Running an online store seems like a privilege because it lets you operate without a proper brick-and-mortar shop and boost earning with surcharges. However, building powerful online stores is not a very easy task either. If not as much as offline shops, online stores still cost a lot in the beginning. To keep a WooCommerce store run conveniently, a WooCommerce store owner should think of applying reasonable surcharges on customers.
Here, we are not talking about applying heavy unnecessary costs in order to raise funds for online stores. Instead, our focus is on helping you reduce your operational cost by letting customers pay for your as well as third-party services wherever applicable.
What Service Fees or Surcharges Might be there in Online Stores?
A feature-rich WooCommerce store with all needed functionalities as per your business setup is what you need to run an online business successfully. It requires having a reliable set of shipping methods, payment gateways, products, categories, and so on.
Besides that, you might also want to provide services related to the product packaging (e.g. gift wrapping) or product customization.
Given you need to run your store for a long time and earn a profit too, all these services cannot be provided for free to your customers all the time. Here are a few types of fees that you can charge from your store buyers:
Transaction or Payment Gateway Surcharge
There are various kinds of payment gateways popular in different regions. Many of them charge a significant amount of fee (up to 3 percent of the transaction amount in most cases) for eCommerce purchases. If such fees also apply to your customers, you must charge it as a payment gateway surcharge. Make sure to clearly tell your customers on the checkout page before you deduct it.
Sensitive Product Packaging Surcharge
Glass and many home or electric appliances need different packaging than regular goods. It not only requires employing experts but buying costly packaging material and investing more time in it. So, it is reasonable to apply a sensitive product packaging surcharge on your buyers. What do you say?!
Special Packaging Surcharge in WooCommerce
Providing services for gift-wrapping or special gift boxes during your festival season can increase your sales. For such services, people won’t mind paying extra. And just as brick-and-mortar shops charge for gift-packing, you also can.
Extra Fees for Faster Delivery
For emergency conditions, customers would wish if you had an express delivery feature if it costs a bit extra. Similarly, for products like cakes and eatables, people prefer express delivery in an hour. Why not fulfill their wish by charging a bit from customers to keep your operations unaffected?
Product Customization Surcharges
It’s a trending business idea to customize your products, especially decor and gift items. People like to add their initials, pictures, or names to products they add to their houses. If your store has items that can be customized, why not start providing product customization services? It will surely boost your sales. And to compensate for customized efforts, you can apply extra fees on buyers. They will be more than happy to pay for it, provided they like your offered product and services!
Shipping Fee/Surcharge
Your business may bear the shipping cost for high-value orders or when the distance is little. However, this operation cannot be kept free for all customers and orders. So, you may also add shipping fees as extra fees for your online store.
While Advanced Flat Rate Shipping Fee Plugin can be used for specialized shipping fee-related needs, for a less complex store, you may use the Extra Fees Plugin for this.
How to Make your Customers Pay Extra Fees/Service Fees for Online Shopping?
After reading the previous section, you must be clear about the surcharges that you might have to charge for your services in your eCommerce store. Now, in this section, we are going to tell you how to charge service fees or extra fees in your WooCommerce store.
Here are the steps:
- Download this plugin and install it on your WooCommerce store.
Extra Fees Plugin for WooCommerce is your full-fledged option for enabling your store with the ability to charge extra fees. You can add fixed price or percentage-based additional costs for various conditions related to location, payment gateway, payment method, shipping method, shipping class, user role, category, product, variable product, etc.
- Once installed, you will be able to see the name of the Extra Fees plugin in your admin dashboard side menu. From there, click on its name and you will find an option named Add Product Fees.
- Click on this option and fill in the fee configuration details carefully. In the next section within the same page, you can add multiple conditions related to your extra fees method.
For example, here, we have specified the extra fees for the carts having subtotal less than $250 while the number of items above 13. After all, packing this many items will be costlier, needing more time and effort.
- Save your product fees method to configure this setting.
Just as above, you can choose a payment gateway as the condition and select a gateway to define the extra fees for it.
Or, you may create a product variant with gift-wrapping or customization facility and apply extra fees for the people choosing that variant.
You may also set extra fees for a particular shipping facility and provide additional services (e.g. faster delivery or better packaging) to your customers.
The Final Word
Extra fees functionality of this plugin can be utilized in multiple ways. Depending on your needs and online store, you can make its right use and apply surcharges on your customers without keeping any information hidden from them.
Need to deploy it for your online shop?
Use this link to download the Extra Fees Plugin for WooCommerce now.
