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How do I come up with one reasonable shipping rate schedule for non-homogeneous products in my website?

I started a website that I sell various products in different shapes and weights. I am trying to come up with a reasonable shipping rate schedule without over/under charging customers. My website is set up to calculate finalized shipping rate at checkout. I thought about using USPS flat rate boxes and envelopes, but they aren't suitable for all of my products, as some of my products are sort of light-weight but are too bulky to fit into USPS flat rate box, others are too small that I will be over charging if I use flat rate envelope for those. I also considered determining shipping rate by the purchase dollar but this doesn't seem to work either. Because it will under-estimate shipping costs if the products purchased were discounted. Also, some of my products are indeed light weight/small but high-end priced - therefore over charging shipping fees. I wish I could come up with different shipping rate schedule for each product category but the current system doesn't allow me do to so.

Public Comments

1. You have started the right way. See if you can categorize the items into 4 different categories. Then within the category do a weighted average. This means that if you are likely to ship 5 items that cost $10 and 5 items that cost $1 your weighted average is 5 x 10 + 5 x1 = 55 divided by the number of items 10 = $5.50 per item. I would then put a margin of 20% on top of the calculation. Therefore in the example, I would be putting a shipping cost of $7.70 per item.