Best practices for local delivery

If you plan to provide local delivery as an option for your store, you'll want to keep some best practices in mind to ensure the process runs smoothly. In this article, we'll discuss how to manage your local orders, as well as how to limit your deliveries to certain subtotals and certain time periods. To keep your travel distances reasonable, refer to the article Limit local delivery to certain zones.

Managing local orders

You can always check the information about delivery date and time picked by customer in the order list at My Sales > Orders in your store admin and in the New Order email notification. Delivery time selected by your customer is also available in their order details.

If you have many orders with the Local delivery option, you can search them by delivery date and time to clearly see what orders should be fulfilled first.

To search orders by delivery date and time:

1. Go to My Sales > Orders and click "Filter."

2. Click Pickup or delivery date and time.

3. In the opening form, specify the time range you are looking for to see all orders in the selected time period.

4. You can also look up for the upcoming orders in the next 3 hours, 24 hours, on this particular day, or in the next 3 days.

You can update several orders at once by checking the box above the orders list and choosing action in the "Mass Update" menu. You can print, export or delete selected, change payment or fulfillment status for orders. 

If you are used to keeping track of your orders with the spreadsheet, you can download details of the pickup orders to your computer as a CSV file. The downloaded CSV file is compatible with spreadsheets or can be opened and edited in any text editor.

To download CSV file:

1. Check the boxes next to the required orders or select all by checking the box above the orders list.

2. In the Mass Update menu, choose "Export Selected."

3. Click "Download CSV file."

Limiting delivery to orders over certain subtotal

Usually a free or lower-cost local delivery is offered to orders exceeding a certain amount to keep it profitable.

To offer a local delivery for orders over certain amount:

1. Go to Shipping & Pickup.

2. Click "+ Add delivery."

3. In the "Conditional free delivery" block, click "Set Up Conditions."

4. Enter the name for this delivery option.

5. Below, you'll see the preset values that mean free delivery for orders over $30 and $3 delivery for all smaller orders.

   Enter your values instead of the suggested subtotal range and input the delivery rate that corresponds to it. Let’s say you want to charge $1 for orders over $40 and $4 for a smaller subtotal range. Enter the maximum amount for regular charge ($39.99) and the minimum sum for lower-cost delivery will be changed automatically.

6. Add the description for this delivery option that your customers will see at checkout such as your delivery time or conditions.

7. Optional: You can automatically inform your customers about your delivery condition at checkout and encourage them to order more to be eligible for this delivery option. For this, click "Limit availability by order subtotal" and specify the minimum order subtotal. If the order sum is lower than the minimum subtitle, this delivery option will still appear at checkout but will be grayed out until the customer adds more products to the cart.

   To make this delivery option look more attractive to customers, specify a much lower rate per order compared to other delivery methods. 

   You can also set up a free delivery option to encourage your customers to buy more.

   If you deliver only at certain times, click "Limit availability to operating hours" and specify the days and hours when this delivery option should appear at checkout.

8. To offer this delivery option only in your local area, click "Set delivery zone" and create a zone.

9. Click Save & Finish.

Limiting local delivery to certain time periods

You can limit delivery to certain time periods or choose blackout dates to prevent your customers from ordering when you are unable to prepare an order in time. 

To limit delivery per day or per time slot:

1. Go to Shipping & Pickup. 

2. Choose the local delivery option you want to edit or create a new delivery option.

3. Turn on the "Delivery operating hours" setting (or "Set operating hours," if you are creating a new delivery option).

4. Check off the days and choose the time period when a delivery option is available.

   To add multiple operating hours intervals during a day, click "+" near the time slot.

5. Optional: To prevent customers from ordering at any time, choose "Blocked" in the "Order outside of operating hours" dropdown menu. Customers attempting to place orders outside of the schedule will see this delivery option as unselectable with a message about the next available time for placing the order.

6. In the "Blackout dates" section, click "+ Add Blackout Date or Date Range" to set up specific dates when your store doesn’t work. This way, customers won’t be able to choose these dates for local delivery. To repeat blackout dates every year, select the "Repeat every year" checkbox. 

7. Click Save.

If you deliver 24/7, just turn off "Set operating hours" so that your customers can order at any time and day they want.