Delivery Appointment: Comprehensive Guide

The Delivery appointment app enables you to customize the shipping methods and delivery times for customer purchases, enhancing your customer’s shopping experience and providing a system to better manage reservation orders.

• Enhance the customer purchasing experience by selecting an appointment time: After selecting the desired items, customers have the autonomy to choose their preferred delivery methods and specify the delivery time on the shopping cart page. For example, customers can pre-order Christmas gifts, select the appropriate delivery method, and request delivery on Christmas day. These flexible delivery options truly optimize the shopping experience, increase customer satisfaction, and improve the success rate of transactions.
  
• Flexible configuration of appointment times, products, and calendars: Firstly, in the background settings, you can set available and unavailable dates and time ranges for appointments. Choose from different appointment time formats, such as Date only, Date and time, or Date and time period. Additionally, you can specify weekly business hours and set the purchase limit quantity for appointments, ensuring smooth fulfillment and meeting your customers’ expectations to the best of your ability. Secondly, you can select which products can be reserved through appointments. Enable appointment services for Specific products or All products and easily manage which products are eligible for scheduling. Furthermore, you can customize the style of the appointment calendar and decide whether to display or hide the Checkout button. A visually appealing store display style can quickly attract customers' attention and improve the order placement rate. Therefore, it is crucial for sellers to carefully consider choosing calendar main colors and font colors that align with their store and brand identity.
• Centralized management of appointment orders: After customers select an appointment time and place their orders, you can view the appointment order details within the app. You can filter and display the order list based on specific time ranges or different order statuses. Additionally, you can perform actions such as shipping directly from the app. You can easily view relevant order data to efficiently manage your appointment delivery orders.

Installing Delivery Appointment

Search for the Delivery appointment app in the SHOPLINE App Store, install it, and grant authorization.

App Settings

Appointment Settings

1. Click Appointment configuration to select the desired delivery method.
   

• • Shipping: Delivery by an express logistics company.
  • Local Delivery: Arrange personnel for delivery directly by the seller. Set up supported local delivery addresses in Settings > Shipping and Delivery > Local Delivery.
  • Pick up: Customers can pick up the products in the store. Set up supported pickup addresses in Settings > Shipping and Delivery > Pick up.

2. Select products to be reserved

• • All products: When selected, all products within the store can be reserved for appointments. Customers will have the option to choose an appointment time when placing an order.
  • Designated product: If you select the Designated product feature, only the selected products will support appointments. Customers will be able to select a delivery time only when purchasing the designated products. Other products will not offer the option to choose a delivery time.

When selecting designated products, click Choose a product and check the box of the products that you want to set up. Click Finish when you’re done.

3. Set the time range and reservation limit that supports user appointments. 
   Shipping: Set the delivery method in the Delivery Rules and Delivery time settings sections.
   

• • Restrict bookable date range: You can specify the time range for customer appointments, including the nearest and furthest available dates from the current day, and the specific cutoff time for bookings. For example, if your store only allows customers to book appointments within the next seven days, with bookings not accepted after 11 PM on the seventh day, you can set the date range from 0 days (current day) to 7 days, with a cutoff time at 11:00 PM.
  • Exclude dates: If you set specific dates as unavailable for appointments, customers won't be able to choose those dates when making a purchase.
  • Delivery time format: You can choose how customers schedule their appointments. If you select Date only, they can only choose a date. If you choose Date and time, they can select a specific date and time slot. If you opt for a Date and time period, they can book within a specific time range.
  • Delivery time setting: Set your business hours from Monday to Sunday for customer appointments. This includes configuring time slots and the total purchase limit per day. Use the One-click copy button to apply these settings to each day.

Local Delivery: If you haven't set up a local delivery address beforehand, click Go to location settings > Local Delivery > Location settings to set it up. Then, go back to Delivery appointment > Local Delivery and click Set an appointment time.

If you have already set up the local delivery address in advance, simply click Delivery appointment time to set it up directly.

Set the desired preferences in this pop-up window. You can choose to apply these settings to all locations by selecting Apply to all locations. Once you have finished, click Finish to complete the process.

