Sketch Fest 'options' idea.

[ellenmillion]

Up earlier than I'd like - the husband and baby are back in bed, so I'm stealing some programming time.

Fixing a quick item with the new Sketch Fest logins, I am thinking about the perennial sticky issue of international shipping. Prices have recently gone up pretty steeply between most countries; I know I was caught flat-footed when I was expecting to send a card for .85 and was stuck with a several dollar bill. With Sketch Fest, right now there is one price option, and no shipping addition. This caused some squawks at first, but I explained the ridiculous disaster it would try to be to charge shipping when people are from all over the world buying things from all over the world, often together with things from elsewhere in the world. The policy right now is that you include shipping - taking into account the possibility of international shipping. This does make pricing particularly difficult. Is my $3.50 ACEO print going to cost me .45 to ship or $2.55? Will I be shipping this 11 x 14 sketch overseas??

So... I'm thinking about giving each product options. I was actually thinking about this idea a while ago in terms of originals - making the option of buying a sketch as-is, OR buying a to-be-finished version. That functionality would also let an artist give the option of 'shipped within the UK' for a lower price. (Assuming they were shipping from within the UK, in this example.)

Problems with this idea: it might not be clear enough to buyers which option they should choose. Customers can be easy to confuse, and that can decrease the overall number of sales. We don't really want to do that. It also might not be clear to artists who are posting their work for sale how to use the options. The product-adding forms are already pretty complex, and I can EASILY see an artist adding an option but forgetting to mention something critical, like which country this price applies to. The more complex a system is, the more that tends to go wrong, and the more I have to change it manually, which we REALLY don't want. Also, does it trump the prompter's price? Does the prompter's price get options, TOO? That could get dizzying pretty quickly.

What pluses and minuses do YOU see with this idea? Got another clever idea? Please feel free to discuss!

Comments

Shipping Options

[lisa cree (from livejournal.com)]

I would add a flat shipping rate for ACEOs / 4x6 and A4 sketches to be filled in by the artist in their account section to shipping within their country, and shipping internationally.

Maybe it could be done by weight? Some people might get confused though as you said, but 20g being the weight of one sketch, wouldn't be the same as a sketch on canvas board for example. A lot of professional artists would easily have access to how much a package would cost by weight.

That way, when they post an item for sale, the artist can check either one of these options, or make another one if they need to.

There is also combined shipping, because I am sure that there are a lot of people, like myself who have to put the prices of an ACEO up quite a bit to allow for international shipping, and would like to be able to offer shipping discounts to people who buy their art more regularly. Maybe a "combined shipping" box for each format in the artist account would be a good idea?

I would like to be able to offer quick sketches for as little as a dollar sometimes, towards the end of sketchfest when but I am so worried about getting caught over the shipping prices that I can't.

Anyways, my point was, don't link the shipping to each individual item, but to the artist, and let the artist pick which shipping format it would be... a bit like Etsy does.

Thanks for all your hard work Ellen.X

Re: Shipping Options

[duck113.livejournal.com]

I'd have the artists include what country they are in & give them a "yes no" option for "will ship to other countries". Then you could just say "all international purchases add $3 for shipping"

[jenny_evergreen]

I have to admit that I, as a fairly frequent customer, like not having to mess with shipping. I'll cope with changes, but the simpler, the better!

[boo moore (from livejournal.com)]

Is there a way for the site to allow users to "register" where they are in the world? I'm in the U.S., so I would reg there. If I buy something from Lisa, who is in France, and the site knew that from the registration, could it automatically quote me the Int. price, since I am registered in an overseas area? Artists could then set their own shipping via their account, as Lisa suggested, and that way, customers would automatically see the price with shipping for their location, without it being too confusing. That's pretty much what Etsy does, so the seller can set a standard normal and Int. shipping rate, and when a buyer comes along, they'll know what they'll pay for shipping with no hassle or questions.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

If having everyone register their locations is too much, how about having the artist register their location/country so they could just enter a "price shipped locally" and a "price shipped internationally". Then the form for buyers reads "price shipped within the United States (for example)" and "price if shipping is to anywhere else/the rest of the world"

[jenny heidewald (from livejournal.com)]

Tricky, tricky shipping...I try not to think about how much I end up with in the end... It's such a bummer that it's going up, and then you get those Paypal fees on top of that.

I like the two price quotes thing, if someone is buying they have to put in their address anyways (make it so that they have to fill out all the required spots, or the form keeps telling them "Yo, ya forgot to put in some stuff!" I've gotten an incomplete one before), the Coding Magic could figure out what to charge them in the end. :)

[lethea.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest this as well. To further simplify, what about making the artist's location a simple text field rather than trying to match buyer/seller countries? This would allow one to, for instance, set a single shipping rate for "North America" if they wanted. (Buyer would then check a box corresponding to the proper shipping rate.)

Since I'm guessing a lot of people SketchFest in the same medium(s), it might be useful to have fields for "default domestic S&H" and "default international S&H" rather than having to set each individual piece. This may lead to Forgetful Artist Issues every time the post office raises its rates, though.

[nixjim13.livejournal.com]

I just factor it in. Cheaper shipping locally, but then again paying in $US is cheaper locally too. To be blunt, I don't want to work out shipping costs because pretty much everything I sell is international - and that always costs $5 on average

*this ended up under someone's post reply, not the primary post, gah

[marrael.livejournal.com]

I'm in the keep-it-simple camp. I kinda like things the way they are; then again, everything I ship goes overseas, and far!, so I've always priced with that in mind. But even then I sometimes still wind up absorbing more shipping charges than I'd like. Other times I save a bit. Over all, it evens out. Maybe you can let some of us stay with the KISS system? :)

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh man, that is a hard one.

When I used to sell stuff off my website years ago, the only way I could think of to handle the shipping problem was to have the buyer fill in the correct price for shipping on the honor system -- I had a short list of options (add $blah US shipping, $blah international, $blah each additional item) and then they would put in the right cost(s) when they paid. Paypal has an automatic shipping option, but (at the time, anyway; I don't know if it's different now) it didn't allow for variable shipping costs, so I just kept it turned off and had the customer do it manually.

After reading the above responses, though, I hate the idea of adding anything to Sketch Fest that would make it harder or more prohibitive for people to buy art. I'm tempted to say leave it the way it is and let it all even out. Domestic customers would end up paying comparatively more than international customers for the same item, but normally international customers are the ones who get slightly screwed, so this time they'd win for once. And the artist might lose a bit extra on international shipping, but they'd win a bit on domestic shipping. Someone whose customers are almost invariably domestic or international could price accordingly; anyone else will probably find that it balances in the long run.