E-Commerce in T&T: Delivery Options for Your Online Store

Congratulations! Welcome to the wonderful world of E-Commerce in Trinidad & Tobago, brought to you by your unfriendly worldwide pandemic. Everybody’s woke and in the throes of online business bliss. However, we’ve sadly discovered that in our corner of the third world, everything’s not figured out. Yes we’ve got websites and WiPay, but no whipping… er, shipping.

We can call it shipping, and for real too, because we have Tobago. Unlike the fake shipping in the US where everything’s ‘shipped’ by plane then truck. But they had it figured out— long before the dawn on online shopping over 25 years ago (Amazon is 26 years old!). But here in T&T? It’s backward ever in this land of nothing works.

Thankfully we’ve all lived here long enough to not wait for things to happen, but work with what we got, which ain’t much. But when Trini life gives you limes…

The neat thing about online shopping, is that the customer’s experience is seamless. Browse > Add to cart > Pay, and wait for the call from a man saying ‘we dropping de ting for you today’. In the US, FedEx or UPS won’t call in advance, nor call to ask for directions. But in our own Trini way, that call is nice, because more often than not, we get to say ‘we was’n expeckking you so fas!’

The most seamless element in shipping, is the ability to calculate an accurate delivery charge for your order upon checkout, and the best way to achieve that is by connecting the shopping cart directly with the delivery company.

For US online stores, accounts with major delivery companies (also called carriers) like FedEx, and UPS, are easily connected to shopping carts to provide multiple shipping options on checkout, such as, Ground, Priority, 2-Day, etc. This connection between the shopping cart software and the carrier’s, is facilitated by what’s known as an API, or Application Programming Interface. It is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other.

Unfortunately, FedEx and UPS in Trinidad & Tobago don’t offer local (domestic) delivery like the US. They deliver incoming and outgoing international packages but DO NOT do inter/intra-island delivery. So no FedEx/UPS from Arima to Mayaro, or Scarborough for that matter.

Fortunately, there is a lone option here in T&T called Universal Packaging Systems Ltd (UPSL). They can do this because they are sole authorized contractor for UPS so already have logistics in place. Their service integrates with shopping carts like Woo Commerce, Magento, Shopify etc., allowing for the same seamless rate calculation based on the order and its destination in Trinidad or Tobago.

The UPSL Woocommerce plugin interfaces in real time with Universal Package Systems’ API in order to provide the following to your store:

• Live rates from Universal Package Systems
• Test account toggle on or off
• Automatically create orders in UPSL backend
• Automatically set package status to printed in UPSL’s backend upon order completion in WooCommerce
• Dynamic price changes depending on weight
• Dynamic price changes depending on COD
• Tracking ID emails to customer

I’m also happy to say that the price has come down substantially to $1500 TTD for a yearly license for Woo Commerce

Full integration support and installation services are available.

Unfortunately, there’s no other similar option, they’re the only such game in town. One would expect that our national postal service TT Post would have already been on board, perhaps be the first. But no such luck, because as a government operation, they have no interest in anything forward thinking as long as political appointees, friends, relatives, party financiers, have their cushy jobs. In fact, they’re still inventing postal codes. More on TT Post later though, I’m not done with them yet.

I’ve successfully integrated a couple of online stores with DHL after liaising with both local and US reps to get the process down. I’m happy to say that I have it figured out and I’m able to replicate on future sites.

Delivery rates are weight driven, so you’ll need to set up your product weights to use properly. And international carriers like these do not use actual physical weights to calculate rates, they use volumetric weights to account for the item’s physical dimensions. There is a formula to use to convert your product weights to their final chargeable weights.

Given the online store trend in T&T, all online stores have the long term goal of Caribbean and international deliveries on their radars.

In the absence of integrated carrier APIs, the only other option is to set pre-determined delivery rates yourself using the default shipping methods per your shopping cart. Personally, for local delivery, I don’t see the need for very complex calculations like the big US shippers. It’s critical for them because of the sheer size and volume of the industry. Here in our one zip code sized island, our volume is nary a blip.

For Woo Commerce, these are the three shipping options, which are all self explanatory. While it may seem that Flat Rate won’t be optimal for T&T, it’s only a single flat rate that won’t, especially for hard to reach and less populated areas like Toco where orders will be few, far apart, and obviously cost more. Use of Shipping Zones easily address this. It’s easy to create a Shipping Zone and call it Toco, and set the delivery rate a $20 or $40 higher. So when the customer selects Toco as the delivery address on checkout, the rate for Toco would automatically be charged.

