Offer WooCommerce delivery dates based on your product lead times

Discover the new way to offer a choice of WooCommerce delivery dates on the checkout, based on the actual lead times of the products in the cart.

IconicWP, the company behind the WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin, have just released a brand new integration with our WooCommerce Lead Time plugin. By using the two plugins together, you can provide clear information about how long customers will have to wait for each product, and let them choose a suitable delivery date when they will receive their order.

Keep reading to learn how the integration works and how to use the two plugins together.

Example: Delivery dates for a WooCommerce furniture store with long lead times

Let's look at a real world example of a furniture website.

Furniture stores often have long product lead times of up to 12 weeks. As a result, it's important for a WooCommerce furniture website to have the following features:

• Clear information on the product page stating how long customers will have to wait for delivery.
• An option to select an available delivery date on the WooCommerce checkout page.

As a workaround, many furniture stores compromise by manually adding the lead time to their product descriptions, and by contacting the customer prior to delivery. If you've ever ordered furniture online, you'll know delivery companies almost never suggest a date that is convenient for you!

It's much better to let the customer choose a delivery date on the WooCommerce checkout page. This is more convenient for the customer, and saves you time in contacting them manually prior to delivery.

However, most WooCommerce delivery date plugins offer the same dates regardless of which products are in the cart. That's no use if your products have different lead times.

The solution is to use WooCommerce Delivery Slots with WooCommerce Lead Time.

How to use lead times to extend your WooCommerce delivery dates

As you can see, it's important to offer delivery dates based on the availability of each product in the cart. Next, I'll tell you how to set it up.

1. Install WooCommerce Lead Time on your WordPress site.
2. Go to the plugin settings page (WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Lead Time) and change the following options:
   • Activate your license key from the order confirmation email.
   • Choose the 'Static' lead time format instead of 'Dynamic'. This is needed for the integration with the Delivery Slots plugin to work.
   • Set the 'Lead time units' to either Days or Weeks.
3. Now it's time to add your product lead times. You can either set a global lead time for all your products on the plugin settings page, or add different lead times for each category, product or variation. Either way, make sure you enter a whole number in the 'Lead time' field - for example, '14' if the lead time is 14 days. This allows the Delivery Slots plugin to read the lead time and use it to calculate the first available delivery date.
4. Install WooCommerce Delivery Slots and set it up according to the plugin documentation. You can create as many delivery slots as you like based on your drivers' availability, opening times, etc.

Finally, view your site and add some products to the cart as a test! You will see:

Where to get the plugins

You can get the WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin from Iconic, and WooCommerce Lead Time is available directly from Barn2. Install the plugins today, and start offering delivery dates based on your product lead times!