This screen displays all Arrival Dates used for shipping Products.
Arrival Dates allow you to offer your Customer the ability to select their Requested Arrival Date for each recipient in their Cart. This is very important if you are offering gifts for purchase and your customers need the Products to arrive on or before a special occasion (the recipient's birthday or anniversary, event, or a holiday).
The Arrival Dates you create and enable are displayed to the Customer on the Shipping and Arrival Page during the checkout process. If you do not want the customer to select an Arrival Date, then you may delete all Arrival Dates.
Here are examples of the three types of Arrival Dates that you can create:
At Once: This type of arrival date is the default for most websites that ship their products as soon as possible and the arrival date is not important.
TIP: To create an "At Once" Arrival Date, set the Arrival Date field to "0/0/0000".
NOTE: If you create an "At Once" Arrival Date, all Shipping Methods that are available to deliver all Products to each recipient's address (each Product's Allowed Shipping Zones intersects with the Shipping Method's Allowed Shipping Zones), will be offer the the Customer, no matter how many transit days the deliver might take.
IMPORTANT: You should only have one "At Once" Arrival Date ("0/0/0000") enabled at any time on your website.
Christmas: This type of arrival date is for gift giving sites when the Product must arrive on or before a specific holiday. You can enable as many of these Arrival Dates as necessary at any time.
TIP: To create a "Christmas" Arrival Date, set the Arrival Date field to 12/25/XXXX or 25/12/XXXX (depending on your date format), where XXXX is the current year.
NOTE: If you create a "Christmas" Arrival Date, only Shipping Methods that are available to deliver all Products to each recipient's address (each Product's Allowed Shipping Zone intersects with the Shipping Method's Allowed Shipping Zone), on or before 12/25/XXXX.
TIP: Arrival Date/Shipping Method combinations allows the website to automatically switch between "standard" or "expedited" Shipping Methods for your Customers when orders are placed close to the Requested Arrival Date (i.e. holiday). Going further, the website will not allow the Customer to order if they are attempting to place an Order too close to the Requested Arrival Date (i.e.holiday) and no Shipping Methods are found that can get the Products to the destination in time.
TIP: Use the Arrival Dates Start Date/End Date features to tell the website when to automatically remove and add Arrival Date options for your Customers. So when its too late to order for Christmas, that option can disappear and the option to order for Valentine's Day can appear. Using these features, you can preset many future occasions in advance.
Special Date: This type of arrival date is for gift giving sites when the Product must arrive on or before the Customer's own specific occasion (i.e. birthday, anniversary, event).
TIP: To create a "Special Date" Arrival Date, set the Arrival Date's Display Custom Field.
NOTE: If you create a "Special Date" Arrival Date, the Customer will be prompted to enter their own date, and only Shipping Methods that are available to deliver all Products to each recipient's address (each Product's Allowed Shipping Zone intersects with the Shipping Method's Allowed Shipping Zone), on or before the date entered by the Customer.
IMPORTANT: You should only have one Arrival Date using the "Display Custom Field" enabled at any time on your website.