FedEX Saturday Delivery

[ids]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

I'll add my own "case study" to this.

In '97/'98 time frame when a partner and I started an online business, we chose Miva because of the possibility to customize the interface. Modules weren't really a possibility.

Our business sold roses. Our idea had a very specific interface in mind. No other shopping cart could give us the capability to create what we needed. None that we could find anyway. My idea was clear. Create the interface so the customer couldn't make a mistake and they knew exactly what was going to happen. The shipping costs and delivery dates were the hardest and easiest to plan out. Easy because we only shipped Fedex Overnight which limited what the costs were. The hard part was setting/programming the rules.

We had to exclude Mondays because Fedex and Sunday didn't work for perishables. We had a cutoff time every day to get orders to the greenhouse, so they could cut, clean, box and ship the same day.

It wasn't a module, but I was able to customize and integrate each step of the ordering process. The customer was given valid delivery date options, excluding Sunday and Monday. If our servers time (compensated for out time zone) was past a certain time, delivery the next day was excluded. The customer knew the very next time delivery was available. Here is the gist. If the next available day was Saturday, the option was offered at Sat-NextDay price. Customer had no way to try and fool the interface.

There was other parts of the scripting for that business which were essential to built in perfect customer service. For example I built a batch report that calculated what orders needed to be shipped today for next day delivery. Was handy at the seasonal busy times and allowed us to take orders in advance and we didn't need to figure everything out every day all over again.

Eventually, I was able to create a module for this in MM4. Because of the power and flexibility from MM5.5 till now -- MM9.4, it's become an integration of SMT template code and a tightly integrated helper module customized per store with an interface for choosing/configuring holidays, weekends, time of day cutoff, and tying directly with specific shipping options so the customer knows what the cost is when they land on OSEL page.

Here's the case study info. When I created the MM4 version, it was basically a retail ready module. Easy to install and easy to configure. I actually thought everyone would want this capability. I was wrong. What was the length of time MM4 compiled was not end of life? That is nearly how long DateSelect was available on MivaCentral and southbound.com. I can sadly say it was not a big seller at all even with a couple Miva techs and other 3rd party developers telling store owners and other developers a module like this existed. I am not sure if store owners didn't want the function, or need the function, or understand the benefits. Not every store or product would. But, in many online stores these days, you need to supply the shipping costs to help customer decide to buy.

There was limited exposure and advertising. But also, surprising low amount of direct questions or requests on the forums and other places for this type of feature. This low frequency still persists IMO. I offer this integration now called SmartDate.

Scott

[Rick Wilson]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

Josh,

That's plausible but we'd look at building something in as an extension of the module. We've done similar for return logistics with UPS for a couple of sites.

This helps us (we don't normally do any custom module work) figure out the use cases so we can reasonably consider if this can be in the core someday.

[joshpappas]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

Rick,
Thanks for your response. Are you thinking that this would be an update to the shipping module itself? That might be of interest. My current idea for a workaround was to create an upcharge for Saturday delivery and automatically add that whenever FedEx Overnight is selected.

Josh

[Rick Wilson]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

Josh,

This could probably be done as a custom project today.

[joshpappas]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

This is actually something we were just talking about today. We know that orders placed by 3:00 ET will ship that day, so we would automatically select Saturday delivery with the overnight option for any order placed between Thursday at 3pm and Friday at 3pm. Our business is very event-driven, so customers are always trying to get things delivered by the weekend. Currently we offer USPS Priority Express, but their on-time percentage rate for us has not been stellar. FedEx is extremely reliable for us, so we want to move as much of the overnight shipping to them as possible.

If this could be added, that would be great.

[ids]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

I have a solution for this. It's evolution of my MM4 module called DateSelect. It's now a module/integration because it's weaved tightly with shipping options.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if interested.

Scott

[mcrmedical]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

I'll jump in. I completely understand Miva not assigning resources to putting this into the native code. But I did want to pipe in to share that it is an important challenge for our business, and one we hope your design club will soon overcome for us with some creative coding.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

Maybe a bunch of people will jump on this thread, but so far I've seen virtually no demand for that feature being added. It adds a lot of complexity to checkout (by estimating delivery date and then only showing it when Saturday delivery is even an option), so I highly doubt it's coming soon natively.

[lesliekirk]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

Customer as in shopper.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: FedEX Saturday Delivery

Customer as in shopper, or customer as in Merchant?

[lesliekirk]

Need the ability for the customer to select Saturday delivery for FedEx.