In today’s very internet-driven business landscape, being able to compete usually requires the ability to ship products across the country or even the globe to consumers. Unfortunately, shipping products provides some unique challenges to businesses. One of these is cost. If you are having trouble managing the cost of your shipments to consumers, below are some tips that can save you money.
Provide Incentives for In-Store Pick-Up for Online Orders
Of course, one way to bring down the cost of shipping for your company is to lower the number of products you have to ship out each day. If your company has brick-and-mortar stores, you should really try to convince internet shoppers that it’s actually a good idea to pick up their online orders from the store in person.
There are different ways to motivate customers to make this choice. First, you could offer discounts. Obviously, the shipping charge should be waived if the product is picked up in person. However, additional discounts could also be offered. Speed of service, such as allowing pick-up that day, can also be a good motivator.
Convince Shoppers to Spend More on Online Orders
Another way to bring down costs is to increase your revenue on each individual order. This can be done by providing free shipping if a customer spends a certain amount. If you only offer free shipping for a $50 order, an online shopper may be convinced to add extra items into their digital shopping cart to make it over that threshold. You could take this a step further and create tiers in which a shopper pays less for shipping the more they spend on their total order. The extra revenue may be enough to make up for the cost of shipping entirely.
Lower the Cost of Customer Service for Shipping Issues
Another way that shipping costs businesses are that it often results in a need for more customer service. Customer service representatives don’t come free. Even if you outsource, providing quality customer service can be quite expensive. Many shipping issues result in customer service interactions over the phone, in live chat, and via e-mail.
One way to lessen this burden on your company is to make customers more informed about the status of their packages. If you provide GPS Tracking for your shipments, customers can check and see exactly where their orders currently are. With this information, they will have fewer questions to contact support about in regards to the status of their packages.
Implement Flat Rate Shipping
One of the reasons why certain online stores have to spend so much money on shipping is because they have to ship so many products of different sizes, weights, and dimensions. Beyond the difficulty in packing these items, it can also get quite expensive. Even accurately giving customers shipping estimates can be extremely difficult under these circumstances.
Thankfully, there is a solution and that is to use flat rate shipping from USPS and other carriers. That way, almost all orders will be the same price regardless of the weight or specific dimensions of a product. This can help make up for the cost of the differentiation that exists when shipping different products.
Get Discounts Based on Volume
Certain small businesses may only ship out a few products a week. However, if your business is actually much more than this, you really should not be paying the same amount to UPS, FedEx, USPS, or another carrier. Instead, you should contact your carrier about business shipping discounts. If your store’s order volume is high enough, you may be able to receive a decent-sized discount for every package mailed. The shipping carrier has an incentive to do so to prevent you from using another service. The amount mailed out will make up the difference in the discount for them.
Overall, shipping can be both time-consuming and expensive. If you want to stay profitable, you’re going to need to research solutions that cut costs both in terms of what you pay to ship products as well as your employees’ paid time that is spent on managing issues related to shipping and handling. Work with different shipping carriers to devise custom solutions, and deploy options like in-store pickup and free shipping discounts for large order totals to make shipping more cost-effective for your company.