Getting Started with Order Delivery

This article will guide you through the first steps with the Order Delivery extension.

Requirements

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The minimum requirements are the following:

• WooCommerce 3.7+
• PHP 5.6+

Installation

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1. Download the .zip file from your WooCommerce account.
2. Go to: WordPress Admin > Plugins > Add New and Upload Plugin and choose the .zip file you downloaded.
3. Click on Install Now and then Activate the extension.

More information at Install and Activate Plugins/Extensions.

Usage

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When a customer proceeds to the checkout, Order Delivery calculates the delivery date for the current order by considering factors like:

• the selected shipping method, 
• the available delivery dates, 
• how many orders have already been placed,
• and more.

Then, it displays a new section in the checkout form with the delivery details:

Alternatively, it allows the customer to choose a delivery date and a time frame:

These delivery details are displayed in multiple locations of the store to notify both the merchant (Admin views, edit-order screens) and the customer (emails, My Account page).

Order Delivery is fully compatible with the WooCommerce Checkout block and the classic editor and will automatically identify which options are used by your shop and make the needed adjustments.

The delivery workflow

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To assign the proper delivery details to an order, or allow a customer to choose a date whose delivery can be accomplished on time, Order Delivery calculates and validates all the possible dates for delivery based on the conditions configured for your shop.

From the time the order is placed until it’s delivered to the customer, our extension defines different stages the order must reach, and for each of them, different settings and variables are considered for the calculations.

Estimating when the order will reach each stage is key to providing realistic delivery details. All of this is calculated in real-time for each customer and for every change made to the checkout form.

Let’s go through the different stages:

Order received

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The customer completed the purchase, and we received a New Order notification. The order was created in our WooCommerce store, and it’s time to prepare the products to ship them.

In this stage, the order has a status of Processing or On-hold, depending on the payment gateway.

Order Delivery estimates how much time it takes you to process the order, depending on whether the order was received before or after the cut-off time, it’s a working date, etc.

Some settings used for the calculations in this stage are the Minimum Working Days and Shipping Days.

The result of these calculations is the Shipping date, which is the date you give the order to your shipping carrier.

If the products don’t need to be processed, then this step can be quite fast, even instant, if all factors are favorable.

Order shipped

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With the product in the hands of your shipping carrier, the order’s status changes to Completed. There is nothing more to do with the order on your end.

The time it takes for the customer to receive the order depends on the shipping address, the selected shipping method, the days of the week the shipping carrier works, etc.

At this stage, our extension utilizes settings like Delivery ranges and Delivery days to calculate the Delivery Date. That’s the first available date the customer can receive the order.

Order delivered

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It’s the delivery date, and the customer received the order on time. Yay!

As you can see, Order Delivery makes all these estimations during checkout as if the purchase was made at that moment and anticipates when the order will reach the stages described above to offer realistic delivery details for that order.

But what happens if the customer doesn’t select the first available delivery date? Don’t worry. Only dates whose delivery can be accomplished are allowed to be selected in the date picker.

Once the customer selects a delivery date and completes the purchase, our extension automatically calculates the shipping date based on the selected delivery date, allowing you to prioritize your orders for better processing.

This is the normal workflow for delivering an order. But there are cases where there will be a delay with the delivery, the package being lost, etc. In such unpredictable situations, Order Delivery provides you with the tools to manage them.

The delivery details are included in the emails sent to the customer when the order status changes, and depending on your store’s configuration, your customers might also be able to review these details on the My Account page.

As the store manager, you can edit the delivery details of an order at any time to adapt them to the current scenario, and also send a note to the customer explaining the reasons for the change. This way, the customer will be notified about the new delivery details, avoiding any surprises.

Conclusion

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Providing precise delivery details to your orders is a complex feature, and Order Delivery gives you the opportunity to offer it to your customers in an elegant and easy-to-use way. It’s also compatible with WooCommerce blocks, shortcodes, and alternative checkout templates like CheckoutWC.

Does Order Delivery not work as expected for your online shop? Feel free to contact us, and we’re happy to help!

Next Steps

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Now that we have seen how our extension works, it’s time to set it up to cover the needs of your store.

More information

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Do you have more questions? You can click here to return to the Order Delivery for WooCommerce introduction table of contents.

Do you have any questions or feedback you’d like to share with us? We’d love to hear from you, so don’t hesitate to reach out to our team.