How to Choose a Tariff Strategy for Your Ecommerce Checkout

Tariffs can be difficult to manage during checkout, especially when the amount depends on the customer, shipping destination, product origin, or individual product components.

The right approach depends on the data available to your team, the systems involved, and how much certainty you can provide when a buyer places an order. Optimizely Commerce Connect supports several ways to incorporate tariff costs into checkout, each with different tradeoffs in accuracy, implementation effort, and customer experience.

In this video, we walk through three approaches: real-time tariff calculations, preauthorization workflows, and pricing adjustments.

Why Tariff Calculations Aren’t One-Size-Fits-All

Tariffs may vary based on several factors, including:

Where the order is shipping

Where a product or its components originated

How the product is classified

Customer-specific agreements or exemptions

The information available in your ecommerce, ERP, and fulfillment systems

That complexity makes it important to understand not only what Optimizely can support, but also which approach fits your operational needs and the experience you want to provide buyers.

Three Ways to Manage Tariffs in Checkout

1. Preauthorize the Order and Determine Tariffs Later

In more complex situations, the tariff amount may not be known at checkout. One option is to display the tariff as “to be determined,” authorize the payment, and have the ERP calculate the final total after the order has been reviewed.

This approach can provide operational flexibility when a real-time calculation isn’t practical, but clear communication is essential. Buyers should understand:

Which part of the total is still being calculated

When they will receive the final amount

Whether the final charge could exceed the initial authorization

Whether they will have an opportunity to review or approve the updated total

What happens if they choose not to proceed

The workflow should be designed around both your internal process and the amount of uncertainty your customers are comfortable accepting.

2. Calculate Tariffs in Real Time

A real-time approach uses an API or another connected service to calculate the tariff while the buyer is checking out.

This may be a good fit when your product classifications, origin data, customer information, and shipping details are accurate and readily available. It can give buyers greater certainty before they submit an order.

However, real-time calculations depend on the reliability of the data and services involved. Your team should also consider what happens if a required system is unavailable or the necessary product information is incomplete.

3. Incorporate Tariffs Into Product Pricing

Some businesses may choose to account for tariff costs through product pricing rather than showing a separate checkout charge.

This can create a simpler buying experience, especially when tariff costs are relatively predictable. However, your team will need to determine how those costs are distributed across products, customers, and markets—and how frequently prices should be reviewed as tariff conditions change.

This approach may be less suitable when tariff costs vary significantly by destination, customer, or individual order.

How to Choose the Right Approach

Before selecting a tariff strategy, here’s what we recommend reviewing:

Do you have reliable product-origin and classification data?

Can the final amount be calculated accurately during checkout?

Which systems need to exchange information?

How frequently do the applicable tariffs change?

Do customer-specific rules or exemptions apply?

How much checkout delay or price uncertainty will your buyers accept?

How will exceptions, failed calculations, and order changes be handled?

There may not be one approach that works for every order. Depending on the business rules, Optimizely Commerce Connect can support different workflows for different products, customers, or markets.

What You’ll Find in the Video

0:00–0:15 — How Optimizely Commerce Connect can support flexible tariff workflows

0:15–0:30 — The customer, shipping, and product variables that make tariff calculations complex

0:30–0:50 — Three approaches: real-time calculations, preauthorization, and pricing adjustments

0:50–1:30 — How a “to be determined” tariff workflow with payment preauthorization can work

2:15–2:45 — Discover how Optimizely Commerce Connect can adapt to your specific needs and enhance your eCommerce processes.

A Practical Next Step

The goal isn’t simply to add a tariff line to checkout. It’s to create a process that gives your business the flexibility it needs while giving buyers as much clarity as possible.

Start by mapping the variables that affect tariff costs, identifying where the required data lives, and determining when the final amount can be calculated reliably. That will give your team a clearer basis for choosing between real-time calculations, a preauthorization workflow, pricing adjustments, or a combination of approaches.

Need Help Evaluating the Options?

We can help you understand the technical and customer-experience tradeoffs, map the systems involved, and determine which approach fits your checkout process.

Contact us to talk through your tariff requirements.