Plugin: Dimension Pricing – A new dimension of shopping!

Have you ever got lost in the dimensions and other measurements when buying, i.e. ceramic tiles on the webshop? How many tiles do I need for 76 m² and what are the actual shipping costs? What about cut-to-size products? 

We are here to tell you that there is a solution to these problems! A new dimension of shopping has arrived in the form of Dimension Pricing Plugin.

What exactly does the Dimension Pricing Plugin and how does it make my shopping and life easier?

Exactly what the name says: it calculates the price of the purchased products according to their dimensions. You don't have to worry about what dimensions it takes into account, it calculates everything automatically, and the magic formula is the one that makes any complicated shopping simpler.

Dimension Pricing Plugin primarily allows the online store owner to expand the offer of products that can be sold, not by piece, but by dimensions. The best examples are so-called cut-to-size products, i.e. products for which the customer needs to enter wanted dimensions, for example, width and length. The Dimension Pricing Plugin then calculates the price of the product based on the customer's input. 

It also allows custom cost of shipping calculation of purchases on, for example, a pallet or container, methods that have not yet been present in the standard version of Smartstore webshop.

This example is only a small part of the functionality that the Dimension Pricing Plugin offers.

The plugin has many options. It combines dimensions with a custom mathematical formula and combines them into a whole. That makes it a powerful tool for online store owners which covers a large number of use cases when dimensions of the product are relevant for product sale.

The possibilities of using the plugin for many different purposes are nearly endless. It is up to the store owner to customize it to his own needs. We will mention some of them with examples, and the rest is left to the store owner customization.

Show me the examples for dimension pricing

This example shows a so-called cut-to-size product, a cover mat for swimming pools made of plastic. Of course, every pool is different. So the customer can buy that product by simply entering its dimensions (width and height). You can notice that the calculated area size and quantity are displayed under the dimension input controls.

The price of the product is 164,95 € (per m²). If the customer specifies the desired width and height in centimeters (in this case 250 cm x 150 cm), the area of the desired slat, in this example 3.75 m², will be calculated automatically.

Since the quantity can only be a whole number, the plugin automatically rounds to the next whole number, i.e. 4. The price is then calculated accordingly (4 x 164,95 € = 659,80 €). Under the Add to cart button, a message is displayed informing the customer that he cannot change the quantity in the cart.

What about unit calculation?

When buying tiles, customers buy tiles for a certain area (usually in m²). For easier orientation the plugin shows the user how much 1 package m² contains. The product has fixed width and height (59.5 x 59.5 cm), which are used to calculate the area. In addition to quantity, the plugin adds another field for the area (in this case 1 package = 0.35 m²). The customer can now easily learn which area (and consequently which quantity) to order. If the field quantity changes, the field area is changed and vice versa. Also, the total price of the ordered quantity is automatically calculated and displayed.

The image below shows an example similar to the previous one, except that it calculates the bag capacity volume in m3 (instead of area).

The peculiarity of this example is that different dimensions are used for the capacity of the bag and for shipping. The plugin shows to the user the capacity of the bag, as well as the dimensions during delivery.

Dimensions in the Cart and Mini Cart

Additional product information is added to the cart item info (in regular cart as well as in the mini-cart).

• If it is a cut-to-size product, the custom dimensions chosen by the customer are also displayed and the customer can't change the quantity since the quantity is calculated through the dimension formula, of which he will be notified with the appropriate message.

• Changing the quantity of products that aren't cut-to-size products updates the volume/area size

This information is displayed analogously on the Checkout > Confirm screen, as well as on the order and in the admin area for orders placed to the store admin.

How do shipping calculations fit into that story?

The plugin also contains a "Shipping by Dimension and Weight" shipping calculation method. If it is active, for all products ordered by the user, the delivery price is calculated in the way defined in the calculation method.

It allows the customer to define a custom delivery type (e.g. pallet shipping or container shipping) and units for each delivery type (e.g. ¼ pallet or 1⁄2 pallet) with specific dimension and weight limits.

For each defined delivery type it is possible to specify a price for the delivery method, country, store, even zip code.

The plugin takes even care of the calculation of the optimal placement of the packages on the unit and the calculation of the delivery price, depending on the user's shipping address.

The price is displayed to the user in the Checkout> Shipping section, only for the shipping methods for which we have defined the price. There is also an option to hide methods for which no price has been defined.

L-shaped products

What if I have products that are not of a regular (cuboid) shape and I want to send them on a pallet?

No worries, we thought of that too. It is possible to combine several packages that are not of the regular shape and thus save space on the pallet.

The example in the picture is only special in that it shows an L-shaped product that is optimally packed on a pallet of 2 items in a set (to form a cuboid).

This can be defined in the part of the plugin dedicated to the combination of multiple products for shipping. When the product is placed in a 2D perspective, the 2 products can be combined as shown in the figure on the right. We added dimension "A" and we see from the image that the combined width of the 2 combined products is actually width + A. It is this formula that we write in the plugin and voila, we optimized the cost of delivery to the user.

Offer your products by size!

The Dimension Pricing Plugin brings a whole new dimension to online shopping primarily because of its flexibility. It is a powerful and customizable tool because it uses custom formulas and options and thus allows numerous combinations regardless of the product that the seller offers or the buyer buys.

These important features allow the online store owner to explore and combine the functionality of the plugin in ways that the creator did not even think about when creating it.

When integrated in your online store, the Dimension Pricing Plugin will definitely become a very useful and helpful tool for store owners as well as for customers.

Please contact Smartstore for details.

Tutorial-Video