Selling by the Metre in a Cart Built for Units

A quantity box that counts in ones

Some products are not sold as items. Rope and chain go by the metre, lumber by length, meat and bulk foods by weight, fabric by the metre off the bolt.

Most shopping carts were built for things that come in ones: a shirt, a kettle, a box of screws. The quantity box beside the add-to-cart button counts whole items.

Shops that sell by length or weight improvise. A price per metre goes beside a box that looks like a count of things, and customers fill it in as if it were.

Then the parcel arrives with three metres where three rolls were expected, and the shop spends the afternoon on the phone.

How the improvising goes wrong

• A price per metre beside a box that reads as a count of items.
• Decimals the cart rounds or refuses, such as 2.5 metres.
• Half metres listed as a separate product nobody finds.
• A note in the description that the cart never repeats.
• An estimated weight charged at checkout, before anything is weighed.

The fourth is the quiet one. A line explaining the unit sits in the product description, but the cart, the checkout and the confirmation email show only a bare number.

Choose the unit the cart will count

Decide on the smallest step you sell, and make that the unit. If rope is cut to the metre, the unit is one metre. If fabric is cut to the half metre, the unit is half a metre.

Price the unit, not the roll or the sack you buy in, and let the cart do the multiplying.

Carts handle whole numbers reliably and decimals badly, so the unit should make every sensible order a whole number. That is the whole reason for choosing the smallest step.

Say what one unit means

Beside the quantity box, in plain words, say what one unit is: one metre, cut from the roll, or 100 grams, weighed to order.

Put the unit in the product name as well, such as by the metre, so it shows in search results, the cart and the confirmation without anyone opening the description.

In the cart, show the result the way the customer thinks of it: 12 metres of rope, not 12.

Most shop systems can add a line of text to a cart item, and whoever looks after the shop can usually set it up quickly.

Minimums, maximums and pieces

Set a minimum where cutting less is not worth doing, and say why, such as cut lengths start at two metres. Most carts can enforce a minimum quantity, sometimes with an add-on.

Say whether a large order comes as one continuous length or several pieces. Someone rigging a boat and someone tying down loads want very different things from twenty metres of rope.

If a roll holds only so much, say what happens when an order runs past it: two pieces, or a phone call first.

A worked example

A moving box supplier on a busy road sells boxes, wardrobe cartons, tape, bubble wrap and packing paper to people moving house, over the counter and through an online shop that delivers locally.

Bubble wrap was sold from large rolls, cut to length at the counter. Online it appeared as one product, priced per metre, with the usual quantity box beside the add-to-cart button.

Customers read the box as a count of rolls. Someone ordering three expected three rolls and received three metres; someone else typed 30 for a two-bedroom move and then phoned to ask whether that meant thirty rolls.

The fix was mostly words. The product became bubble wrap by the metre, cut as one length, with a line beside the quantity box: enter the number of metres, from a minimum of five.

Full rolls became a separate product with a photograph of their own. The cart and the confirmation now say 12 metres of bubble wrap, cut as one length, instead of a bare 12.

Packing paper, sold by weight, gained a line saying roughly how many dishes a kilogram wraps. The calls asking what the numbers meant stopped.

Weighed after the order

Meat, cheese, whole fish and some bulk goods cannot be weighed exactly until they are cut or packed. Charging an estimate at checkout means refunding the difference later, or asking for more.

Many payment gateways can authorise an amount when the order is placed, then take the final figure once the item is weighed, as long as it is not more than the amount authorised.

So authorise a little above the estimate and say so on the product page. Weigh and charge promptly, since an authorisation lapses if it is left too long.

Then send the measured total with the charge: what was ordered, what it weighed and what was taken from the card.

The confirmation says it again

The confirmation email is where a wrong amount is easiest to catch. Show each line in real units, the price per unit and the total, with a reply address for anyone who spots a mistake.

Staff who cut and weigh the orders should work from the same wording. A packing slip that says 12 metres leaves no room for guessing.

If a roll ran short and an order had to go in two pieces, say so in an email before the parcel leaves, not after it arrives.

The counter-case

A shop that sells a few fixed sizes, such as rope in ten-metre and twenty-metre coils, can list them as ordinary products and skip most of this.

A business whose cut-to-order sales mostly come from trade customers who phone may keep those sales off the website for now, and sell fixed packs online.

Where customers do buy by length or weight online, though, set the unit, name it everywhere and confirm the measured total before the card is charged.

The order to do it in

1. Choose the smallest unit you actually sell.
2. Price that unit and let the cart multiply.
3. Put the unit in every product name.
4. Explain one unit beside the quantity box.
5. Set and state a minimum where cutting needs one.
6. Show real units in the cart and confirmation.
7. Charge weighed items only once the total is known.

Step four prevents most wrong orders. Customers read the line beside the box at the moment they type the number, which is the only moment the careful wording in the description would have helped.

Making the second order as easy as the first is covered in a reorder button for customers who buy monthly.

Frequently asked questions

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