Introduction
Shipping is essential when you consider non-downloadable items. Handling the expenses on shipping is quite a tricky part when you consider the operational costs of your business. Operating a WooCommerce business is again a hurdle when you consider shipping. Consider that you own a store, which is into selling a multitude of products that are shipped to various locations, then reducing the overall cost in shipping is quite a task. Now to maintain a healthy customer relationship and uphold the business values, you can either opt to tentatively hide WooCommerce shipping methods, that might not suit the customer’s needs or even incur high-cost unnecessarily.
There are plenty of scenarios, wherein you feel the need that hide shipping is essential. At times, when a customer is purchasing from your store, and your store does not offer any kind of shipping to that particular location. Then upon specifying the zip code for the area, you can easily recognize the locations and restrict your shipping options. Moreover, in this way, you are not providing false expectations to your customers and hence you build a strong customer base.
In the same way, if you are into dealing certain shipping requisite products and want to hide the basic shipping options like free shipping, local pick up and flat-rate, then you can do it using the same plugin. In this way again, you ensure your customers are promised with only such shipping options, that are feasible and good for their products.
Why you need WooCommerce Hide Shipping?
Retaining a customer is a cumbersome task, Every business finds their own ways to retain their customers. Businesses find plenty of ways to help their customers and perform intricate settings, to not to lose any customer on mere shipping settings. We have plenty of plugins and add-ons that will help to set up shipping for suiting the business need.
From location-specific fees to any specific shipping options, there are plugins to help. With the WordPress extensions which support and offer exclusive shipping solutions, managing your store would be streamlined.
In certain cases, it is not advisable to ask your customer to pay a huge amount , when the location is just too close to walk. Hence you have to be alert in issuing the prices on shipping. Suppose a customer is located in your own country, then, they might look for cheaper options to receive their products. You cannot charge them the same as that of shipping to a distant location.
Suppose you have a customer in New York and Mexico and your store is located in NewYork. You cannot charge the same shipping rate for both the customers. Moreover, it is not just the distance, that determines the shipping cost. You need to look into various attributes like the order weight and dimension, then the shipping cost is decided.
Most of the customers get confused about what to choose while shipping. In order to help them, it is ideal to list out only those shipping options that are actually benefitting them, rather than all. In this way, there are several optimum solutions on applying hide shipping methods which are explained further.
Benefits of WooCommerce Hide Shipping
It is ideal when you are considering enhancing the customer experience. By hiding the shipping, you can ensure that your customer doesn’t end up choosing the wrong shipping options and then get disappointed. Also, you help to avoid confusion, while choosing the shipping options, as the shipping options will be mostly listed concerning the filters you apply on criteria as mentioned.
Now in order to get this right, WooCommerce is helpless, it needs much more additional functions, this is where you can make use of ELEX Hide WooCommerce Shipping Methods plugin, which, does this job perfectly. The plugin lets you explore a wider range of options to set the hide shipping. For this, the plugin uses two methods: first, it will pick triggers that will act as filters and then choose the method to hide the shipping method when the rules are met.
For setting rules, the plugin gives you a multitude of options to set of rules to enable hide shipping on your WooCommerce store.
Hide WooCommerce Shipping – The Process
To establish hide shipping on your WooCommerce store, you need to follow these processes :
- Setting Filters for Hiding Shipping Methods
- Selecting Shipping Methods for Hiding
Setting Filters for Hiding Shipping Methods
The plugin offers some useful filters, with which you can hide WooCommerce shipping methods. Based on the filters configured, the shipping methods will be hidden in the cart and checkout page.
- Shipping Class: You can select one or more shipping classes that you created in your WooCommerce shipping settings. Or you can even choose to select products with no shipping class as well. Whichever shipping class you add on your store will be y default added to the list.
- Product Category: You can select one or more WooCommerce product categories. When the products in the selected categories are added to the cart, then the shipping methods will be automatically be hidden.
- Order Weight: This value is the total order weight in the cart. When the cart total weight meets one of the following conditions, the selected shipping methods will be hidden –
- >=: Greater than or equal to the weight specified
- <=: Less than or equal to the weight specified
- == : Equal to the weight specified
- ||: Between the minimum and maximum total order weight specified.
