Advanced Shipping with Delivery Slots
**Note that this is a paid feature. Please contact our support team to get you started on Delivery Slots.
Delivery Slots is a new feature to the NitroSell platform which allows retailers to add more advanced features and controls to their shipping methods, including:
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Add delivery slots for each date that the customer can choose from on the checkout page
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Place a limit on the number of orders that are allowed for each slot
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Charge different prices for each delivery slot
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Allow retailers to add once-off or recurring delivery slots, as well as specify excluded dates in which no shipping will take place
Setting up your Delivery Slots
Once a member of our team has enabled the delivery slots on your store, you may configure any of your shipping methods on your Webstore Manager.
The first step will be to set your store’s time zone. This can be done under All Config Options > then filter for “Set store timezone”.
The second step will be to set up the Shipping Schedule for a shipping method. This will be available under Shipping & Taxes > General Set-Up > Country > Shipping Methods on your WebStore Manager.
Fig. 1: Click on Configure to set up the Delivery Slots on a shipping method.
When you click on ‘configure’ for the Shipping Schedule, you will be redirected to a new page where you can configure the slots for this shipping method (Fig. 2). If you would like assistance with creating a new shipping method, please contact our support team who will be happy to guide you through the process.
Fig. 2: The view of Shipping: Delivery slots page.
In the upper part of the page, the selected shipping method will be displayed, followed by a brief description of the feature. In the centre of the page, you will see the timetable for the current week. You can traverse the timetable using the two arrows on the top right of the timetable, and you can return to the current week by clicking ‘Today’.
Adding Slots
To add delivery slots, retailers have two options.
- Click on the ‘Add Slot’ button below the timetable, which will open the modal window where you can configure a single or recurring slot.
Fig. 3: Click on ‘Add Slot’ to set up the Delivery Slots on a shipping method.
2. You can also click & drag your cursor vertically on a day of the slot. When you release the mouse click, the modal window will open. This option is recommended as the modal window will automatically be filled with the date and start/end times which you dragged over.
Fig. 4: Click & Drag the cursor over the slot interval.
The modal window.
Fig. 5: The modal window for adding new delivery slots.
The modal window allows you to customize the delivery slot. If you had used the click & drag method to create the slot, the Start date, Start time and End time will be prefilled with the date and time interval you had selected. You can still change the date or times on this window.
The window can be broken down into the following sections:
Date and Time
The Start date is the first date in which the delivery slot will appear. If this is a single event, then this is the only date that will have this delivery slot. If it is a recurring date, then this is the first date in which the recurring slot will start being available. The format of the date depends on the language settings of your browser.
The start and end times define the length of the slot. You can choose any length of time for the slot, and there is complete flexibility; you can have one slot from 4:15 - 4:30pm and another slot from 6:00 - 8:00pm on the same day.
Recurring or Single Event
Fig. 6: You can select which days a recurring slot will be available for.
The next option allows retailers to decide if the new slot is going to be a single event, or recurring. If the retailer would like to have a delivery slot which repeats, they have the option to make the slot weekly or bi-weekly. When one of these options are selected, the retailer will then be able to choose which days of the week that the delivery slot will be available.
Note: For recurring orders, the order limit is shared across the schedule events, we recommend having a recurring schedule of no more than one or two days a week.
Availability
Availability allows retailers to have control over how far in advance, as well as how soon before the slot that the customer can select it on the checkout page. This can prevent the store from being overwhelmed by a high amount of orders that are placed just before the delivery slot occurs. If the slot is before the maximum availability or after the minimum availability, it will not appear as an option on the checkout page. In Figure 5. for example, the slot is available up to 8 days before the delivery slot is to occur, but can be selected no later than an hour before it is to occur.
Order Limit
The order limit is the maximum number of orders that can be placed on this delivery slot, giving retailers full control over how many deliveries they process.If the order limit is reached, then the delivery slot will no longer appear on the checkout for customers.
Cost
Fig.7: Drop-down of available cost customization options.
