Shopify is an eCommerce hosting platform. You can start your new online store or migrate your existing online store. But did you know that now you can sell your products locally?
Shopify has now propounded a new system with which merchants can offer their products to their local customers. Below are some questions that will clear your doubt about selling your items locally on Shopify.
Can You Sell on Shopify Locally?
Yes, selling items locally on Shopify is possible. However, you must be vigilant about a few things while selling items to your local customers.
Shopify is a powerful hosting platform, especially for local businesses, so you must ensure that your products on the catalog are relevant to local customers.
And most importantly, the items you sell from your Shopify online store must be legal to sell from Shopify. If any products are irrelevant to your local customers or break Shopify terms and conditions, then they can ban your Shopify online store.
Shopify offers several applications from where you can start selling your items locally. As we progress in this article, we will also discover the best application for selling and delivering items locally on Shopify.
Moreover, Shopify now also offers a special tool with which the store admins can track the local delivery orders from their Shopify admin section. Shopify will connect you with your local customers, and they will receive updates on their orders.
There are many more features that Shopify provides to its users through its applications. You can customize the shortest routes for your staff during local delivery and add a built-in driver view to make tracking more fun.
How To Sell Locally On Shopify?
When customers from your delivery zone order an item from your online store on Shopify, they qualify for local delivery on the checkout page.
You can sell your items from your online store on Shopify using Shopify’s built-in applications. Here are some things mentioned below that you will need to take care of while selling your items on Shopify.
1. Decide your Delivery Areas
Before accepting local deliveries, you will have to set up your delivery regions or zones. Your main target should be to learn which areas your staff can travel to and complete the delivery.
To make this a success, you can select a specific city area, or you can even use several postal codes or zip codes of the area to determine your delivery area. Customize your online store on Shopify, which will ask your customers about their delivery zip/postal codes, and then it will determine if the delivery is possible or not.
2. Customize your Local Delivery Rates
When you dropship from your online store, you sometimes have to add delivery charges or charges based on the delivery region. But you must set an optimal charge while selling and delivering items locally on Shopify.
You must be vigilant about the charge you set. Charging very low can disbalance the trust between your customer and you. Charging high delivery rates can stop your customers from ordering any items from your online store on Shopify.
So it becomes crucial to merge with a shipping company that offers delivery at a reasonable price in your locality and is best at its profession.
3. Provide Feedback System
It becomes crucial to provide your customer with quick solutions to their queries and doubts when selling items locally. Your sales representatives should be aware of the processing of the order and how and when it is delivered to the customers.
Your company should be transparent with the policies so that the customers cannot complain later on. Ensure to set up your sales reps or a 24*7 bot messenger from where they can find their solutions.
4. Use a Single Point To Prepare your Orders
When selling your items locally, it is best to arrange all your local orders in one place and then find the optimal route to distribute with effective cost and minimum time.
Once you have checked the mentioned-above things, you have to use a local delivery app from Shopify to sell and deliver your items locally. The application will make it easier for your staff to deliver the items locally.
Can I add a local pickup to Shopify?
Yes, you can add a local pickup to Shopify, where your customers can collect their online stores from any location you choose. Customers can also collect items from your retail store or any curbside.
However, to add a local pickup to Shopify, you must enable this option in your Shopify online store. Also, your store must fulfill a few criteria before enabling your online store on Shopify local pickup.
- Your online store on Shopify should have less than 20 pickup locations.
- Multi-origin Shipping must be enabled, provided your online store has multiple locations for pickup.
- There should be at least one stock inventory at each pickup location.
- It would help if you disabled all the pickup applications you use for your online store on Shopify.
- Each pickup location of your online store must fulfill the online orders of its respective region.
- Ensure that your delivery partner or agent, whoever will make the delivery has access to your Shopify admin section.
- Your fulfillment priority order must meet your business needs.
- Ensure to update your pickup location names so that your customers understand where they can find their online orders.
How does local pickup work on Shopify?
Once you have enabled local pick for your online store, customers can order their products from your online store for local pick up. Local pickup is nothing but the company, or the online store is not responsible for the delivery.
The customers will have to visit the company’s local retail shop, pickup locations/warehouses, or any other locations they choose. Below mentioned is the process of how a local pickup work on Shopify.