And apologies to Toco and other hard to reach areas of Trinidad & Tobago, that you have to be charged almost double the rate of the rest of the country, That’s thanks to 50+ years of independence and jackass governmenting by every single administration till today in 2021, where 41 dumber jackasses cock their asses to pontificate to Madame Speaker with their Convent accents. As you can tell, I don’t like the 41 jackasses in parliament and I say jackass a lot. I’m over 50 now, and completely lost my filter.

By way of a plug-in, the shipping options can be extended in Woo Commerce to use what’s known as Table Rates. Table Rates allows for using more refined rules to calculate delivery based on a number of parameters like product price, weight, order value, destination etc. For example, a rule can be created for a bulky item that would cost more to deliver even though it weighs the same as a smaller item. This rule is then assigned to the product.

This would obviously be handy if we had postal codes in T&T but they haven’t been invented here yet. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for the decrepit dinosaurs at TT Post, as we can simply create our own codes and assign rates as the postal code field on checkout doesn’t validate, i.e.., it doesn’t verify that the postal code is correct.

One such live example is on my client’s site, Reliable Appliances. They created four zones on the T&T map, named A1 to A4. Customers are directed to identify what zone their addresses are in and enter the correct zone in the postal code field upon checkout.

I’ve developed my own plug-in that refines the delivery rates even further. Still using made-up postal codes, the refinement is that it uses our Regional Corporations as a selector on the checkout page to present the customer the list of towns per their region. Unlike the Rate by Postal Code above, the customer only has to select their correct area to calculate the delivery.

Whether delivery fee calculations are integrated or non-integrated, you still have to deliver the order when you get it. Obviously if you have integrated delivery like UPSL (local) and DHL (international), they pick up the order and deliver. If not, then you have a choice of delivery methods.

You actually have quite a few options, all dependent on your headache tolerance. How much frustration you can endure will determine your ultimate choice.

This might be the least of headaches as you’re in the most control of the process. All your driver has to do is put the packages in the van, then drive to the customer’s address to drop off. Any headaches as a result won’t be related to the delivery process itself, but other elements like taking long to reach destination, driver being rude to customer, damaging the packages etc.

Here you hire some local courier service to do the same thing. Like the above, same applies. Lately there are more ‘online courier services’. These are companies that have cropped up to fill this same delivery void with online shopping. Call them up and they will pick-up/deliver the order for you for their fee.

The only problem with this is that they themselves are limited in the level of service they can provide. On any delivery day, they are picking up orders from several businesses then delivering. Depending on the geographic location of all parties, customers may get orders very late. The logistics for such an operation are difficult on a small scale.

I have seen larger local couriers more known for their skybox services jump on board too, and just as well, because with limited incoming flights, international volume has dropped. And since they’ve been covering the island anyway, it’s an easy segue to the opportunity to both compensate and capitalize.

My personal opinion is not to touch TT Post with a ten foot pole if your vision is ‘hardcore’ E-Commerce. My client Bel Air Store used them only a few times in 2020 when the site just launched and learnt this the hard way. A waffle maker struggled to make it from Marabella to Chaguanas in four days with no info available on it’s whereabouts during that time. After that, sayonara TT Post, stick to delivering mail.

However I’m sure that for every nine stories like this, there is one the opposite, where TT Post was a dream come true. In such a case, though it’s quite possible you’re dreaming, feel free to take your chances. Gopaul luck is not Seepaul luck.

You just want to get the order delivered from Point A to Point B and don’t want to be picky? Find a man with a van or wagon and fix a price for deliveries. As long as he’s reliable and doesn’t drive like a Ya-Yan, you may not have much of a choice. Of course, there are the options above.

Proof that I still have a sense of humor as I’m getting on in age. You of course may have heard about Amazon Prime Air, a drone delivery service currently in development by Amazon. Operations were expected to begin in select cities starting late 2019 but haven’t yet in 2021. In a nutshell, it would use delivery drones to fly individual packages to customers within 30 minutes of ordering.

The chances of this happening here is a million points below nil. And even by the time this rolls around, given that online shopping here rolled around 25 years after inception, chances are it will be obsolete. By then we’d be beaming goods and people all over the place Star Trek style.

In laid back, less sophisticated T&T, important delivery ramifications are easily overlooked or don’t even enter one’s mind. What if something goes wrong with the delivery? Goods get damaged in transit, frozen goods melt, food spoils, customer not home or refuses to accept order, driver gets mugged or worse… shudder to think, but all very possible. Not as simple as a man with a van now is it?

