;
• Shopper gets Postal Code and Phone Number hints (that will pass validation);
• After submitting, validation errors will occur if either the postal code or phone number does not match the style that the country requires.

Exclusions

If you excluded any products from shipping to certain countries, these countries are identified on the product's detail page:

As a reminder to the shopper, these same countries are identified in the customer's Shopping Cart:

If the customer attempts to ship a product to a country that you created an exclusion for on the Products page, a validation error will appear at the top of the page and will not allow the customer to proceed with the purchase until the items are removed.

Review and Publish

As with all other Quick Shopping Cart functions, you are encouraged to preview the changes frequently before publishing. You can preview your work by either clicking the [Preview] button in the upper right corner or refreshing (F5 Key) the preview window if it is already open. When you feel comfortable with the configuration, publish.

Country Additions

Quick Shopping Cart will periodically add countries to its list of Available countries in the "International Shipping" section on the Storefront > Preferences page. If you visit this page, you may notice new countries that you can select for shipping.