How Shipping Strategies Influence Your Online Business Activity

Offering free shipping is something not dedicated because everyone loves free stuff or paying for shipping is extra painful...honestly it is a trick to increase your sales volume. But when does it make sense for you to offer it?

The Pros and Cons of Various Shipping Options

Figuring out your shipping strategy is determining a solution that cuts into your margins as little as possible yet remains attractive to your customers. This post outlines a few factors you’ll need to consider when deciding whether or not to offer Free Shipping and, which one. Let’s go in detail.

1.       Offer a Flat Rate for Every Package

Despite the fact that this is one of the most prominent methods to charging for shipping, it requires a bit of preparation as you need to figure out your average cost of shipping a package. Also, you need to make sure that you don't drastically undercharge or overcharge your customers but delivering the product in a reasonable amount of time.

An important highlight in flat rate shipping is to figure out what flat rate works for you, and if you need to do it by order totals or weight ranges- will require some testing.

2.       Setup Real-Time Shipping Quotes

Take for instance, the very popular shopping cart solution like Magento ecommerce where it's possible to setup real-time shipping quotes. Means, customers will pay more or less the same price what you would pay to ship your products.

However, the small discrepancy here is you might end up breaking even between the shipping charges you collect and what you ultimately have to pay to ship the package.

3.       Offering Free Shipping Depending On Your Margins

This is a sure-fire way to get your customer's attention. Displaying 'Free Shipping' on your website will require you to either absorb the cost or slightly increase your prices to cover it.

In order to follow this practise requires a lot of research time to understand your numbers and make the right decision. It includes

·         How much each of your products actually costs to ship,

·         What’s your competitors handle shipping, and

·         Your allowable profit margin

 The best ways to ship your products or services is enabling the most strategic decision possible and taking the advice of an expertise even while developing your ecommerce website can be prudent.