Pick up:
If you haven't set a local delivery address beforehand, please follow these steps: 

1. Click Go to location settings > Local Delivery > Location settings to set your address.
   
2. Make sure the address is correctly set in the Product > Inventory section, with inventory greater than zero.
   
3. Go back to the Delivery appointment plugin and click Set an appointment time under Local Delivery. If you have already set a local delivery address, simply click Set an appointment time.
   Set the desired preferences in this pop-up window. You can choose to apply these settings to all locations by selecting Apply to all locations. Once you have finished, click Finish to complete the process.
   
   
4. To set an appointment date restriction for a product, click Add date restrictions in the Product Date Limit section. Check the box next to the product that requires the appointment date restriction and click Finish.
   
   After selecting Allow products to be reserved on a specified date or Prohibited product reservations on specified dates, click the Select date field to set the allowed or prohibited reservation dates.
   
   To select a specific date, click the desired date in the calendar. Once selected, a corresponding tag will appear. If you need to cancel a specific date, click the "x" icon on the date tag (but you can’t cancel directly in the calendar).
   
   
5. Click Enable now to finalize the setup and apply the changes.
   
   
   

Style Settings

After setting the appointment time and product, you can click Style settings to complete settings such as Reservation Calendar Style Settings and Hide checkout button.

• Reservation Calendar Style Settings: You can adjust the main color and font color of the selected dates in the calendar to match the style of your store.
• Checkout Button Settings: By default, the Checkout button will be hidden once the plugin is installed. This ensures that customers can't skip the appointment time selection and go directly to checkout. If you want to display the Checkout button, you can enable it here.
  
  

Appointment Order Management

1. View customers' appointment delivery orders: After customers place an order in the store by selecting products and delivery times, appointment orders will be generated. You can view and manage these appointment orders within the app. Clicking the Overview section in the app will allow you to view these orders.
   
   You can also click View Appointment Calendar to see all pending orders scheduled for delivery.
   
   
2. To modify the scheduled delivery time for customers, click on the order.
   By clicking Edit, you can modify the date and time period for scheduled delivery. Once you have confirmed the shipping date information, click Proceed to ship main order to initiate the shipment.
   
   
   

Visual Display of Appointments

1. Product page: After completing the app settings, you can view the earliest available delivery time for making appointments on the product page.
   
2. Shopping cart page: Once the app settings are completed, customers will see the types of appointments available in the shopping cart (as shown in the diagram below with three delivery mode options). When customers select a delivery method, they can choose the corresponding available date and time. For the "Shipping" method, customers need to select a delivery date and time.
   
   For "Local Delivery", customers must enter their postal code and click Verify. The system will then confirm if local delivery is supported in that area. If it is, customers will see the prompt "Select local delivery appointment time at checkout". If local delivery is not supported, a message stating "Sorry, we can't deliver to your region" will be displayed.
   
   When selecting "Pick up" as the delivery method, customers need to choose the pickup location and time.
   
   
3. Checkout page: After customers have selected the delivery method and time on the shopping cart page and proceed to the checkout page, they can still change to other delivery methods and their corresponding dates. As shown in the image below, if the customer initially chose the "Shipping" method but now wants to switch to "Pick up", they need to confirm the pickup location and time. After filling in the information, click Proceed to select logistics.
   
   
   If customers choose “Pick up” as the delivery method, the checkout process will skip the logistics selection and go directly to the payment page.

• • Settlement process for the "Shipping" method: Shopping cart > Fill in the information > Select logistics > Payment.
  • Settlement process for the "Local Delivery" method: Shopping cart > Fill in the information > Select logistics > Payment.
  • Settlement process for the "Pick up" method: Shopping cart > Fill in the information > Payment.

FAQ and Tips

1. For pickup orders, you need to go to SHOPLINE's Orders section to process the delivery. Processing deliveries within the app is currently not supported.
2. If the Checkout button is enabled, customers may place an order without selecting an appointment time. These orders won't be considered appointment orders since they don't include any appointment information.
3. Regarding the appointment settings for in-store pickup and local delivery, you can customize the corresponding logistics options according to your preferences. For example, if the "Pick up" method was enabled but not configured in the app, customers who choose "Pick up" during checkout will not generate an appointment order.
4. To ensure optimal store performance, the plugin loading speed may be slower than that of the store page. This can lead to situations where customers proceed to the next step before the plugin is fully loaded, resulting in orders being placed without having yet selected reservation information. Therefore, these orders won't be considered appointment orders.