8 Essential Shipping Strategies for eCommerce Stores
Unless you are not drop shipping or a big enough organization to utilize a distribution center yet, you would actually be delivering the products yourself when you launch the ecommerce business first. However, it may be a frustrating task to work out your delivery plan, and how you can deliver the shipments to your clients. Where do you continue with hundreds of variables, to consider?
This post will take you through all of your shipping strategy’s major variables that you need to consider when shipping your packages so you can get your product into the hands of your customer in a way that impresses them while keeping your business profitable.
It’s crucial to note that, with time, the shipping approach can shift. These may make improvements to the packing products, the process with unboxing, the way with naming the items, whether you bill consumers or also the delivery carriers you choose. There are other ways too. Offering customized packaging is a great idea. You just need to integrate a custom packaging designer such as ImprintNext and you are done. Customers design the package as per their own tastes and preference that you print and ship them.
It is crucial to decide a starting point and to adjust when you move, either for a better consumer experience, higher productivity, or higher effectiveness.
1. Create Product Unboxing:
One of the first items you are going to want to remember when it comes to your own shipping plan is what sort of service you are going to try to give to your customers. A packaged unboxing experience boosts excitement and gets the product ever more ready for consumers to pick up. This can have a major effect on the business, but from both a financial and a productivity viewpoint it comes at an expense.
Just how critical is a successful experience of unboxing customers? Ok, according to Youtube, unboxing videos have received 57 percent more views since last year, and unboxing video uploads have risen by more than 50 percent.
Deciding the impression you want your consumers to have before opening the package will help drive the choices for the remainder of your shipping plan.
You will see the real product unboxing process for the Finch Goods brand below. Because they are curating higher quality, well-made men’s items, they also decided to show certain values in their packaging and unboxing experience.
2. Calculate Shipping Rates:
Your product size and weight are one of the key deciding variables for delivery costs. You’ll want the package to be carefully designed to ensure sure it’s wide enough to carry the goods but not being so broad that it inflates the shipping costs.
You will want to suggest storing 2-3 separate package sizes to minimize delivery costs and you can pick the most suitable one for each order.
3. Shipping costs based on Location:
Beyond the package’s size and weight, the place and destination that departs are often a significant cost factor. Nonetheless, there’s not anything you would possibly do here, it’s necessary to bear that in mind if and when you get large enough to use a warehouse for fulfillment.
You will pick a warehouse closer to the majority of your clients by evaluating previous transactions and their locations, raising the average shipping costs.
4. Insurance:
Insurance and monitoring are two very critical factors, which can be an essential part of your shipping policy depending on what you offer.
Tracking nearly often comes at an additional expense by improved delivery and may be useful not just to show you’ve shipped the order, but also for the consumer experience. Several customers anticipate a certain degree of monitoring which helps to add to their package’s excitement of receiving and opening.
Insurance will many times be included, but may only cover your merchandise up to a certain amount (usually around $100). If you’re shipping higher value items, you may want to purchase additional insurance to make sure you’re covered. This can be done on a case-by-case basis when you have concerns about a particular location or customer.
If you regularly ship high-value items or items that are easy to break or be damaged in shipping, you may want to consider using a third-party insurance provider that will cover all your packages automatically. For third-party package insurance providers, check out ShipSurance and Insurship.
5. Customs and Duties:
One of the biggest challenges that you’ll face as a retailer that sells across international borders is customs and duties. As a seller, it’s hard to know what extra fees the goods would generate from each country. Customs and customs duties also generate confusion for all parties.
Be sure to make it clear to your customers when it comes to your own shipping strategy that you are not able to control the customs and duties fees they may incur and that it is determined individually by each country. This may be difficult for consumers to realize that after they get their order they get paid again, but make sure you’re as transparent as practicable on the webpage that it’s an expense that’s outside the influence and that you don’t get money on.
6. Cheapest Way To Ship:
Since it includes too many factors. You should keep in mind, though, that each carrier has strengths and disadvantages, and is best placed to support various companies.
The USPS and Canada Post are stronger and more effective at transporting tiny parcels, documents, and flat items, and they are often much greater than private delivery companies when shipping to suburban areas, also referred to as the “last mile.” Nevertheless, private carriers such as DHL, FedEx, and UPS have built up their businesses and the capacity to transport bigger and heavy parcels. However, they may be less effective, and thus more expensive, to distribute to residences versus companies.
The best way to determine your cheapest shipping method is to experiment with different shipping courier calculators and always select the type of destination for your business (i.e. home delivery vs. business delivery) and to test multiple destination locations, including the same city as you, across the country from you and common international locations.
7. Packaging:
Your packaging is very important. As stated at the beginning of this post, it is a key determinant of shipping costs, but it can also enhance or undermine the overall customer experience.
Choosing your packaging materials carefully can ensure that you provide your customers with a great deal of experience that they want to share, while also keeping you profitable.
8. Label Printing:
Labeling can be time-consuming, so you’ll want to think about how to label and print postage for each package. Starting with the package, you can write the shipping address and return the address directly to the package. This can be a quick way to get started, but it’s also time-consuming once you start shipping orders regularly.
Many eCommerce platforms can help with this by allowing you to print shipping addresses right from your order summary page, which you can then stick to your packing tape package.
Alternatively, you can also opt for label stickers available from any office store, which will make your presentation a little cleaner. (Create a funny meme for free using the Itmemes meme maker tool)
Conclusion:
Getting your packages from point A to point B isn’t supposed to be that hard. Unfortunately, with the number of variables involved in shipping, the shipping strategy you choose will rarely be perfect for the first time. Rather, your shipping strategy should be a continuous process that you constantly evaluate to ensure that you deliver the best possible experience to customers while maintaining profitability and efficiency for your business.
