Currently when shipping goods with WooCommerce you can use one of the core shipping methods (flat rate, international, local pickup).
Each method can be used once, and availability is configured per shipping method. Whilst this system is simple, it is in no way flexible for more advanced shipping setups, forcing you to find additional extensions.
Imagine being able to define multiple regions/countries/zip codes and then being able to add as many rates, flat rates, table rates, free shipping methods, etc as you want to each. Sounds good right? Enter shipping zones.
What are Shipping Zones?
Shipping Zones are groups of locations to which you ship products. You can group multiple continents, countries, states, and zip codes into a ‘zone’ for example you could have:
- Local Zone = California ZIP 90210
- US Domestic = All US states
- Europe
Then each one of these zones can contain multiple shipping methods, such as free shipping, local pickup, and flat rates. Customers within the zone only see the shipping methods applicable to them.
Here is a demo showing zone setup:
The customer, after inputting their address or being geolocated, would be matched to one of these zones and be offered the appropriate rate. Magic!
What about the old shipping methods and existing stores?
If already enabled, the old CORE shipping methods will continue to function as-is until disabled. They will be named ‘legacy’ methods for backwards compatibility.
Whilst this continue to function in 2.6, you should move to zones as soon as you can ideally as they will be taken out for good in future releases.
What about 3rd party shipping methods?
Like explained above, methods which do not define support for Shipping Zones will work as is – globally. Of course, moving to zones would be beneficial for their users, but this is not forced.
What about Table Rates?
The WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping extension had its own Shipping Zone system which this idea was based on. It was always the intention to some day roll this into core.
Table Rates are still mighty useful for defining rates based on weights, items counts, and customer spend so we’re going to continue to offer this extension, but it will be updated to use core zones instead.
When can I have it!
Zones will ship with WooCommerce 2.6 which is due for release Q2 2016. Please feel free to experiment and test with this functionality from Github master branch and provide feedback. It was merged today!
How can I support Shipping Zones?
Whilst not fully documented yet, you can refer to the Flat Rate Shipping class.
You define support for Instances and Zones and define settings per instance of your shipping method.
As long as you use the methods for retrieving options, you should be good to go as instances are handled in the abstract shipping class.
You can also still define global settings and support ‘settings’ to offer some options globally, which can be used in addition to instance settings. This will be useful for API based shipping methods who share settings between instances.
Leave a Reply