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Question: How do you set a fee per-lot for orders under X per lot?
New seller, struggling to figure out the matching options between BL and BO...
On BL, there is an option to set a fee per lot for orders under a given value per lot. So if it is a 50 lot order and $25, that is 50 cents per lot, you can have 5 cents added per lot to cover for that.
Where is that on BO?
On BL, there is an option to set a fee per lot for orders under a given value per lot. So if it is a 50 lot order and $25, that is 50 cents per lot, you can have 5 cents added per lot to cover for that.
Where is that on BO?
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I'm sorry to hear that... it is understandable to keep things simple, however there is a labor cost to pulling large lot count orders with small qty for parts.
We played around with various options over on BL, from 25 cents to 50 cents to $1 as the average lot minimum, until we found the option to remove lot limits but with a fee.
So if an order averages $1 per lot, there is no fee, but if it is below that, it's 5 or 10 cents per lot (or whatever you set).
If someone places a 250 lot order for $50, frankly, it's not worth the time to pull it, that is several hours of work. Raising prices by 10% doesn't address the problem and only hurts sales.
This does, however, partly explain (to me) why BO seems to have higher prices than BL on average. It's a shame, because it seems like... a reasonable option to allow all orders without hard limits.
Is there a way to have a $10 minimum order amount while having a 50 cent average lot minimum?
You do have some options with shipping methods and minimum/maximum order subtotal limits. So you can have a shipping method for orders below $10 that has higher prices.
It's of course just my opinion, I respect that others will disagree, but the ability to allow customers to narrow down their orders to the lowest cost possible if they wish, or to just order whatever they wish and let the chips fall where they may, strikes me as the better option.
The thing is, it's cheaper to fill some orders rather than others. I'm happy to offer those customers a better deal. With flat rate everything, you have to charge more to everyone. For Amazon, sure, casual buyers don't want the complexity, but people buying LEGO parts off BO aren't (IMHO) casual buyers.
Anyway, thank you for the replies and details. It's appreciated either way.
Raising prices 10% doesn't address this, it would add $2.71 which doesn't pay for a 101 lot order pull, and all it does is punish the volume buyers.
I get that you probably aren't changing your mind at this point, however this post is my attempt to get you to reconsider. This sort of order makes no economic sense to pull without a handling fee of some kind. This might not affect hobby sellers, and I respect that, but those selling for a living have to make it work economically.
My goal here is to see BrickOwl grow and become a real competitor to BrickLink, I'd love if 50% of my sales came from here. As it stands, about 7% of my sales are from BO.
The restrictions on setting up boundaries for sanity in orders is one key reason why. I would lower both my prices and my shipping costs on BO if I could.
The goal is to get customers to buy in such a way that they can be avoided, while offering the option to order whatever you want at a cost.
It's similar to how LEGO Pick A Brick charges a handling fee if your order is too small.
The way to make it like pick a brick would be to include a charge in your postage for orders under X value.
At first, i try the minimum lot average at 1$ and received order of $2-3.
I decide it was not profitable and change it to minimum order at $20.
In 5 years ,i had to cancel maybe 6-8 orders that was way too crazy. One was $35 for 330 lots.
I don't think Lawrence can change the setup of the store without massive investment but he will always answer your questions and be there to support you. The benefit outlast the burden.
As part of the Brick Owl terms and conditions,
"Stores must not be unable to fulfil orders, or cancel orders on a regular basis.
Stores must not cancel orders for having low value, or a high lot amount."
Therefore you would need to update your store homepage
To cover the costs of small orders, as mentioned above, you do have some options with shipping methods and minimum/maximum order subtotal limits. So you can have a shipping method for orders below $10 that has higher prices. I understand that depending on your shipping situation, this may be a faff to set up. So if that is the reason you have not set something up, I would suggest adding that as a suggestion in the forum.
That seems to run counter to what you just said, unless I'm not understanding (which is always possible!).
Having one shipping method that applies to $0 orders and another that only applies above $10 is fine
This causes bulk sales to become needlessly expensive and doesn't provide a true reflection of the cost of providing this service. The real cost is in the time to pick each lot, not the total part count. 100 lots of 10 parts each is a FAR longer pull than 10 lots of 100 parts each, yet there is no way to reflect that here.
Your site, you can do what you want, but the ultimate pain is felt by the customers on the site and by the site itself due to reduced revenue. My goal is to have real competition for BL and I'd like to see BO be that, but as it stands, that's not possible in our view because you cannot account for the outlier orders here.
The idea of "no fees, simple ordering" sounds really nice, but that's a business model suited to Amazon, not a LEGO part buying site that has far more complexity than typical ecommerce.
I'm open to discussing with you further in the search for a logical, reasoned discussion, but if you've made up your mind and you're done with the topic, just let me know and I won't bring it up again, annoying you is not my goal.