Shopify Shipping Policy: What to Include, Section by Section

What a shipping policy is really for

A shipping policy is the page that answers "when will it get here, and what will it cost?" before a shopper commits. It also does quieter work after the sale: it is the page your support inbox points to when a parcel is late, a customs bill arrives or an address turns out to be a P.O. box. A good one prevents a whole category of emails.

This guide goes through the sections a Shopify shipping policy normally needs, what to say in each, and how to check the page against what your checkout actually charges. If you want a draft to work from while you read, the shipping policy generator builds one from your answers.

General information, not legal advice: consumer rules on delivery, risk in transit and import charges vary by country and change over time. Check the rules where you sell and with your carrier, and have the final page reviewed where you trade.

Section one: how long an order takes

Split the timeline into the part you run and the part your carrier runs, and name them separately.

Processing time

This is the time from order to handover: picking, packing, labelling. State it in business days and say what your cut-off is, for example orders placed before a certain time on a weekday leave the same day. If you use a 3PL, use their real turnaround, not the one in their sales deck. Made-to-order or pre-order products need their own line, because their processing time is a different animal.

Delivery time

Transit is the carrier's clock. Give a range per region rather than a single figure, and call it an estimate. Shoppers add the two parts together in their heads, so if you only quote transit, every order feels late by the length of your processing time.

Section two: what shipping costs

List the rates or the way they are worked out: flat rate, by weight, by order value, or calculated live by the carrier. You do not have to print every rate table, but a shopper should be able to predict roughly what they will pay before reaching checkout.

The free-shipping threshold

If you offer free shipping above a basket value, it is usually the most important sentence on the page, because it is the one shoppers act on. Say which regions it covers, whether it applies before or after discounts, and whether any products are excluded. Setting the number itself is a margin decision, not a policy decision: it has to sit where your AOV, gross margin and average shipping cost can carry it. The free shipping threshold calculator works that out from your own figures.

Bulky and heavy items

Carriers often price large, light parcels by size rather than weight. If you sell furniture, lighting or anything in a big box, say whether those items carry a surcharge or are excluded from free shipping. The DIM weight calculator shows how a box's size can change what you are billed.

Section three: where you ship, and international orders

List the countries or regions you deliver to, and name any you do not. Then cover the three things cross-border buyers worry about:

• Duties and import taxes. Say plainly who pays. Either the customer pays on arrival, or the charges are collected at checkout and nothing more is due. A buyer surprised by a bill at the door may refuse the parcel, and you then pay for it to come back.
• Longer transit and customs delays. Give a wider estimate and note that customs can hold a parcel for a time you do not control.
• Restricted goods. Batteries, liquids, aerosols, fragrances and some cosmetics can face carrier or destination restrictions. Check with your carrier, and list any of your products that cannot go to certain places.

Remote areas deserve a line too. Islands, remote regions and military addresses often take longer or cost more, and it is better to say so than to absorb a surcharge in silence.

Section four: tracking, addresses and parcels that go wrong

Tracking

Say whether every order is tracked, and how the customer gets the number (usually the shipping confirmation email). If your cheapest option is untracked post, say that too: an untracked parcel is hard to investigate, and the customer should know that before choosing it.

P.O. boxes and address errors

Many courier services will not deliver to a P.O. box. If yours will not, say so on the page and in checkout where possible. Then set out what happens when a customer enters a wrong address: whether you can change it before dispatch, and who pays if a parcel is returned to you and has to be sent again.

Lost, late and damaged parcels

Give a point after which a customer should contact you, usually tied to the slow end of your delivery estimate. Say what you need from them (order number, photos of damage, the packaging) and what you will do: open a carrier claim, reship or refund. Be careful here: in some countries the seller carries the risk until the goods reach the buyer, whatever the policy says. Check the rules where you sell before writing that a lost parcel is the carrier's problem.

Make the page match your checkout

The most common shipping-policy problem is not a missing section. It is a page that describes one set of rates while checkout charges another. Shoppers compare the two, and the gap reads as a bait-and-switch. After you publish, open Settings, then Shipping and delivery, in your Shopify admin and check each line of the policy against it. This table is the audit:

A test order to a domestic address and one to an international address will catch most mismatches in a few minutes.

Keep it current through the year

A shipping policy goes stale faster than most pages. Put a reminder in your calendar to review it when any of these happen:

• You change carrier, 3PL or warehouse location.
• You change the free-shipping threshold or any rate.
• You start or stop shipping to a country.
• Peak season approaches and carriers publish holiday cut-off dates. Add a temporary note with your last order date for delivery before the holiday, based on what your carrier states.
• You add a product line that is bulky, fragile or restricted.

Any line that quotes the policy elsewhere on the store, such as a delivery note on product pages or a free-shipping bar, needs the same update on the same day.

Next step

Gather your processing time, delivery ranges, threshold, regions and duties setup, then run them through the Shopify shipping policy generator. Paste the draft into Settings, then Policies, edit it for your store, and run the checkout audit above before you call it finished.

A free-shipping threshold only changes behaviour if shoppers see it before the cart. Nudgesmart builds on-site popups and bars from ready-made templates and shows them to the visitors you target, which is one way to put that line in front of them.