Overview
Modern Retail aims to provide flexibility for all our integration features, so we can support you no matter how your business works. Since every business is unique, we try to offer options & approaches that can serve all our clients. With that in mind, in this article we'll be discussing different approaches our Local Delivery feature can utilize.
Customer Controlled
The first approach we'll talk about lets your customers control how their order gets delivered, to an extent. Let's look at a checkout example from a client using the customer control approach:
With the customer control approach, Local Delivery appears as an option alongside the other delivery methods, along with the price you set for each (Modern Retail's ShipStation integration is what allows us to display the Shipping: Ground, Shipping: 2nd Day, and Shipping: Next Day pricing). This lets the customer choose if they want local delivery, or an alternative shipping method.
While this does allow the customer the freedom of choice, you're still ultimately in control. Local Delivery will only display as an option if it's available in their area; Modern Retail's technology checks their shipping address against the shipping rules you've set up to see which shipping methods should be offered. If the customer's shipping address is outside of your local delivery range, they won't see local delivery as an option.
Also note that while the above checkout example is what we settled on in one case, the checkout experience is customizable to suit your needs.
Store Controlled
If the above approach doesn't work for you, we have an alternative approach offering you, the client, a greater degree of control. Let's look at another example checkout (also customizable, of course):
Instead of having "Local Delivery" as a specific shipping option, instead "Shipping & Local Delivery" is offered, with a price you can customize. Orders from customers selecting this option will use the customizable shipping rules set up in the Admin Panel, our middleware. These rules will determine whether an item should be shipped (and from which store it should be shipped from), or if it should be locally delivered. All of this occurs in the Modern Retail Admin Panel, and can be easily accessed & monitored by you and your staff.
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to submit a support request.