These days ecommerce consumers have high expectations when it comes to shipping and as a result if you are not currently offering free shipping you are missing out on the top ecommerce shipping tip I can offer. Let’s face it, Amazon and other large marketplaces has made it normal to get free shipping and so much so that if a consumer gets to your check out page and sees that shipping charges are being added in, they abandon your ecommerce website and move on to a new location to find the same product with free shipping.
The ecommerce shipping tip may scare novice online sellers because they see the price of the label they are generating and are not sure where to make up that cost from. So let’s get into the details of how many online ecommerce websites offer free shipping to really make it work in their favor.
3 Ways To Offer Free Shipping Ecommerce Shipping Tip:
Add shipping costs into price. This is very common on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon where customers can filter out search results to only show sellers that offer free shipping. As a result, many online marketplace sellers simply add the label cost into their list price and make it free shipping. At the end of the day the customer is paying you the same amount but you are able to offer free shipping and loaded the list price with your shipping costs. This seems basic but you would be surprised how many people do not do this and as a result lose out on many sales since customers expect free shipping and are willing to make the higher price rather than a shipping cost. As an ecommerce shipping tip, you need to understand the mentality of your buyer and for this, always go free shipping and minimally bake that into your price to offset the cost.
Set Free Shipping at a price point. For most online sellers they have included a profit margin which grows exponentially on higher priced items since typically it is a percent based model. As a result, your more expensive items typically can allow for free shipping to be worked into the price and you still walk away up a profit even it if is slightly lower. Always remember it is better to get the sale and make profit even if slightly lower than have something sitting on your shelf forever. As a result you can choose to charge for shipping for your items that are inexpensive but for your items above $50.00 as an example you may already have enough profit baked in to offset shipping so should therefore offer free shipping on those. Alternatively, you may say that if a customer spends more than $50.00 they quality for free shipping since they may be buying many items to get to that price point that individually the profit margin exceeds where you need to be to offer free shipping. This is also a great way to encourage cross sell and drive the average sale up as most customers will add in that extra item to get the free shipping.
Set Free Shipping at an item count. For this ecommerce shipping tip it really comes down to the type of item you may be selling but for many online sellers you can probably fit many items in the same package and not really add to the label cost if a buyer is buying multiple of an item or items. As a result you can decide as an easy ecommerce shipping tip is to say if you buy three or more of an item it qualifies for free shipping since at that point the three items gives you the profit margin to offset the free shipping cost. Typically this works best for the smaller items with low weights where you can usually add in multiples and not really add to your label cost based on the weight range the items fall into. When you make this type of free shipping offer you end up putting consumers in a situation where they would pay a few dollars for shipping or if they add one or two more items to their cart they get free shipping and in their minds, they pay a little more but get more and no money wasted on shipping so it is worth it.
At the end of the day each ecommerce business owner has different challenges to face when it comes to shipping costs but the one thing that every ecommerce owner faces is that customers expect free shipping. As an ecommerce shipping tip you really need to figure out how to offer free shipping within your business. These three tips can help you come up with ways to offer free shipping without losing money on your sale but still being able to make the offer. Again, free shipping for lower weight items is much easier to come up with ways to make it happen. Obviously if you are selling heavy items, you will need to charge for shipping but in those cases, customer expectation is also very different for it as they would expect charges for delivery.
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