Ingrid checkout solution by default provides one pre-defined selected delivery option for the end consumer that is preselected. In this article, we will discuss the preselection preference feature that improves the user experience even more.
Preselection can be defined in Ingrid Merchant Platform (IMP, known as MAD as well) in the regions tab. In order to set the preselection, the merchant has to define the order of shipping categories based on which the preselection will be applied.
Let's assume that you want to have a shipping category with delivery to your local store being preselected. When the end consumer enters the checkout and provides the postal code*, the checkout will render the available shipping options that are closest to the given postal code and preselect the local store.
But what happens if the given postal code is invalid? We risk preselecting the local store that is located far away from the end consumer and hence creating a bad delivery experience for our end consumer.
*your configured checkout flow may vary from the one described in the example.
Introducing the preselection preference feature
You can reach out to the Customer Success team and ask for enabling the preselection preference feature, which is switched off by default. It works for provided addresses that had enough information to provide accurate pickup and in-store shipping options (the ones depending on geographical location) in the Ingrid checkout, but yet the provided address was not able to be connected to a certain geographical location (in general, it was not possible to create a point on the map related to this address).
We assume that in order for an address to have a geographical location, it has to have at least a postal code entered. The preselection preference feature won't take effect for addresses consisting of only a country, because there is no way to bind it to a certain geographical location.
The preselection preference feature would preselect delivery types other than pickup and in-store if the provided address could not have been resolved to a geographical location. If there are no other shipping options (apart from the pickup or in-store ones), we would fall back to preselecting pickup or in-store one, because of a lack of other choices (based on the preselection order set up in Ingrid Merchant Platform).
Example
Let's set the preselection order for the example site as follows:
- In-store with pickup in a local store.
- Pickup in a parcel locker.
- Home delivery.
If the preselection preference feature is enabled and the provided address was not resolved to a geographical location (does not contain geo-coordinates based on which we will be able to tell if the location is close to the end consumer), we will preselect number 3 (if it is an available shipping option).
If number 3 is not an available shipping option (because for example, a carrier has no coverage for home deliveries in the given area), we will preselect 1.
Use cases
We strongly advise having this feature enabled on your site, especially if you provide in-store shipping options for your customer. Please kindly reach out to our Customer Success Agents at support@ingrid.com who will be happy to set it for you.
Enabling the postal code validation may not alleviate the mentioned problems with entering postal code not resolvable to geographical location. Some countries (like Sweden) have artificial postal codes, that serve administrative or operational purposes (like postal codes related to government offices or sorting centers). They are valid postal codes but are not tied to a certain geographical location.