Shipping protection setup

The Shipping Protection widget offers shoppers an opt-in toggle that adds a small protection fee to their order. Because Shopify carts can only contain products, that fee has to be a real product in your store — Cartie will create and publish one for you, or adopt one you already have.

#First-time setup

1. 1
   Add the widget

   Drop Shipping Protection into a cart in the builder. The setup window opens the first time.

2. 2
   Choose your fee product

   Create one for me makes a non-physical product at the price you enter and publishes it to your Online Store. Select a product adopts a protection product you already created.

3. 3
   Set the presentation

   Pick how the opt-in is drawn — a checkout button with an opt-out under it, a card with a toggle, or a checkbox line. Title, description, icon and fee are edited in the widget's normal settings panel afterwards.

4. 4
   Publish the cart

   The toggle goes live with the cart.

#Requirements

• The fee product must be published to the Online Store sales channel — otherwise it cannot be added to a cart, and shoppers get an error when they flip the toggle.
• Cartie needs product and publication permissions, which are granted when you install the app.
• The product should be non-physical (no shipping required) so it does not add shipping weight or trigger fulfilment.

#Flat fee or percentage of the order

Flat fee charges every shopper the same amount — edit Protection fee in the widget settings and republish, and Cartie updates the variant price in Shopify.

Percentage of order scales the fee with the cart, which is how most stores price protection. Set the percentage and a minimum and maximum, then press Build price ladder. Shopify charges whatever a product variant costs, so there is no way to charge 2% of an arbitrary cart without a variant at that price — the ladder is a set of priced variants Cartie adds to your protection product, and the cart picks the right one as the shopper's basket changes.

#Working with your existing protection app

Pick the provider in Who provides protection at the top of the widget settings. Cartie then draws the opt-in and puts the provider's own fee line in the cart, so from their side the order looks exactly as it would have through their widget — claims, reporting and payouts are untouched.

• Your auto-add setting carries over. Navidium and Captain publish whether protection starts on, and Cartie reads it — so if your cart adds protection automatically today, it still will. For Corso, Route and Cartie's own fee there is no setting to read, so mirror it under Starting state in the widget.
• A shopper who removes protection is never asked again. The decline is recorded on their cart, so it survives page changes and a return visit. Cartie will not re-add a fee somebody just deleted.
• Product exclusions are honoured. If your provider refuses to cover a product, Cartie hides the offer on carts containing it rather than selling coverage that would not be paid out.
• The fee never counts as merchandise. Free-shipping bars, rewards ladders and volume discounts all subtract a protection fee before they measure progress, whichever app collected it — so a $72 cart plus a $3.50 fee does not falsely unlock a $75 free-shipping threshold.
• Multi-currency is not verified yet. If you sell in more than one currency, test the fee in each market before going live.
• Subscription carts are not verified yet. If protection has to apply to subscription orders, test one before going live.

#Where the opt-in appears

Checkout button with an opt-out is the default for a new widget: a checkout button that adds protection, with a smaller "continue without protection" button under it. Both go to checkout, so the shopper answers the question instead of having to notice a control. It checks out on its own, so it takes the place of your Checkout Button widget: leave one in the layout and the cart draws only this one, so the shopper never sees two buttons. Pin it to the cart footer. Card with a toggle is a bordered card with your icon, copy and a switch. Checkbox line above the checkout button is a single compact line — drag the widget directly above your checkout button to use it. Both checkout-adjacent layouts see far more opt-ins than a separate card, which reads as one more thing to scroll past.

#Should you offer it?

Order protection is real revenue with no cost of goods, but it is a promise. Decide in advance what you will actually do when a protected order is lost or damaged — replace it, refund it, or file with the carrier — and say so in the widget description. Some markets regulate anything presented as insurance; if in doubt, present it as a shipping guarantee you honour yourself rather than as an insurance policy.