Shipping is one of those unpopular but crucial things that every eCommerce company has to deal with. If you plan on setting up an eCommerce store and no matter what size you are, you want to do it well for yourself and for your customers.
A major cost for online sellers is shipping and how it is handled has a direct effect on both sales and the bottom line. In a perfect world, sellers would want customers to happily pay the actual costs of shipping orders. However, thanks to websites like Amazon, online shoppers expect free or very low-cost flat rate shipping fees every time they shop.
Therefore, it is no surprise that high shipping charges is the leading cause for low sales. If you charge for shipping, then you probably would have experienced this in your online store. Good news is that you can minimize the effect of lost sales by offering customer-friendly shipping options. When done right, you can even boost orders values and increase your profit margins.
Shipping is often the “make or break” point of a consumer’s online purchase. If shipping cost is too high, not offered via their preferred shipping carrier, or perhaps even inconvenient in some way, a potential customer is more than happy to abandon their shopping cart so search elsewhere.
When you set up your own online store, you must decide how you want to send your products to customers and how much to charge them for shipping. There are many ways to avoid losing your customers over a mere shipping setting, though. Below are some shipping options to consider when selling online in order to grow your store and make your customers happy.
Calculate shipping costs
The cost of sending your products to the buyers are affected by different factors. They are:
- Package weight and dimensions. Shipping carriers calculate shipping charges based on the actual weight of the package or its dimensional weight.
- Shipping destination. Your shipping costs will be higher if you offer international shipping in your store.
- Value of shipped products. If the products you sell are high-value products, you may want to insure their shipment and this will increase shipping costs.
- Delivery times. Some buyers prefer to pay for expedited shipping and this cost is based on where the buyer is located.
After you find a shipping service to use from https://www.shiply.com/us, you can calculate your shipping costs to make sure your margins can stay high. By doing so, you can choose a shipping strategy and decide the price to sell your products. If you have a high margin, you want to absorb the cost of shipping domestic orders and offer free shipping to your customers.
You can also choose to charge your customers the exact amount that you pay for getting their order shipped. If you have just started your online business and sell locally, you can offer a local pickup, or deliver the ordered goods yourself. You can also use simple packaging for orders and hand-write shipping labels to reduce expenses at the start.