The intent of combined shipping discounts is to setup rules so that Bonanza can make good decisions about how much it will cost to ship your items when a buyer wants to purchase more than one of your items in the same transaction. Using combined shipping discounts (henceforth, CSD) is a great way to spur buyers on to buy many items from you. And, if you set it up correctly, buyers can do this without any intervention from you.
To set up combined shipping discounts, point your mouse over the "Selling" link in the upper left-hand corner of any page and select "Booth settings" from the drop-down, then click on the "Discounts & coupons" tab.
There are three main types of combined shipping discounts you can setup:
Free Shipping on Orders Totaling a Specified Dollar Amount
This type of discount applies to any shipping option (flat rate, calculated or free). If you enable the checkbox to offer free shipping over a specified dollar amount, Bonanza will apply free shipping for buyers who spend that amount when purchasing items from your booth in one transaction.
Combined Shipping Weights on Items with Calculated Shipping Price
This type of discount is applied when a buyer buys more than one item that was setup to use a combined shipping discount. Note that this discount can only be applied to items that were setup to ship using the same service (i.e., USPS or UPS), so it is highly recommended that you setup all items in your booth to ship with the same service.
If you enable the checkbox to "Combine the weight of items from the same order together when calculating shipping costs" on calculated price shipping items, Bonanza will add together the weights of all items being shipped before having the shipping provider estimate the shipping cost. We use the size of the largest package in the buyer's offer to estimate dimensional weight. So, if a buyer was buying 10 items that all weighed one pound and were in a normal sized package, we would instruct the shipping provider to estimate the cost of shipping a 10 pound, normal sized package.
If this option isn't selected, then each of the items in your offer will have its shipping calculated individually, which is usually far more expensive if a buyer is looking to buy multiple items.
Combined Shipping Discounts on Fixed Price Shipping Items
This type of discount applies to any items that were setup in your booth as shipping at a flat rate. There are two ways you can setup a fixed price shipping discount:
- Add a dollar amount for each additional item. This picks the item that ships for the highest price amongst the items a buyer wants to buy, then each additional item ships at a flat rate. For example, if a buyer is buying two rabbits that would normally ship for $5 and one fawn that would ship for $10, and you setup this CSD to add $1 for each additional item, then the total shipping cost would be $10 ship fawn + (2 rabbits * $1 shipping each) = $12, compared to the shipping price without the discount, which would be $10 ship fawn + (2 rabbits * $5 shipping each) = $20.
- Subtract a dollar amount from each additional item. In the previous example of shipping two rabbits and a fawn with a CSD value of $1, this type of CSD would result in a final price of $10 ship fawn + (2 rabbits * ($5 shipping each - $1 discount each)) = $18. That is, each of the items that would have shipped for $5 ship for $4 instead because you setup each addition item to be discounted by $1.
