How to Set Up Product Shipping Profiles

Updated on 21 July 2023
9 min read

Understanding Product Shipping Profiles

Product Shipping Profiles is a sub-section of the Shipping Profiles beta feature. It’s an optional tool that can be used to set unique rates for specific items that need to ship separately from the majority of your products that use the default rates.

Default shipping rates must be set in the main Shipping Profile settings before you can add Product Shipping Profiles. The default rates will be applied to all products in your shop, including any new products you add. Once your default shipping rates are set, you can opt to use Product Shipping Profiles to override your default rates for any specific items in your shop that will need to ship in separate packages.

Need help determining your shipping rates? Use our How to Set Up Shipping guide for more information on calculating shipping rates.

An example for when to use Product Shipping Profiles

If you sell t-shirts, mugs, and posters, and t-shirts and mugs can ship together in a box, you would set your default rates to charge the appropriate shipping fee for those items. But if posters must ship in tubes, you can use Product Shipping Profiles to set a different rate to account for posters shipping separately in a different type of container. This means that customers that order a mug and a poster would pay shipping for both a box and a tube.

⚠️ Product Shipping Profiles are separate from Product-level Shipping settings. To set a unique rate for each product in your shop, follow the steps in our Product-level Shipping guide. Keep in mind that enabling Shipping Profiles will hide Product-level Shipping rates.

Create Product Shipping Profiles

You can use our Shipping Profiles guide to set your default shipping rates first. Then once you have at least one default rate, you can use the steps below to create any override rates in the Product Shipping Profile section.

After creating an override rate, you will need to assign that Product Shipping Profile to the applicable product or product variants within the individual product’s settings. Find for Web, iOS, and Android that will walk you through adding override rates and assigning those to products.

💡 When naming your Product Shipping Profiles, be descriptive rather than using the generic “Product Shipping Profile 1” that the system auto-assigns. Something like “Posters” or “Framed Prints” will help ensure that you’re assigning the correct products or variants to their corresponding Product Shipping Profile. And those names will be visible to the customer on the checkout page, so be clear and concise when naming your Product Shipping Profiles.

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Steps

Web
IOS
Android

Make sure you’ve added your default Shipping Profile rates before creating Product Shipping Profiles for items that must ship separately.
The Shipping Profiles tool must be enabled in order for shipping fees to appear at checkout. Only customers in the areas you set Shipping Profiles for will be able to purchase from your store. (no shipping settings = $0 shipping worldwide)

To Create a Product Shipping Profile:

Log in at my.bigcartel.com.
Go to the Account section.
Under the Shipping Profiles section, click Edit your shipping.
Under Product shipping profiles, click Add product shipping profile.
Click in the Name field to edit the example profile name, and enter a name specific to the product it’s for.
Click + under Shipping rates.
Under Add shipping profile, select a country, region, or zone
Click on each of the default Shipping Methods provided to edit the Name, Description, and rates, or to delete that method entirely.
Click Save.

To create additional Product Shipping Profiles for different regions or zones click Add shipping profile again and walk through the previous steps to create another Product Shipping Profile. To edit an existing Product Shipping Profile, select it from your list of profiles to open it up for editing.

To assign Product Shipping Profiles to a product or product variant:

Head to the Products tab.
Select the item that must ship for the Product Shipping Profile rate
To assign this override rate to the entire product, scroll to the Shipping Profile field and select the new override rate from the dropdown menu.
To only assign this override to a specific variant, scroll to the Variants section. Select the variant you want to edit, and choose the correct Product Shipping Profile from that dropdown menu.
Click Save.

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