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How do I come up with one reasonable shipping rate schedule for non-homogeneous products in my website?

• I started a website that I sell various products in different shapes and weights. I am trying to come up with a reasonable shipping rate schedule without over/under charging customers. My website is set up to calculate finalized shipping rate at checkout. I thought about using USPS flat rate boxes and envelopes, but they aren't suitable for all of my products, as some of my products are sort of light-weight but are too bulky to fit into USPS flat rate box, others are too small that I will be over charging if I use flat rate envelope for those. I also considered determining shipping rate by the purchase dollar but this doesn't seem to work either. Because it will under-estimate shipping costs if the products purchased were discounted. Also, some of my products are indeed light weight/small but high-end priced - therefore over charging shipping fees. I wish I could come up with different shipping rate schedule for each product category but the current system doesn't allow me do to so.

• Answer:

  You have started the right way. See if you can categorize the items into 4 different categories. Then within the category do a weighted average. This means that if you are likely to ship 5 items that cost $10 and 5 items that cost $1 your weighted average is 5 x 10 + 5 x1 = 55 divided by the number of items 10 = $5.50 per item. I would then put a margin of 20% on top of the calculation. Therefore in the example, I would be putting a shipping cost of $7.70 per item.