Setting up local delivery in your Online Store

You can offer local delivery to your nearby customers. Local delivery often has price and delivery speed advantages over shipping. In addition to that, local delivery helps create a personalized brand experience. Customers who shop locally appreciate the personal experience and local delivery is a cost-effective way to do that.

You can deliver goods yourself or use a local delivery service. You can make it free or charge a delivery fee. You can offer free delivery on orders exceeding a certain amount and/or placed on certain days and times.

To specify your local area, you can use zip/postal codes. If you have different delivery rates, just set up several local delivery options, each with its own fee and delivery area.

To set up local delivery in your online store:

From your Online Store dashboard, go to Shipping & Pickup.
Scroll down to Add a new shipping or delivery method area, click on Local delivery and then click + Add Delivery:
Depending on how you want to charge for delivery, pick one of the following options, and set it up:

Free delivery: choose this option if you want to offer free delivery to your local customers.
Conditional free delivery: choose this option if you want to offer free delivery only to those local customers whose orders exceed a certain amount, e.g. for orders over $100.
Flat rate: choose this option if you want to charge a fixed sum for delivering orders to your local customers.
Custom rates: Use this option if you need to charge different delivery fees for orders within certain weight or subtotal ranges, e.g. $15 delivery of orders over 3kg and a lower delivery fee for lightweight orders.

After choosing the delivery option, name it, or keep the suggested name.

Make sure to change the delivery option name since this is how the delivery method will appear to your customers at the checkout.

Define the delivery zone

If you deliver fresh food and want to sell only to customers from your neighborhood to keep the food warm, you can specify your delivery zone. Decide on the delivery zone depending on how far you can travel and deliver orders.

If a customer’s address is not within the designated area, this customer cannot place orders using this delivery option.

To specify the area where you deliver, do the following:

Go to Shipping & Pickup in your Online Store dashboard.
Scroll down to the Local Delivery and click + Add delivery.
Choose the new local delivery method. In the new delivery method settings area, expand the tab Delivery zone. Now you can set up your delivery zone.

Click Advanced settings and then Create a new zone:
In the Destination zones window, specify the country, region, or add a precise postal/ZIP code for the areas that you serve with local delivery:
Go back to Shipping & Pickup, then to Local Delivery and Add Delivery. Depending on your business needs, choose the local delivery method, for example, Free Delivery. You can choose any delivery method, depending on your business goals.
In the delivery setup menu, expand the Delivery zone menu, and click Advanced settings. Choose the appropriate delivery zone from the drop-down menu:

Click Save & Finish at the bottom of the area.

Allow customers to choose a delivery date and time

If you want to allow customers to choose the delivery time at checkout, turn on the Ask for delivery date and time in the delivery method settings area.

You can also disallow placing orders with fixed-time local delivery at a certain period of time, for example, during the night or weekends.

Note: Keep this option turned off if you don’t want your customers to choose the date or time for the delivery.

Offer local delivery only for orders exceeding a certain amount

You may choose to offer free or low-cost local delivery only for orders exceeding a certain amount to keep your business profitable. You can limit delivery availability by order subtotal and specify the minimum order subtotal.

To offer local delivery for orders over a certain amount:

From your Online Store dashboard, go to Shipping & Pickup. Scroll down to Local delivery and click + Add delivery.
In the New Local Delivery Method window, go to Conditional Free Delivery and click Set Up Conditions:
Enter the name for this delivery option. Click Add description for customers and describe this delivery option. Customers will see this information at checkout. You can include your delivery condition or delivery time. Example: Free delivery in Wollerau on orders over $30.
Add the values that enable free delivery, for example, on orders over $31 and $3 delivery for orders with a total amount less than $30:

Click Add Row and then Save.

Tip: When you are ready to deliver a purchase to a customer, you can mark their order as Out for Delivery so they receive an email notification about it. Once the order has been received by the customer, you can change the order status to Delivered for your internal records.

Optional: You can automatically inform your customers about your delivery condition at checkout and thus encourage them to order more to be eligible for this delivery option. For this, click Limit availability by order subtotal and specify the minimum order subtotal, for example, $30.

This way, if the order amount is less than $30, this delivery option will still appear at checkout but will be greyed out until the customer adds more products to the cart and reaches the required minimum subtotal.

You can also set up a free delivery option to encourage your customers to buy more.

Useful tips

To charge different delivery fees depending on the distance from your store, you can add several delivery options in your store, each with its own rate and zone. Complete the steps outlined in this tutorial as many times as required for as many delivery options as you need.
If you want to deliver orders for free to the customers in your local area and offer a $5 delivery for customers from more distant areas, you need to set up one delivery option as Free Delivery and another delivery option as a Flat Rate Delivery.
During the local delivery setup, make sure to create a separate delivery zone for every delivery option so these settings do not overlap with each other. If the zones overlap, i.e customer’s address is in both zones, both delivery options will show up at checkout for the customer’s choice. This may create unnecessary confusion for the customer.
Consider taking a screenshot of your delivery area(s) and adding the images to the Delivery page on your website where you describe your shipping/delivery/pickup policies. This way, your customers will see the delivery areas clearly before completing the checkout.

Delivering from multiple locations

If you have two restaurant locations and want to prepare and deliver food from the location that is nearest to your customer’s address, you can create two delivery options with different names using these instructions:

Sett up two local delivery methods and name them distinctively.
Assign different delivery areas using a ZIP/postal code for each option. This way, during the checkout, customers will see corresponding delivery methods.
When you receive an order, you will see the chosen delivery method in the order details. You will know which location should prepare the order and send it to the customer.

Managing local orders

You can always check the information about the delivery date and time picked by the customer in the order list at My Sales > Orders in your Online Store admin and the New Order email notification.

The delivery time selected by your customer is also available in their order details.

If you have many orders with the Local delivery option, you can search them by delivery date and time to clearly see which orders should be fulfilled first.