Does your ecommerce shipping strategy actually help you grow your sales?
Answering this question goes beyond offering attractive shipping rates.
Whether you sell in your domestic market or ship globally, there are a number of proven shipping practices and tactics that can successfully increase your online sales.
In this article, we’ll share with you:
Here’s how to use shipping to grow your sales!
Last Updated on November 3, 2023 by Zeljko Drazovic
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Ecommerce shipping includes all services required to transport products purchased online from a seller to the customer’s delivery destination. This also involves addressing customer delivery needs.
The following best practices will help you grow your ecommerce sales:
Different buyers, different needs. It’s not only about the products and brands that they choose, but also the delivery options that they can select.
Online buyers have different delivery preferences.
If the buyer:
Ecommerce sellers should offer their customers multiple delivery options to address their specific needs and improve their customer experience. This is even more important when you sell and ship globally. For instance, one of the key delivery options in Poland are smart parcel lockers called “paczkomaty”: not providing this option for Polish buyers may cost sellers a lot of lost orders.
Additionally, in the current reality, it’s important to address the needs of buyers affected by Brexit, i.e. those ordering goods that have to cross the UK-EU border.
Consider offering Brexit-affected buyers 2 options:
Note that not all marketplaces will allow you to offer both DDU and DDP, but DDU only. On such marketplaces, you need to estimate taxes/duties and include them as a fixed amount in the shipping price.
To minimize your shipping costs, take a closer look at your shipping rates, especially when you sell and ship internationally. For example, do you have a flat rate set for all countries from a particular region? Or do you have a flat rate set for a group of similar items?
Now consider this.
Let’s say you sell products from the UK. You may have one shipping rate for the EU, one rate for the rest of Europe and one for the rest of the world.
However, what if shipping from the UK to Germany is much cheaper than shipping from the UK to Italy? In this case, the same rate for the two countries is not the most cost-efficient option!
The bottom line:
It would make more sense to set a shipping rate per country. You can go even further and set your shipping rates per country and per item/listing.
Additionally, if you sell on multiple marketplaces (e.g. on eBay, Amazon, cDiscount, etc.) make sure that your shipping prices are consistent across all platforms. This way conversion rates on a given marketplace won’t be impacted by your shipping prices.
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If you ship a higher volume of fast-moving items to a given location, you’ll probably be better off having inventory closer to your end customers. For example, if you’re a British online seller trading in the USA, consider storing fast-moving items in warehouses closer to your US customers.
If you ship internationally, fulfillment centers can significantly shorten shipping times. Shipping products in-country eliminates the hassle and delays of cross-border commerce. One way to deliver goods quickly and efficiently across the borders is to use a fulfilment center, e.g. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
Advantages of using a fulfillment center:
Marketplace fulfillment solutions help sellers:
Using fulfilment centers may be even more important in the post-Brexit reality as moving goods across the EU-UK border has become less straightforward and prone to shipping delays.
However, bear in mind that using fulfilment centers may put some extra demands on your business. For instance, you need a VAT number in the country where you store your goods (e.g. if you use a warehouse in France, you need a French VAT number).
Further, If you use a marketplace fulfilment solution, you need to pay extra if you sell products outside of that marketplace. Additionally, you usually need to pay a premium if your items are stored for a long time.
Never surprise your customers with unexpected shipping costs: they won’t like it. The psychological barrier is significant here and many buyers will abandon your shopping cart.
So either remove the shipping cost or make it clear upfront that there is one to pay.
Removing shipping costs and offering free shipping means that you add them to the item price. For example, instead of asking £8 for an item and £2 for shipping (total £10), ask for £10 and say you will ship the order for free.
Ecommerce fulfillment demands are driven by increasing consumer expectations, the need to enhance customer experience and the continuous pursuit of speed and efficiency.
Buyers tend to feel particularly distressed when it takes too long for the parcel to arrive. The risk of shipping delays seems much higher when goods have to travel across borders, which can cost your customer lots of stress and yourself some bad reviews!
Keep up with online buyers’ delivery expectations:
In light of our planet’s finite resources, consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the need for sustainability. In fact, the pandemic has deepened consumers’ environmental concerns.
What’s your online business’s take on environmental issues?
Based on IBM’s “Meet the 2020 consumers driving change” report:
No wonder that more and more buyers are looking for products and brands that align with their eco-friendly values.
The result? Retail is going green.
To gain eco-conscious customers’ loyalty, sellers should strive to create more sustainable & greener practices for their businesses, for example by:
Finally, collaboration in the shipping industry increasingly involves implementing environmentally-friendly practices and green initiatives. Endeavours to limit high levels of pollution created by the freight industry is likely to have a pretty big impact on the ecommerce sector.
Most online sellers feel confident about delivering goods on their local markets. Unfortunately, their experience and expertise often fall short when they sell goods across borders.
Even though it’s possible for sellers to manage international shipping without using an automated solution, in many cases this means:
Webinterpret’s AI-powered shipping solution helps marketplace sellers streamline and optimize their domestic and international shipping processes by:
As buyer expectations of ecommerce shipping are increasing, sellers need to continuously strive for speed and efficiency as well as impeccable customer experience. This is also important when goods are delivered internationally.
Staying on top of the shipping game also means considering:
Don’t wait to grow your sales with your shipping!
Webinterpret enables online retailers and marketplace sellers on eBay and Amazon to instantly expand worldwide and boost their online sales.
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