When defining the slot cost, there are five options available to define the slot cost value.
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Default: Slot delivery cost will be the same as the cost of the shipping method it is assigned to.
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Increase cost: Presents a new input field, where the cost of the slot is added to the shipping option.
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Decrease cost: Presents a new input field, where the cost of the slot is subtracted from the shipping option.
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Override cost: Presents a new input field, where the cost of the slot will override the cost of the shipping option.
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Free fulfillment: Overrides the cost of shipping to be free, if this slot is chosen.
Once you are done setting up the new delivery slot, click “Save” and the delivery slot will now appear on the Scheduling Panel.
Editing and Deleting Delivery Slots.
Fig.8: You can edit a delivery slot by clicking on.
To edit a delivery slot, all you need to do is to click on the desired slot on the Scheduling Panel. A modal window will appear, which contains the same options as there is for adding slots, populated with the data of the delivery slot. You can change any of the options for the slot, and then click ‘Save’ to update the delivery slot.
To delete a delivery slot, click on the desired slot on the Scheduling Panel. Click the red ‘Delete’ button on the modal window, which will open a new window.
Fig. 9: The modal window for removing a delivery slot.
You then have the option to delete only this slot, or if it is recurring, delete all of the future occurrences of the recurring slot as well. This provides great flexibility as you do not need to edit a recurring slot to remove a slot for a specific date. Click on ‘Exclude Date’ to delete the slot from the schedule.
Excluded Dates
Fig. 10: The Excluded Dates section.
A retailer who is using recurring delivery slots will inevitably have some dates which, while normally would have the delivery slots available, would not be serving on that day (such as national holidays). Rather than having to traverse the Schedule timetable to these specific dates, a retailer can specify excluded dates where no delivery slots will be available.
Excluded dates are in a section below the Schedule panel. The currently excluded dates are displayed in the section, and can be removed by clicking on the ‘delete’ text shown in each of the dates. To exclude a new date, click the ‘Add New’ button, and a new window will appear.
Fig. 11: The modal window for excluding dates.
Like the Start date for adding slots, it is written in DD/MM/YYYY format, but you can click on the icon to the right to display a calendar from which you can choose a date from.
Checkout Page
Fig. 12: The delivery slot dates at checkout.
The delivery slots appear as a new template on the checkout page. The template is customisable, however it is not recommended without assistance from our team. When the shipping option is selected by a customer, they will see an interface with up to 4 dates displayed for the customer to choose from. The customer can traverse to other dates by clicking on the red arrows to the left or right of the dates. After choosing a day, a list of available delivery time slots appears according to the schedule in WebStore Manager. Each time slot is displayed with its start time, end time, and the delivery cost. Shoppers can select a time slot by clicking on it. When the maximum number of orders per delivery slot is reached, the time slot will no longer be displayed on the checkout page under that date. The shopper must then choose from other available slots.
Fig. 13: Available slots for selected Day.
When the customer clicks on a delivery slot, a message will appear, letting the customer know that they have the delivery slot reserved for thirty minutes. This will prevent unfinished orders from reserving all of the order spaces for the delivery slot. If the order is not completed within the thirty minutes, they will no longer have the slot reserved and will not be able to complete the checkout without selecting a new delivery slot.
You can edit the string DELIVERYSLOT_RESERVED_MESSAGE to your preferred description.
Fig. 14: Selected slot reserved.
The interface is also adaptable for mobile devices, with the dates appearing in a vertical list with the same features.
Fig. 15: The modal window for adding new delivery slots.
If a customer tries to checkout without selecting a delivery slot, or if their slot reservation expires, they will receive this error message and the checkout will fail.
Fig. 16: The modal window for adding new delivery slots.
This error message is an editable language string, which you can edit by going to the Design & Content menu on the Webstore Manager, and click Edit Language.
From here, you can edit the string ERR_SELECT_DELIVERYSLOT to your preferred description.
If you have any questions about delivery slots or would like to set them up on your store, please contact us for details.