In this video we're going to look at three methodologies for controlling what shipping methods customers see at checkout based on the products they have in their shopping basket at the time. We're going to be talking about excluding permitting and limiting shipping methods and how you can do all of that from a product by product basis.
First let's look at how you can configure a shipping method to always exclude itself from the list of available shipping options at checkout. This is a setting introduced into version 9.5 of the Miva Merchant software and to get to it you want to be in the Shipping Method Rules tab in the Shipping Settings area of the Admin. Here you can see that we've got some UPS shipping options and we have a peculiar shipping method called “Free Express Shipping for Mugs” which I configured using the Flat Rate Shipping module. If we double click it, we can pull up a modal of all of the Shipping Method Rules we can apply to this shipping method. The one we want is down here under exclusions, called “Exclude this Method Unless Permitted by Products.” If we check mark this option, click the “Save” button and do nothing else, this shipping method will never ever ever appear as an option for any of your customers. It’s essentially turned off by default and will only activate if there is a product in the basket that specifically permits it to appear in the list of options. Case in point, here is a shopping cart at checkout which I started before our settings change. You can see the Free Express Shipping for Mugs option, but when I refresh the screen, that shipping option goes away. Now, let's move on to a mug product to complete the second part of this two-step process.
In this Edit Products screen, if you scroll down you'll find a section called Shipping Rules. Under the Setting called Permitted Shipping Methods, let's check mark Free Express Shipping for Mugs and click “Update.” Now as long as we have this specific mug product in our shopping basket it will permit Free Express Shipping for Mugs to appear, because it's configured to exclude Itself by default unless permitted by a product. Let's go back to the checkout process and refresh the screen. We can see the Express Mug Shipping is back in the list, along with all of the other UPS options. Lastly, let's look at the setting called Limit Shipping Methods. If you check mark “Limit Shipping Methods” and “Free Express Shipping for Mugs” we can go back to check out and refresh the screen and we can see that not only does it permit the Free Express Shipping for Mugs option to appear when it normally would not, but it also limits the list of available shipping options to only Free Express Shipping for Mugs. Again, this is happening because we have the mug product in a shopping basket. With the Limit Shipping Methods options selected and this product in your basket you will only have shipping options available if they are check marked in this list here. One quick topic worth talking about at this time, this mug product is configured to only be shippable via a Shipping Method that is not available to any other products. So in the event that this mug product is in the shopping cart with another product like this $10 shirt, if we go back to the checkout screen, the checkout process is going to error out on the customer because the two products in the basket don't share any similar shipping options between them. So keep that in mind when you're setting up your Exclude by Product and Limit by Product Rules. And that's how you control which shipping methods customer see at checkout based on products in a basket.