Ecommerce Shipping: Strategies, Solutions & Best Practices
Every online shopper wants to get free shipping but you as a business owner must consider the logistics before you offer free services. There are ways that you can get your shipping costs down and offer your customers discounted shipping. Other than the packaging, special consideration must be taken to ensure that your packages are sent un-harmed so that you avoid having to re-ship and pay for any additional shipping or inventory costs.
Strategies
E-commerce is growing and changing every day and more shipping partners are willing to work with small businesses to get their shipping costs down. You can ship your boxes on pallets to a warehouse and to keep your costs down you can purchase a stretch wrapper to wrap your shipments.
Stretch wrappers will help keep your shipment from moving around during the shipping process. Users of conventional hand film will find that stretch wrapping saves time and is more precise. In the end, you will save time and money by purchasing your own shipping equipment.
Solutions
There are new platforms in which you call build shops and sell items and even applications that people download on their smartphones to buy and sell products each offering different types of eCommerce logistics. These platforms help you by offering solutions for order fulfillment and warehouse space.
If you have a warehouse where you can store your products in major cities you can bring down your shipping costs. The closer the warehouse space is to your customer the less you or your customer will have to pay for out of pocket shipping costs. Warehouses also make one-day delivery options possible.
Best Practices
Honesty is the best policy when it comes to shipping. Measure and weigh all of your items to give your customers a better idea of shipping costs. Typically, if you’re shipping out of the country there could be customs issues and fees so you must ensure that your packages comply with all regulations for that region. If you’re concerned about customs and regulations you can choose to only ship to certain countries.
Try to standardize your shipping fees or eliminate them altogether. You can raise product prices to incorporate shipping fees, pay the entire cost of shipping for your customer, or split the cost of shipping with your customer by offering a flat-rate fee.
Ensure that your packaging is standard for all of your shipments. If you’re shipping items that are not the same size, packaging could be an issue. Try to choose very few packaging sizes that will accommodate your products with bubble wrap or other protective products. Having standard sizes will allow you to offer a low-cost standardized shipping fee.
Shipping essential for eCommerce businesses. You must protect your products while ensuring that your customers pay a fair rate for their products and shipping costs. Keeping your shipping costs low is a great way to reduce the price of shipping for your customers and may allow you to offer free shipping.
For instance, working with a large eCommerce company for logistical purposes and to hold your products in a warehouse. Keep a standard for your packaging with a small range of sizes to cut your costs and buy shipping types of machinery such as a stretch wrapper that will save you time and money.
Free one-day shipping will always catch the eye of a consumer and it is in your best interest to get your shipping costs down so that you can provide this service to your customers. If you disappoint your customers and miss their delivery dates you can potentially lose more clients from a bad review. Work on your shipping strategy today to bring in more clients and reduce your costs!