Archive for January, 2012

UPS Negotiated Rates in Magento

Posted by: Karen Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Setting up XML Rates

In Magento there are 2 choices around displaying UPS Rates:

  • CGI – No requirement for user details, just displays standard rates. EASY but rubbish
  • XML – Need a login, password XML Access Key. Can display negotiated rates. HARD but accurate

Basically the CGI is good for playing around, but when you go live you want the XML rates. There is a lot more going on, and if your store is outside the States then you can’t live without.

To get setup for XML Rates is not straightforward.  You need to go to their Developer Kit page, register, login, and request an access key.

With a bit of luck at some point you will get an email containing you XML Access Key.  So in total you should have a UPS Login, Password, and Access Key.
In Magento enter your UPS login details.
Make sure you highlight all the allowed methods you need – this is a common mistake and if you don’t select some you won’t see any rates.
If you aren’t running SSL you might also want to switch to developer mode in the UPS shipping config, then switch to live afterwards.
All being well you should now see rates on the frontend in Magento.

Negotiated Rates

So now you have XML Rates. But what about those rates you obtained from your UPS representative, how do you display them?  Well, for some sites you don’t want to display the negotiated rates, as you don’t want to pass the savings onto your customer. But for others keeping the shipping costs as low as possible is a key part of your competitiveness in the market, and you need those negotiated rates.
In theory you should be able to just switch on negotiated rates in admin and add in your shipper number you obtained from your rep.
But, and here is the catch, we have seen a number of customers that do this and negotiated rates are not returned.
It turns out that in order to switch on Negotiated Rates you must be authenticated on the UPS site. This can be done manually by ringing UPS, or via the My UPS, under ‘Maintain Your UPS Account’.
Bingo!

Product Matrix Tooltip Feature

Posted by: Josh Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Product Matrix is one of our most popular extensions, it is constantly evolving and we are always trying to find new ways of improving it. Recently a client of ours mentioned that he would like to display a Tooltip next to his delivery methods giving customers more information about the delivery method. We thought this was a great idea and decided to add the feature to Product Matrix.

I was lucky enough to get the job of implementing the Tooltip feature, as a fairly new member of the team I was excited to be working on Product Matrix.

 

Tooltip

 

When the Tooltip is active it will appear next to the delivery methods for which you have specified a Tooltip caption. The Tooltip caption can be set up in your Product Matrix CSV file, simply enter your Tooltip caption under the notes column. Any delivery method with a star in the notes column will not have a Tooltip displayed to your customers at checkout.

You can take a look at Product Matrix by going to webshopapps.com

 

Tracking with Royal Mail

Posted by: Josh Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Anyone using Royal Mail tracking links lately will have noticed that when they click on the link, it redircts to a generic tracking page and doesn’t carry accross the tracking number which isn’t great for your customers.

This is because Royal Mail have quietly changed the tracking link and format you need to use. The new link is below in the correct format for our Generic Tracker extension:

 

 

 

 

http://track2.royalmail.com/portal/rm/track?trackNumber=#TRACKNUM#

If you’ve not had a chance to take a look at our tracker yet, now is a prime time. It’s just £35 and makes tracking a lot easier for your customers by adding a tracking link to the shipment email and in the customers my account area for any carrier you want to use that supports tracking links with embedded tracking numbers.

http://www.webshopapps.com/generic-tracker-magento.html