- All: For all the products regardless of order weight in the cart.
- Order Subtotal: This is the subtotal of products. When the cart subtotal meets one of the following conditions, the selected shipping methods will be hidden –
- >= – Greater than or equal to the amount provided
- <= – Less than or equal to the amount provided
- == – Equal to the amount provided
- || – Between the minimum and maximum order subtotal amount specified.
- All – For all the products regardless of the order subtotal in the cart.
- Countries: Select one or more countries to hide the shipping methods. Once you select countries that have states, the States field will appear to the chosen desired states.
- Postal Code: To hide shipping methods, enter one or more postal/zip codes separated by commas,
- Product SKU: Enter one or more product SKUs separated by commas to hide shipping methods. If you are looking to hide shipping methods for individual products, this is the most ideal method to use.
- Shipping Methods: You can use existing WooCommerce default as well as premium shipping methods to hide other shipping methods. Once you activate premium shipping plugins, the shipping method ID will be automatically added to this list.
- Shipping Options: If you want to filter a specific service from your premium shipping method(s), you can add the HTML value of the desired shipping service. You can add multiple services by separating them with commas.
- WordPress User Roles: Select the desired WordPress User Roles from whom you want to hide shipping methods. You can select one or more user roles.
Hiding the Shipping Methods to Hide
- Shipping Methods: Use this to select the desired shipping methods to hide. The shipping method IDs – flat_rate, free_shipping, and local_pickup for WooCommerce default shipping methods are usually listed by default. If you have activated other premium shipping plugins for USPS Shipping, EasyPost, DHL Shipping, and so on, the shipping method ID will be listed here automatically.
- Shipping Options: If you want to hide a specific service from your premium shipping method, then you can add HTML value of the desired shipping service. You can add multiple services by separating them with commas in here.
- Rule Name: Enter a suitable rule name to identify each rule distinctively for further reference.
Manage Rules
In here, you can manage the rules you created for the store.
Hide WooCommerce shipping methods using certain conditions
Case 1 :
Suppose, you want to set hide flat-rate shipping when free shipping is available. Here you can see, all the shipping options in the cart:
Now let us set the settings :
Then in the second tab, you need to find the shipping methods to hide :
Once the filter settings are set, then you need to specify which shipping methods to be hidden. And, you have already set up all three shipping methods on the shipping settings for the zone.
In here, suppose we decide to hide the flat-rate shipping method and then set the rule. Then on your cart, you can see that:
In this way, you can promote the eStore by offering free shipping on products. With the above rule, you can simply hide away the flat-rate shipping and help the customer by simplifying the shipping method choices. Moreover, customers are happier when they get a free shipping offer.
Hide Shipping Methods using Filters
The plugin offers, various methods to hide shipping based on various filters like :
- WooCommerce Shipping Classes
WooCommerce lets you add several shipping classes, based on the weight or item-specific etc. With WooCommerce Shipping, you can group products from a similar category. You can create rules based on the WooCommerce shipping classes, to hide shipping specifically,to certain shipping classes. Like for example, you can create a hide shipping for bulky products on your store and for lightweight items another set of rules and shipping services. - WooCommerce Product Categories
WooCommerce support several product categories, that helps to distinguish products based on their brand or other details. Creating shipping based on product categories helps to identify shipping options that can include certain shipping methods. - Order weight
Order weight is also an important factor to consider while shipping. Most of the packaging options are decided upon the weight of the ordered item. Like for example, if the product weight is more, then the packaging options will differ, hence the shipping too. - Order subtotal
The total amount of the products in cart is also an integral factor to decide upon shipping options. - Destination countries and their states
Destinations matters in shipping. Some countries do not support, all kind of shipping, hence it is important to ensure that certain shipping options ae not displayed. - SKU
- Other shipping methods available.
- Shipping options or services
- WordPress User Roles
All these filters can be used extensively and WooCommerce hide shipping rules can be formulated.
