What if the online retailer has multiple suppliers drop shipping and a customer enters a multiple piece order to be fulfilled by more than one supplier?  Is there any way to avoid the customer having to pay two shipping fees?

Unfortunately in this case there are actually two separate movements from two different locations and so there are two transportation fees involved in the movement.  The only alternative is for you as the online retailer to eat one of the two transportation costs.

When you have a large variety of products, a range or flat rate is difficult to estimate, at least for new online retailers. 

Online retailers need accurate shipping rates but find it hard to do so given the variety of destinations.  How can one get a better fix on the shipping costs quoted so that online retailers’customers don’t get ugly surprises?

UPS has a tool that can help with obtaining real time rates.  The tool is called the UPS Rate and Service Selection Tool.  The UPS  Rates and Service Selection Tool returns rates for available UPS domestic and international services.  And the rates provided include all applicable shipping surcharges such as the fuel surcharge and delivery area surcharge.  The online retailer will need to provide the package information for each product (weight, length, width and height) and as mentioned before, make sure these are the package characteristics not the product characteristics. 

The customer will simply need to provide their destination zip code to generate the rate.  Some online retailers ask for this information as soon as the customer enters the site while others request it once a shopping cart is checked out.  Since most online retailers’ customer addresses tend to be residential you’ll want to ask your customer to input not only the zip code but also the street information in order to determine whether it’s a residential or commercial delivery and assign the appropriate rate.