[thelist] Let's Discuss Ecommerce Enabled Sites...

Michele Foster michele at wordpro.on.ca
Mon Mar 26 19:05:34 CST 2001


Hi Folks,

I really like this article, and most things mentioned in it seem to make
sense.

<tip author=Mishka type="Best Practices for Designing Shopping Cart and
Checkout Interfaces">
http://www.dack.com/web/shopping_cart.html
</tip>

A question that is missing from this article.  When to calculate taxes?
And, this can be extended, when to calculate shipping charges based on
destination.

Just looking for best practices information here.  I realize each case may
be a bit different and am just wondering what others do, what you've found
works best, etc.

I currently have two different scenarios on the go.  The first is rather
simple, if a customer lives in a particular state, they will need to pay
sales(state??) tax.  The shipping charges are based on each individual item,
as this particular client only wants to deal with U.S. Continental orders at
this time.

The other scenario will be more complicated, but again the tax and shipping
information will depend on the destination.  In this case, provincial tax
will be applied for all Ontario residents, federal tax for all Canadian
residents, and shipping will be very much different if within Canada or the
U.S (and within Canada itself, many thanks to Canada Post).  Showing a
complete invoice, before gathering the necessary shipping info, isn't going
to be possible.  But, at the same time I find numerous potential customers
email us to find out what it will cost to ship before they want to place an
order.  (Keep in mind this site doesn't have an automated ecommerce system
in place, yet.)

Anyway, based on the fact that customers WANT to know the final cost before
committing any personal information, how do others best deal with this?  Ask
the information on the shopping cart page, in simple terms, i.e. are you in
Ontario, are you in Canada, etc.?

Actually, this brings up another question for the fellow Canadian developers
out there.  Anyone figured out a logical way to calculate shipping between
two postal codes, with Canada Post?  Any scripts available that will do this
online in real time?

TIA,

Michele






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