Hide WooCommerce Default Shipping methods
Like the above example, you can hide a flat rate shipping method, using the rule for any items in the free shipping category. Also, you can create the rule for other shipping methods like hide Free shipping when flat-rate options are available etc.
Hide WooCommerce Premium Shipping methods
When you already have some specific popular premium shipping carriers like DHL, UPS, USPS, Australia Post etc, then you can also include them in the list of shipping methods.
Hide Shipping Methods based on Shipping Classes
You can create rules, based on shipping classes which you have already set in your Shipping settings.
You can also opt more than one shipping classes, depending on your business choices.
WooCommerce Hide Shipping Methods based on Product Category
You can also set rules based on the product category.
Hide Shipping Rule based on Order Weight
Here the plugin lets you set rules based on the order weight in total in the cart. The units measured is the same, you use in your WooCommerce products. On setting the rules, when the conditions are met, then the rule is applied and the particular shipping is hidden from the cart. Here are the rules :
- Greater than or equal to the specified weight
- Less than or equal to the specified weight
- Equal to the specified weight
- Between the specified minimum and maximum total order weight
Hide Shipping based on Order Subtotal
You can also set, hide shipping rules based on the Order Total, and the conditions are :
- Greater than or equal to the specified amount
- Less than or equal to the specified amount
- Equal to the specified amount
- Between the specified minimum and maximum order subtotal amount
Once these conditions are set and then matched to the criteria, the shipping will be hidden.
Hide WooCommerce Shipping Methods Based on Destination Countries
Using the plugin you can set rules to hide shipping methods based on the destination. This is advantageous to any business that serves global customers. The plugin lets you select multiple countries and their respective states in the Country and State fields.
Hide Shipping Methods based on Postal/Zip Code
When you want to restrict shipping options, concerning the Postal codes or zip codes, then, you can also set it here using the plugin. Suppose you want to free shipping and flat-rate when local-pick up can be a feasible option. You can set it to specific zip codes which helps to display the shipping options for a specific area.
Hide Shipping Methods based on SKU
Only those SKU numbers , owning products will have the hide shipping rule implemented, the rest will be working the same way.
Hide Shipping Methods, to Shipping options
If you have multiple shipping carriers integrated with your store, them can hide shipping methods based on the shipping options.
The above screenshot shows how to add shipping options when you have EASY POST shipping plugin activated on your WooCommerce store and you want to hide the shipping method EasyPost Library Mail and Priority to be hidden from the shipping options.
Hide Shipping Methods based on User Roles
As WordPress supports user roles, we can also set rules based on WordPress User Roles too. One or more user-roles can also be selected.
Upon doing this, whenever the user roles selected are logged in, then the hide shipping rules applicable to that particular user is effectively placed on the store. Whereas the rest of the users will not be affected by the hide shipping rules.
Compatibility with other Premium Shiping plugins
The ELEX WooCommerce hide shipping plugins is compatible with major premium plugins like :
- ELEX WooCommerce DHL Plugin
- ELEX WooCommerce EasyPost Plugin (UPS, FedEx and USPS)
- ELEX WooCommmerce Australia Post Plugin
- ELE WooCommerce USPS Plugin
You can easily hide the respective services offered by the Premium shipping plugin, using the WooCommerce hide shipping plugin.
Let us look out how to add the premium services to the hide shipping plugin using the HTML.
Suppose you have the EasyPost plugin installed on your WooCommerce store, then, see how the HTML value is fetched. In the cart, select the shipping service you want to hide in the cart page., by clicking inspect and fetching the HTML value of it.
Once the value is obtained :
Then paste the value in the Shipping options field in the Hide Shipping rule creation and create the rule.
Examples :
Suppose you want to hide local Shipping for orders weighing between 5 and 10 oz. Then you can set the conditions likes:
Then when the order weight is between the givens range of 5 and 10, with free shipping option, hide the flat-rate option.
To Conclude :
With Hide shipping, various restrictions and rules can be followed methodologically. With proper rule structuring, you can easily run a store successfully, by ensuring better customer satisfaction.