- Your staff will first verify the ordered item for its availability. If the ordered item is available, then the staff member or you who have access to your Shopify store admin section needs to update it.
- Once the availability verification is done, Shopify will notify the customer that their order is available and is being/has been processed.
- The company can provide a pickup slip to the staff member responsible for the delivery.
- When the order has been processed, it will require you or any other staff with your Shopify Admin access to handover the item.
- The customer must verify that the ordered item belongs to them, through some OTP or other steps at the pickup location.
- Once the verification is done, the staff responsible for handover needs to update the order status in the Shopify Admin section. The status must be changed from “unfulfilled” to “fulfilled.”
- This status of the order will imply that the order has been delivered. There is no need for further action.
This is how the local pickup in Shopify works. You can add some delivery instructions to make the delivery easier and more comfortable for your customer.
For instance, you can share the pickup locations’ contact numbers. When the customer calls, the staff or the agent will bring their order out.
Such changes to your local pickup can be done from the Managing the Preferences for your Pickup Locations.
How to set up local delivery on Shopify?
Selling your items locally from Shopify online store is not a big deal. You can easily set up your online store to sell your items locally.
Before selling your items and setting up your store for local pickup, you must know that you do not need a retail store to distribute your orders. So, any young entrepreneurs with their stocks can sell items locally using local pickup as their delivery option.
Here is a transcript of the video to set up your local delivery/pickup on Shopify. Ensure to follow the steps and make changes accordingly in your Shopify admin.
- First of all, you have to Add Location to your Shopify Admin. And if you already have locations for your store, ensure they are easy to understand and trackable.
- Click on each location and the box with “Fulfill online orders from the location.” If you do not check this box, pickup will not be available for this location on the order checkout page.
- Ensure that your Fulfilling Priority is up-to-date.
- Ensure that your Inventory is up-to-date. If any item is unavailable or not updated, it will not be available on the checkout page.
- Disable all the pickup applications that you have installed.
Now that your pickup locations are optimized, you will have to enable local pickup/delivery from your Shopify Admin page.
- Visit your Shopify Admin page.
- From here, click on Settings and then Shipping and Delivery.
- You will have to enable local pickup for each location. Click on Manage beside the pickup locations of your store.
- Click on the check box “This location offers local pickup.”
- Now select the expected pickup time from the drop-down menu given below. Ensure that the selected time is enough for your staff to prepare the order for local pickup from your retail store/inventory.
- Add an Order Ready for Pickup notification. This message will be sent to your customers after the time for expected pickup time is over. You can add further pickup information, like the delivery agent’s number, timings, and other relevant details.
- Click on to Save button.
This is all you need to do to set up local delivery on the Shopify store. Once you head back to the Shipping and Delivery settings page, you can find that the changes to your pickup location have been updated.
Any further changes you need to make to your pickup location can be done by clicking on the Manage button beside the pickup location.
FAQs
What is the best Shopify app to sell locally?
Many applications available over the internet can serve your interest in delivering items locally. However, no other application can suit your interest better than Delivery – Pickeasy.
This application, developed by LogBase, is currently one of the best applications for local deliveries on Shopify. The plan for this application starts from $6.99/month, and you can even try their 14-day free trial to understand its systems and work.
In addition, you can try many new features during your free trial period. For example, this application works with the latest themes and can be directly used in Shopify admin.
Some of its features are listed below.
- You can cut off time and make quick deliveries.
- It allows you to set custom delivery rates, which can help maintain a profit margin.
- You can set your preferences for your product-based or service-based deliveries.
- It allows merchants to limit their daily pickups and deliveries so that the store can avoid crowding and deliveries can be done smoothly.
Many reasons make up why you should choose this application over other local delivery applications like Shopify Local Delivery App. The pricing of this local delivery application is also very reasonable.
For instance, Delivery – Pick easy offers four types of plans, out of which any one of them can benefit you. The plans for this application are listed below:
- Starter -$75.99/year
- Smart -$118.99/year
- Advanced – $183/year
- Premium – $269.99/year
With 500+ positive reviews, this application is one of the best that you can reach out to deliver your items locally from your delivery locations.
Final Thoughts
Selling items on Shopify is a lot easier than on any other eCommerce platform. You will tons of features and options to set up your online store and make it a success.
Selling items locally is one of its many advantages. So will you be selling your items to your local customers?
