I've put together a webapp where users can list their articles for sale with a price and the payment is done via paypal. Now caluclating the price for the payment won't really work if there is shipping cost involved and I don't have a good method for adding the shipping. I've implemented usecases for adding and listing an article and also buying the article and paying via Paypal which works, but I don't know how to do with the shipment since the seller does not know who the buyer is when listing the item. Do you have any suggestions how I can improve the solution?
-
1How would you know where to ship the product if you don't know the buyer? Of course it still works. You gather the details you need to deliver the goods or your service and use Paypal only for the payment so the buyer doesn't have to divulge his credit card or other financial information to you.– Marjan VenemaJun 23, 2013 at 10:24
-
I suppose I can use an interface of some kind to let the user set his or her shipping to different countries and store the users shipping preferences even though the buyer is not known. That might work.– Niklas RosencrantzJun 23, 2013 at 21:04
-
1Yes, this isn't a new problem. That said, you really need to work with the sellers on this. Often shipping is fairly compartmentalized in terms of prices. Ie, shipping to the entire continental US is typically a flat rate. If you have to deal with a lot of international shipping, however, I think your only solution is to indeed make sure your sellers populate that data themselves.– DA01Jun 23, 2013 at 21:35
1 Answer
See how Ebay solves this task:
It is byuer who selects shipping options. In most cases only country is required. This dialog could be accessible with Calculate
link inside shipping cost area. At the same time don't leave the shipping cost area blank, set the shipping cost for the primary or most probable country.