Introducing Automatic Shipping Rates for Royal Mail

7 min read

Brilliant news for Ecwid merchants in the UK! We just released our integration with top shipping carrier Royal Mail, to let you easily display real-time Royal Mail shipping rates at checkout.

With automatic shipping rates from Royal Mail, you can charge your customers the same rates you’ll pay when shipping their orders, so your delivery costs are always covered.

Read on to learn how to set real-time rates for Royal Mail in your Ecwid store.

Your Shipping Expenses Will Always be Covered

Calculating accurate shipping rates is essential for covering your costs without charging your customers too much or too little. Charge your customers too much and you risk losing them to high delivery costs; too little and you lose your own margins to costly shipping expenses.

New Royal Mail real-time shipping rates allow you to accurately display shipping costs at checkout, so your customers are charged fairly and appropriately based on product dimensions and distance of shipping. They pay what YOU pay.

Customers will see the rates for each available option at checkout

To give customers more options, you can add up to 18 Royal Mail shipping methods in your store. For example, some shoppers might be willing to accept longer delivery times for a lower shipping cost, while others would be willing to pay a bit more to have their order delivered faster. Offering a variety of shipping methods will reduce barriers and enable you to close more sales among shoppers who arrive at the checkout process.

You can add different Royal Mail shipping options in your store settings in just a couple of clicks. Once enabled, customers will be able to choose from your listed Royal Mail shipping options at checkout.

Royal Mail 1st class and Royal Mail International Economy are active by default when you set up Royal Mail shipping in your store

How to Enable Automatic Royal Mail Shipping Rates in Your Ecwid Store

Automatic Royal Mail Shipping Rates are available for merchants on all Ecwid pricing plans. Yep, that includes our Free plan!

Setting up automatic rates for Royal Mail is pretty straightforward, but before you start, ensure that:

You’ve marked products as shippable and entered each products’ weight.
You’ve specified the shipping origin address (the UK) and currency (pound sterling).

Now you can enable the automatically calculated Royal Mail rates in your Ecwid store:

1. Go to the Shipping & Pickup page in your Ecwid Control Panel.
2. Click on “+Add Shipping Method” and click on “Set Up Royal Mail”.
3. Find “Automatically calculated rates from Royal Mail” and click on “Set Up Royal Mail”:

Specify the address from where you ship your orders. It will be used to retrieve calculated real-time shipping rates.
Click Save & Finish.

After you enable the automatically calculated Royal Mail rates, two of 18 Royal Mail shipping options will be active by default in your store: Royal Mail 1st Class and Royal Mail International Economy. To enable more Royal Mail options, go to the Shipping & Pickup page, find Royal Mail method, and choose Edit.

Learn more about editing shipping settings, setting up default package size, and shipping markup for Royal Mail in our Help Center.

What if I pay for postage through Royal Mail Click & Drop?

Royal Mail Click & Drop allows you to buy postage online, download your label, and print it from your desktop. You can then put the printed label on your parcel and drop it off at a convenient location like a Royal Mail Customer Service Point, post office, or a postbox drop-off. You can buy postage and download labels from the Royal Mail Click & Drop website.

If you pay for postage through the Royal Mail Click & Drop service, you can check the “Postage paid through Click & Drop” option in the Royal Mail settings in your Control Panel. After you do that, the shipping costs at checkout will be calculated with discounted online prices from Royal Mail (the ones you paid for with Click & Drop) to offer more accurate cost calculations.

Learn how to check the “Postage paid through Click & Drop” option in our Help Center.

What if I already use the Royal Mail Shipping Rates app from the Ecwid App market?

Before this update, Ecwid merchants were able to display Royal Mail shipping rates in their online stores with the help of the Royal Mail Shipping Rates app from the Ecwid App Market. This app still works, but the new integration provides more accurate rates, works out of the box, and supports more Royal Mail services.

We advise you to start using the new Royal Mail shipping method and delete the old Royal Mail method added with the app.

Learn how to delete the old Royal Mail method and start using the new one in our Help Center.

Take Your Shipping to the Next Level with Royal Mail and Ecwid

For UK sellers, set up Royal Mail shipping methods today and start enjoying our most convenient shipping process yet.

And while you’re at it, upgrade your packaging and shipping even more with the following articles:

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Ecwid Updates

Mar 12, 2020

About the author

Matt is a product manager at Ecwid. He works with the Ecwid dev team and helps them shipping the right features for Ecwid merchants. Outside of work, Matt likes travelling and climbing the mountains.