Sometimes you just need one shipping method, or perhaps 99% of your customers use a specific method. This is often the case for European shops serving just one country. By default, Magento allows customers to get a quote estimate for shipping costs in the cart page.
The customer has to set it’s country and select the appropriate method in order to get a correct quote, including the shipping costs. In the scenario I mentioned earylier, it could be best to just set the country and shipping method by default. This way the customer will always get a price including shipping costs. Never again will they be surprised by a higher then expected price at the end of the checkout process!
A solution
So how to achieve this? Well… One can write a small extension that catches Magento’s sales_quote_collect_totals_before and set a shipping method if none is set. This shipping method then should be configurable from Magento’s backend. Not into writing code? Check the attachment. Download the extension here. I tested it in Magento CE 1.4, 1.5, 1.6. Should work in 1.7 as well.
Magento always show shopping costs
Instructions for installing this extension:
1. Download the zip (DUH!)
2. Extract it’s contents to the root of your Magento installation. You can use FTP to do that. It’s the directory containing index.php [App] [Skin] [Media] among others
3. Log in to your Magento backend
4. Go to System -> Cache Management, select all options, and in the action dropdown select “Refresh”. Then click Submit.
5. Log out/in to your backend
6. Go to System -> Configuration -> Shipping Settings and drop down the “Origin” selection
7. This extension adds two new options here; “Apply defaults to empty quote” and “Default shipping method”
8. Set “Apply defaults to empty quote” to “Yes” , set “Default shipping method” to your preferred shipping method. And make sure “Country” is set.
9. Click save config.
10. All done!
When a customer visits your site and starts adding stuff to his shopping cart, all prices will be shown including shipping costs! (If this does not happen the first time you visit your site yourself, clear all your cookies, as you might still have an active quote present, in which case the extension will leave it alone).
How does this work… I mean in code…?
Well… The extension uses a simple observer to check if the shipping address has a country set. If it does not (which is the case for an empty quote) it will set one including the default method. Pretty simple stuff!!
Update 7/9/12: Idev OneStepChecout bug
Stevan from Enigma Webdesign reported an issue with Idev OneStepChecout. As it turns out the Idev OSC extension “assumes” a billing address is present in the quote when a shipping address is found. This causes the OSC to load with no valid billing address, and as a result, it will show the default country with just the default payment method.
One can work around this by using this version of the extension when using Idev OneStepChecout. This update will set a billing address as well as the shipping address, to enable Idev OCS to work. Set the “Apply defaults to billing address” option in “System -> Configuration -> Shipping Settings” to Yes. Download the update here.
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