How to add UK postcodes to a region

If you ship to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and its crown dependencies, you may want to find which would be the easiest and most efficient way to add the postcodes to determine your shipping zones better.

You may want to get familiar with the different Region Rule types as they will help you create regions limited by just one postcode or multiple postcodes at a time.

Note: These recommendations are useful for all Shopify stores that ship to countries with alphanumeric postcodes, including Argentina, Brunei, Canada, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Malta, the Netherlands, Peru, Somalia, the United Kingdom, and Swaziland. Nevertheless, examples in this article use the United Kingdom of Great Britain postcode format.

Let’s explore your different options to create effective matching rules for your regions:

Single rules

If you want to aim for a very specific location, then you may want to use a single rule which means you’ll use the exact postcode:

E1 0AD

However, using single rules may make the process of setting up your shipping region slower than needed. Additionally, you may want to cover more comprehensive ranges while setting your shipping regions. This is why you may use the Wildcard rule. This is a very useful rule when you want to target a narrow or broad set of alphanumeric postcodes.

Wildcard rules

If you want to target all postcodes that start with specific characters, as in E1, we’d recommend using this in you Matching rules space:

E1 *

This will encompass all postcodes that start with E1, such as E1 0AA or E1 5RG. But be careful; the position of the asterisk matters. If you place it one space before E1* then this will include all postcodes that start with E1, regardless of them having a space after E1. This means this rule will include postcodes such as E1 0AA, E10 6RF, and E18 2EA.

Wildcard-range rules

Now, let's say your shipping region would include postcodes that start from E1 to E5, you’d like to make it easier and simpler to add them. So, instead of adding 5 different lines with the wildcard rules E1 *, E2 *, E3 *, E4 *, and E5 *, you may just add a wild-card range rule.

How do they work?

In this case, you we’ll create a range that encompasses all postcodes that start from E1 to all postcodes that start with E5. So, you’ll need to add a rule as:

E1 *-E5 *

Please note how, once more, it’s important to consider the number of characters between the asterisk on both sides of the rule. This means that if the side before the hyphen has one letter, one number, and a space before the asterisk, the part after the hyphen must contain the same format and the same number of characters. This means that having a wildcard-range rule as E1 *-E15 * won’t work, and the Postcode Shipping app will inform you you’re using the wrong formatting. In this case, consider separating them in two ranges:

E1 *-E9 *
E10 *-E15 *

Does the wildcard-range rule also work with letters?

Yes, it does; you can have a rule for a much smaller region like:

E1 0A*-E1 0S*

Just keep in mind considering the characters used before the asterisk.

Cases in which the wildcard rule won’t work:

Placing the wildcard rule anywhere but the end. The asterisk must always be placed at the end of the postcode, meaning that these examples won’t work:

E1 1*A

TR* 1AA - TR* 5SH

Using more than one asterisk in the rule:

B1* 2*P

B1 **-B7 **

Using different postcode formats when using the wildcard-range rule:

IV1*-IV15 *

Have more questions? Feel free to reach out and our support team will be happy to help!

Updated on: 28/08/2023