According to reports, the sales volume of the eCommerce industry has topped around $2.5 trillion last year. As the eCommerce market is booming, the expectations of people are also growing. And everything is settling down to the key element known as shipping. As around 40% of the online clients refuse to return to the online retailer after facing a negative delivery experience, getting the shipping in shape has become even more critical.
To be specific, sorting your shipping is a lot more than offering free freight. So, every online eCommerce business owner should consider the carriers that can get their orders where these need to be shipped. Also consider the services to implement like a few hours, next day or same day. Another thing to consider is the way to manage the order from the perspective of packing, picking and dispatching.
So, here are a few tips that can help you in this regard:
- Get the eCommerce shipping policy in the right place: The majority of the online shoppers often abandon the carts because of slow delivery times or high shipping costs. With the availability of more options than ever, the demands of the online customers are increasing and they want everything for free now. Although this is a great thing for the customers, keeping up as the online retailer often becomes really costly as well as logistically tiring. So, it is necessary to spend a certain time looking at all the options and then put the right shipping policy in place. Even if you have got one, reviewing the shipping industry trends on a regular basis can help you to keep up with the client expectations.
- Carrier: At the present time, the voice of the customers is more important than ever. Here convenience and choice play important roles in pushing the online conversions. Therefore, selecting the right carrier is important to make your online business Apart from choosing the right shipping option, managing your eCommerce website properly is also important along with packing, picking and dispatching products.
- Cost: Flat, free or variable? The shipping policy of your company must fit both the requirements of your company as well as your clients. When you consider whether to charge for freight and how, then there are three options that you can count on, namely flat rate, free or variable on the basis of location and weight. With around 80% of the online shoppers considering shipping costs as influential factors, it becomes really important to get things right. No matter which option you choose, ensure that you conduct proper research and display things properly on your website. Hiding the shipping costs until the last step of checkout will result in high rates of cart-abandonment.
- International: In the online world, geographic boundaries are becoming smaller every day. So, in case you are planning to offer international shipping, then perform your research properly regarding international shipping industry trends and decide the ways to manage the process without any hassle.
- Speed: Consider whether you want to deliver the products on the next day or same day. And also check how you are planning to manage the cutoff and pick up times of orders. Next day delivery and same day dispatch are expected now, to conduct thorough research and use the right tools to streamline the shipping process.
- Choose an eCommerce shipping software: Although the majority of the eCommerce platforms now include in-built shipping integrations, these only allow people to manage the online shopping process from a side. So, while the buyers can selecting from a range of shipping options, the method of choosing and booking couriers, updating the tracking details, sending notifications and reporting things- all are done manually.
In the present market, online retailers are always ready to make smart and swift decisions. So, the more time you manually spend dealing with the logistics, the customer experience will be that slower. Here the shipping software can assist you to pack things faster and ship smarter by comparing the rates of shipping. An eCommerce shipping software also helps to pack orders properly, printing the packing slips automatically and then choosing the right carrier for that purpose. As a whole, getting transparency over the cost of shipping can work as a deal breaker here.
- Come up with the right boxing strategy: Although the majority of the retailers mostly concentrate on the packaging aesthetics, the experts now suggest that prioritizing form over function is not a good thing. So, to mitigate the increased shipping cost, it is advisable to follow some smarter shipping industry trends while it comes to preparing the shipments. And these rules include eliminating unnecessary and empty spaces in packaging and to optimize the ways how packages can be composed perfectly to make sure that these can be shipped at the lowest possible rate.
Video – Logistics