Site Building
Commerce
Commerce is free to try, privately, for any duration. To receive actual payments, purchase an Add-on: $5.50/mo when billed yearly or $9/mo when billed monthly. Cargo does not charge per-transaction fees.
Adding a product
- Go to the Products tab, click New Product, and enter a product name.
- Specify whether this is a physical or a digital product (more information about digital products below). Enter the price and inventory details (your stocked amount — leave blank if unlimited).
- For shippable products enter the weight and dimensions of your shipping-ready package. (Units of measurement can be changed in Commerce Settings.)
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Adding a digital product
- A digital product is any item that does not require shipping, like a downloadable file or a service.
- Here, if wanted, you can write a follow-up message to your customer (this is optional). After a successful payment, this message is displayed inside the shopping cart, and added to the email confirmation that is sent to your customer.
- Downloadable Files can be hosted anywhere that you can link to — Dropbox, Amazon S3, Cargo’s Files (100MB limit), or your own personal server space. The download link can be pasted directly into this message.
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Creating product variants
- If your product has multiple variants, like colors and sizes, you can enter them by clicking Create Product Variants.
- Enter the attribute name (in this example “Color”) and the attribute options (in this example “White” and “Blue”).
- Add additional attributes as needed. When ready, click Generate Variants — this will create each individual variant, as seen in the example.
- Each variant can have its own price, quantity, weight, and size. For digital products, each can have its own message and download links.
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Putting a product on your site
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Adding a cart button to your site
“Append # of Items will add “(1)” after your Cart link, indicating how many items are in a user’s Cart.
For example: you could Pin a navigation menu to your site and add a Cart link or icon to it. (Click on the “Cart” example link on the right.)
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Open the Cart →
Checkout customizations
- A Terms & Conditions checkbox — this links to a page on your site, in which you can specify your terms and conditions. (You have the option to set this as a requirement for all transactions.)
- A Customer Note field — where customers can leave a comment during checkout. (Here as well, you have the option to set this as a requirement for all transactions.)
- A custom Order Success message — this shows after a payment has successfully gone through. By default this message reads:
Order Completed. You will receive a confirmation email with your order number shortly. - A Custom Order Success page — this allows you to specify any page on your site to be displayed when an order is completed.
Managing Orders
- When a customer makes a purchase, it is added to the Orders tab.
- If the order requires shipping, a print-ready packing list is generated. This summarizes the order details (click on Packing List).
- If you use Shippo as a third-party shipping provider, you can purchase and print a shipping label directly from the order page. This tracking number can then be emailed to the customer in the “Your Order Has Shipped” email.
- If you handle shipping manually, you can enter a tracking number and include it in the “Your Order Has Shipped” email.
- You can send partial or full refunds in the “Refund” menu; this will send the customer a refund confirmation email.
- When you’ve completed an order, click on Mark as Complete, which will file the order in the Completed section in the Orders tab.
Connect to Stripe to accept credit cards
- To accept credit cards an account with Stripe is required. A Stripe account connects directly to your bank account. You can setup a Stripe account within your Cargo Admin.
- In the Settings tab, open the Payment Providers menu, and click Stripe. Enter your personal details in the popup window (or log into an existing account) — when completed you can start accepting credit cards for payments.
- In addition to regular credit cards, Safari users will be able to pay with Apple Pay.
- Your account at Stripe is used solely for the purpose of accepting credit card payments; it will deposit funds into your bank account. Everything else is handled by Cargo.
- Stripe (like all Payment Gateway Providers) has its own fee structure, visit this page for details. (Cargo does not charge a per-transaction fee.)
Setup PayPal
- Accepting payments through PayPal requires a PayPal Business Account. To set one up visit this page. If you have an existing account, you can change it to a Business Account: visit this page for instructions.
- When you’re set up, create a new live “app” and generate “keys” from the developer applications page. Note your “client ID” and your “secret.”
- To connect your PayPal account account to Cargo, open the Payment Providers menu in Commerce Settings and click Paypal.
- PayPal (like all Payment Gateway Providers) has its own fee structure, visit this page for details. (Cargo does not charge a per-transaction fee.)
Shipping
- Ship for free.
- Define your own shipping options. You can specify shipping zones and define shipping costs for specific continents, countries and regions.
- Use Shippo. This service interfaces with shipping companies like UPS, FedEx, DHL and allows your shop to calculate rates and generate shipping labels.
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Taxes
- In Commerce Settings you can create tax rates for every country and state.
- Open the Taxes menu, select “Define your own taxes” and click “New rate.”
- Please note: taxes are calculated and collected differently depending on your region, state, province or country. It is your responsibility as a merchant to ensure that tax calculations (and subsequent filing) is correct. We recommend working with a tax advisor.
- For sellers in the US, you can access this guide for information. For European sellers, there is this guide.
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Email notifications
- When an order is completed, both you and your customer receive a confirmation email.
- When an order has shipped, you have the option to send a shipping confirmation email.
- When a refund is issued, a confirmation email is sent to your customer.
This is the email that a customer receives after successfully making a purchase.
This is the email you receive when someone makes a purchase on your site. It contains a direct link to the order in your site admin.
When an order has shipped, you have the option to send a shipping confirmation email. This is a good place to share tracking information.
When you refund a customer, this is the email that the customer receives. The text can be customized.