SuiteCommerce Default Shipping and Pre-Selected Shipping Methods

What is the Default Shipping Setting in NetSuite?

The default shipping setting in the website setup record allows website owners to control which shipping method will be displayed first in the list, when more than one is shown, and the default method is also eligible to be shown.

Why does it matter for ecommerce websites?

Having the right shipping method appear first in a list on your website is beneficial, as customers typically evaluate the first few options displayed when shopping on a website. Therefore, having a shipping method you, the website owner, prefer to use displayed first will help ensure that it is selected more often.

NOTE: Just because it is the option displayed first, this does NOT mean it will be ‘pre-selected’ as a user goes to check out.

What controls ‘pre-selection’ of the shipping method, then?

Since this ‘Default Shipping Method’ field is not the data point that controls which shipping method is pre-selected during SuiteCommerce checkout, there must be another field that controls this - there is!

On each customer record, there is a tab called “preferences” that controls various preferences throughout the NetSuite and SuiteCommerce environment. One of the fields in this tab is called “shipping method”. IF this field has a value - keyword here being if - whichever shipping method is in this field will automatically be selected during checkout for that customer - regardless of the website default shipping method. The customer can still change the shipping method selected, but SuiteCommerce will have the customer's record’s shipping method preference pre-selected. The screenshots below show this in action.

IMPORTANT: the customer record’s default shipping preference will change based on the customer’s last purchase. This means the following scenarios will happen at some point:

• The customer record’s shipping method preference is blank; they select a shipping method during checkout. After checkout, the customer record’s shipping method preference will be set to the method selected.
• A customer record’s shipping method preference is ‘shipping method 1’. During checkout, that method is pre-selected, but they instead choose ‘shipping method 2’. The next time they go to checkout, ‘shipping method 2’ will be pre-selected.

How does the default shipping method & pre-selection behavior affect my website?

If you want to have the same shipping method always pre-selected for customer records (or not have the pre-selected shipping method change), a customization will need to be put in place to make sure that the desired shipping method is set in the preferences of the customer record.

Similarly, if you do not want a shipping method pre-selected when a customer is checking out, you will need a customization put in place that makes sure the shipping method field in the preferences of the customer record is always empty.

If you are interested in these customization options, contact our team!

Summary

The website setup record “default website shipping method” does NOT control pre-selection of the shipping method during checkout. It does, however, control which shipping method will appear first in the list. There is a field called “shipping method” on customer records under the ‘preferences’ tab that DOES control which shipping method is pre-selected during checkout - without customization, this field value will change based on the shipping method selected with the customer’s last website order.

Related Articles: 

• NetSuite Shipping Items Setup Tutorial
• What makes a good SuiteCommerce Partner?
• Customer-Specific Shipping Method

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