I’ll hasten to add that these are the worst case scenarios, and the probabilities are very low. The majority of deliveries will be made just fine, but you need to have a plan for these contingencies in the back of your mind, no matter how remote.

I’ll also hasten to add that these scenarios arise if you’re new the the game. For most physical stores that move to online, they are already delivering, only the way the order comes in has changed. An appliance store for example, has been delivering big ticket items like stoves, fridges, TV’s etc., for years, so for them, just another day at the office. But for you, just starting out, you have more to consider, and don’t wait for it to happen.

I touched on this but it’s a big concern that warrants focus. Crime in Trinidad & Tobago is a real thing and I’m sure you’ve been watching the news. There are no ‘safe’ areas, people are being robbed in broad daylight even in mall parking lots. Driver safety is paramount and better to lose an order over a life. Both merchant and driver need to establish and agree on the protocols for a successful delivery. My opinion is, that personal safety always comes first, to hell with the order.

Big shippers like FedEx, UPS, DHL don’t operate vikey-vike and jokey like ‘we’. All goods are shipped and covered by insurance. If your order is damaged on the way to US from T&T via DHL, there is a procedure to file a claim and get compensation. Naturally, you would have to ship out a replacement order while the claim is pending as your issue with the shipper is of no concern to your customer.

Big shippers are also equipped to handle the requirements of the items, like using a truck with a lift-gate to deliver a fridge with a hand-truck/trolley to move it from the van to inside. Here in T&T it might be 2-3 men grunting while offloading with only 2 wearing a back-support strap. The other, well, he risks his balls getting heng.

Please resist the urge to make money off the delivery fee your customer pays. You should only be covering the cost of providing the service, i.e. charging the lowest possible cost to break even. Only in the US can merchants charge the customer $30 USD shipping and pay UPS between $5 to $10 USD, thereby making an additional profit. Here in T&T island delivery, there’s no such room. If you find such room and don’t pass it to your customer, you too damn greedy. If you’re that greedy, you’re more suited to politics than online business; join anyone of the two parties in parliament, they’re looking for people like you,

I used Woo Commerce examples as it’s the shopping cart I predominantly use and promote. Woo Commerce is the most popular shopping cart plug-in for the WordPress platform (yes there are others); both are owned by parent company, Automattic. You may or may not know that I promote WordPress over Magento, and as recently as this month (March 2021), after a successful WiPay integration, I’ve started to promote Shopify as well.

Both Woo Commerce and Shopify come with default shipping settings that allow for setting of shipping zones to set predetermined rates.

Like I mentioned before, only three (3) shipping options, all non-integrated, are available by default in Woo Commerce: Flat rate, Free Shipping, Local Pick-Up. If you want the major carriers like FedEx, UPS, DHL, and additional methods like Table Rates, you’ll have to use either free or paid plug-ins. There’s even extended local pick-up if you want to give customers a choice from multiple stores to pick-up from.

DHL requires some involved steps as there are multiple accounts to create and Woo Commerce settings to enable to get the entire thing working. I haven’t done any yet for FedEx or UPS.

I put a star there as there is a fine print that allows integration of your carrier account: “You need to have the carrier-calculated shipping feature on your store’s Shopify subscription plan to connect your own shipping carrier accounts to Shopify. This feature is included in the Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus plans, and can be added to any plan for a monthly fee”.

For US/Canada Shopify merchants,: “Shopify Shipping to ship from fulfillment locations based in the United States and Canada, then you can display calculated rates to your customers using Shopify’s shipping carrier accounts. You don’t need to have your own shipping carrier account, and rates are included by default in your Shopify admin”.

What does this mean? If you’re a Trini based Shopify merchant you’ll need to connect your carrier account if you want to ship out of T&T to say, Caribbean and North America. There is no other option except using predetermined rates or post-determined rates, i.e. use the ‘hack’ or workaround of accepting the order without delivery, then determining the fee after to notify and charge the customer. Yes, not pretty, but may be necessary in some instances depending on the nature of the product.

I hope I’ve delivered (groan!) some valuable insights into the delivery process as it relates to online business. Whether you’re big or small, if you want to start selling online, there are no obstacles, nothing missing, the puzzle is complete. Sure there are some refinements that would make it easier, but in terms of pure technical functionality, all the moving parts are all in place.

And on the other side, pandemic notwithstanding, things are just as rosy. There is a market of receptive Trini customers ready and waiting for you. The last time this happened was never. The best time to set up your online store was five years ago. The second best time is now.