Does your SaaS provide a Live Shipping Rate feature? If not, you must definitely implement it, as it can be your competitive advantage. Offering real-time shipping rates can significantly improve the customer experience, increase conversions, and streamline logistics. But implementing this feature for your SaaS solution can be a challenge.
In this article, you will learn why Live Shipping Rates functionality is important for store owners and their end customers, and how API2Cart can help you develop this feature effortlessly.
What are Live Shipping Rates?
Live Shipping Rates are real-time carrier-calculated rates based on factors such as weight, destination, and shipping method. Unlike flat-rate shipping, where customers pay the same amount regardless of distance or package size, Live Shipping Rates calculate the exact cost for each order, providing accurate shipping fees during the checkout process.
By designing a Live Shipping Rates feature for your SaaS, you can provide your clients (eCommerce store owners) with the ability to show their customers accurate shipping costs in real time, leading to fewer abandoned carts and better customer satisfaction.
Why Live Shipping Rates Matter for Your SaaS
Live Shipping Rates feature brings several significant benefits for end customers:
- Improved Accuracy: Providing real-time shipping rates ensures that customers always know the exact shipping costs before they complete their purchase, eliminating surprises and reducing cart abandonment.
- Enhanced Customer Experience: Offering accurate shipping costs enhances trust and transparency, creating a better shopping experience. Customers are more likely to complete a purchase when they know exactly what to expect for shipping.
- Increased Conversions: With Live Shipping Rates, your clients can offer multiple shipping options (e.g., expedited shipping, standard shipping), giving customers the flexibility to choose based on their needs and budget. This can increase conversion rates by offering tailored solutions to different customer preferences.
- Better Logistics Management: By automating the shipping cost calculation, SaaS can help eCommerce store owners better manage their shipping processes, improving efficiency and reducing manual errors in shipping calculations.
- Global Expansion: For SaaS providers supporting international clients, offering Live Shipping Rates makes it easier to scale. Real-time shipping information can be obtained from multiple carriers around the world, supporting global shipping operations.
How API2Cart Helps to Implement Live Shipping Rates Feature
API2Cart is a solution for eCommerce SaaS such as shipping software, inventory management systems, multi-channel software, etc to integrate with multiple eCommerce platforms at once.
Beside standard API methods for working with orders, products, customers and categories, it provides a list of endpoints to create, get a list and delete live shipping rate services.
Such methods are supported now for Magento, Magento 2 API, OpenCart, PrestaShop, PrestaShop Api, Shopify, Shopline, WooCommerce, WooCommerce API and Zoey.
API Methods for Working with Live Shipping Rates
Let’s explore in detail how to start working with live shipping rates using API2Cart.
- First of all, you need to create a new shipping service on the online store using basket.live_shipping_service.create.json method.
- You need to specify the service name and callback URL, that will return API2Cart the shipping rates. Every time an e-store client will be on the checkout page of the website, we will send you all the necessary information. Your system will analyze the shipping costs and send us the final price.
- After that, API2Cart will send this info to the e-store.
Depending on the platform, the structure of the request and the expected response will be slightly different, as some platforms may support more fields.
Here is an example of response structure of basket.live_shipping_service.list.json method for Shopify:
{
"return_code": 0,
"return_message": "string",
"result": {
"live_shipping_services": [
{
"id": "string",
"name": "string",
"callback": "string",
"callback_err_cnt": 0,
"enabled_on_store": true,
"additional_fields": {},
"custom_fields": {}
}
]
}
}
API2Cart provides detailed API Documentation. There you can find examples of requests and responses of all our API methods.
Start your free 14-day trial with API2Cart today and begin implementing the Live Shipping Rates feature for SaaS solution with ease!
Top comments (1)
very interesting