Customize Cart Messages in WooCommerce easily

In this post, we will see what are the WooCommerce Cart Messages, when and where they are shown, why you might want to customize Cart Messages in WooCommerce, and how to do it.

In WooCommerce, shipping methods are an essential part of the checkout process. Customers need to know what shipping options are available and how much they will cost, and, if there is more than one available, choose between them. However, there are times when there may be no available shipping options for a particular customer or order. This is when Cart Messages come into play.

What are Cart Messages in WooCommerce?

When a customer tries to check out with products in their cart, they might encounter a situation where there are no available shipping methods for their location or the products they’ve selected, or a combination of both situations: some products can’t be delivered in some regions. This can be frustrating for the customer, as they may not understand why they can’t proceed with their purchase. It’s in this case when WooCommerce will show the Cart Messages.

There are 4 distinct Cart Messages in WooCommerce. We will see later which ones are shown in each case. Out of the box, WooCommerce doesn’t give you a way to customize it, and they are so vague or unspecific, because should fit all online shops and use cases. Customizing this messages can reduce abandoned carts and build customer confidence.

It’s helpful to customize the WooCommerce cart messages to provide clear information to the customer about why there are no shipping options available, and what they can do to resolve the issue. By providing helpful messaging, you can reduce customer frustration and improve the overall shopping experience on your site.

Reasons for the “not available shipping methods” aka WooCommerce Cart Messages:

These are the most common scenarios where the “not available shipping methods” message appears:

1. The customer hasn’t entered his address yet (and our WooCommerce settings does not set any address by default)
2. The customer’s location is not serviced by any of the available shipping methods.
3. The customer has selected items that are not able to be shipped or require special shipping arrangements.
4. The weight or size of the items in the customer’s cart exceeds the limitations of the available shipping methods.

When any of these scenarios occur, the customer needs to be informed of the issue and provided with guidance on how to proceed. This is where WooCommerce displays a Cart Message. These messages are designed to inform the customer about the status of their shipping options and provide guidance on what to do next.

The four WooCommerce Cart Messages

Here are the four messages you might encounter when there are no available shipping methods in WooCommerce, and when each message is displayed.

The first two messages may appear at a stage prior to calculating shipping costs, and therefore should be considered informative messages that guide the normal purchase process.

The last two, on the other hand, indicate that no shipping methods are available and, therefore, the purchase cannot be completed—either because we have deliberately blocked certain products in specific regions, or because there is an issue with the configuration of our shipping methods:

“Shipping costs are calculated during checkout”

This cart message is displayed on the cart page only when:

• The customer hasn’t entered a shipping address.
• The shipping calculator is disabled in WooCommerce cart page.

It’s a neutral reminder that shipping will be calculated later, during checkout.

If you don’t want this message to appear, you can activate the shipping calculator in cart page, in WooCommerce settings:

“Enter your address to view shipping options“

This message is displayed in the cart or checkout pages, when a customer hasn’t entered their shipping address yet, and if you are on cart, you have the shipping calculator enabled, unlike the previous case. It prompts the customer to enter their address so that shipping options can be displayed.

Shown on the cart or checkout page when:

• The customer hasn’t entered their address.
• On the cart, the shipping calculator is enabled (please, see the previous case).

It prompts the user to add an address so shipping options can be displayed.

“No shipping options were found for %s.“

Appears on the cart page, when:

• An address is entered, but no shipping methods are available.

Usually caused by:

• No shipping methods are available for the given address.
• Some product can’t be shipped to that location.
• Misconfigured shipping zones.

It informs the customer that there are no shipping options available and should provide a suggestion on how to proceed, customer will be stopped on next step: the checkout.

The “%s” variable is replaced with the formatted destination (may be different due the country)

“There are no shipping options available. Please ensure that your address has been entered correctly, or contact us if you need any help.“

Shown only on the checkout page when:

• No shipping methods are available for the given address.
• Some product can’t be shipped to that location.
• Misconfigured shipping zones.

It informs the customer that there are no shipping options available and should provide a suggestion on how to proceed, as our customer can’t advance at this point.

Customize Cart Messages in WooCommerce: Contextual, Conditional, and Easy as child’s play

At the end of this post we will show you the way to customise the cart messages programmatically. But maybe you find hard to achieve it. Or simply want a visual way to keep and update the cart messages. Or you want to do it conditionally, based on the cart products, informing our customer exactly what they need to do in order to complete the purchase.

And this is where the Advanced Shipping Rates for WooCommerce special action appears: “Change cart totals messages“. You can set this action in any shipping rule, or in several of them, thus modifying the messages in a conditional and, even better, contextual way: each rule can set different messages if it is fulfilled (typically, exclusion rules, accompanied by the special action “abort shipping method” or “hide other shipping methods“).

For example, imagine we want to set a minimum basket price of $30 for shipping, and messages that say exactly this:

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Customize Cart Messages in WooCommerce is only available in Advanced Shipping Rates for WooCommerce Pro. You can use it together with all the other powerful features. Here you can compare the two versions: Free & Pro.

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How to customize WooCommerce Cart Messages programmatically

As you can see in the WooCommerce template /cart/cart-shipping.php, or you may have overridden it in your theme (under the path: your-theme/woocommerce/cart/cart-shipping.php), the four messages are filtered before printing, so we can hook and replace them:

Here is the code. You can add it to your functions.php file on your theme, or add it to a custom plugin:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_shipping_not_enabled_on_cart_html', 'custom_not_shipping_on_cart' );
function custom_not_shipping_on_cart( $ message ) {
    /* Default message: Shipping costs are calculated during checkout. */
    return 'Please, go to checkout to see the shipping costs.';
}

add_filter( 'woocommerce_shipping_may_be_available_html', 'custom_shipping_calculated_message' );
function custom_shipping_calculated_message( $ message ) {
    /* Default message: Enter your address to view shipping options. */
    return 'Please, enter your address here to view shipping options.';
}

add_filter( 'woocommerce_cart_no_shipping_available_html', 'custom_no_shipping_message', 10, 2 );
function custom_no_shipping_message( $message, $formatted_destination ) {
    /* Default message: No shipping options were found for %s.*/
    $message = sprintf( We currently do not ship to your location: %s. Please contact customer support for assistance', $formatted_destination );
    return $message;
}

add_filter( 'woocommerce_no_shipping_available_html', 'custom_shipping_calculated_message' );
function custom_shipping_calculated_message( $ message ) {
    /* Default message: There are no shipping options available. Please ensure that your address has been entered correctly, or contact us if you need any help. */
    return 'Enter your address to view shipping options and calculate shipping costs.';
}