Shipping Strategies for your E commerce Business
Did you know that the shipping strategy you set up for your eCommerce store plays a crucial role in influencing customer’s purchase decision? Devising a right shipping strategy at the right time is critical in the success of online business. Implementing an efficient shipping method will surely win more customers, increase conversion rates as well as improve customer loyalty. Following are the 3 commonly used shipping strategies in any e-commerce platform.

Free Shipping
When you build an online store, the free shipping strategy is considered to be the best to attract customers. Studies also show that among the different kinds of strategies eCommerce firms offer to lure customers, free shipping is the most common. This is the best promotional offer that has worked to increase online sales. Also offering free shipping has shown to lower shopping cart abandonment rates.

However, offering free shipping to your customers means you got to pay the shipping charges from your own pocket. In other words, the free shipping charges indirectly eat away your profit margin. A better option to compensate for the loss you have to bear on free shipping is to increase all your product prices. Raising product prices is a good strategy as you can still sell products with a higher profit margin despite offering free shipping.

Some ecommerce firms prefer to lower profit margin when offering free shipping. Others prefer to increase product prices marginally. In this case, the shipping charges get distributed among the customers and ecommerce firm owners as well. You can any of these free shipping strategies as they have been found to be beneficial in running an ecommerce business successfully.

Set up Real-time Carrier Shipping
This method involves calculating shipping rates in real time from your shipping carriers. This method is accurate as you get the price from various couriers in real time, so there is no question of undercharging or overcharging your customers. For this to happen, you need to collaborate in real-time with different couriers like FedEX so that you receive live streaming of information including shipping cost.

In other words your online store software should integrate with the software program used by courier companies to get real time shipping rates. So once the customer places the order, the shipping cost is immediately calculated in real time, which is usually based on total weight. This strategy ensures that the customer is charged with the most accurate rate of shipping cost.

Charge Flat Rates
This is yet another shipping method that is found to be useful in preventing customers from abandoning their shopping cart. Flat rate shipping method involves charging a fixed price irrespective of the size or weight of the product. For instance, an offer of $2 shipping on all orders amounting up to $400 is a perfect example of flat shipping rate. As you can see, here shipping flat rates are set for a predetermined order amount.

In the case of flat rate shipping, customers are completely aware of shipping charges that they have to pay at the time of placing orders. This shipping strategy is also found to be helpful in encouraging customers to buy now. Ecommerce firms selling products of similar size and weight usually opt for this shipping strategy to attract customers.

On the whole, whichever shipping strategy you implement for your online store, ensure that the visitors are made aware of it. For that to happen, advertise your shipping method on every web page of your website. If your shipping strategy you offer meets the customers’ expectation, it can definitely help to maximize profits.