6 ecommerce shipping best practices you may be missing

When building an ecommerce business, you first focus on designing a product and getting your brand’s message out to new and existing customers. The next step is developing an ecommerce delivery strategy. After all, what good is selling your product if you cannot get it to your customers? But there’s one catch: finding different types of shipping options that work for your company and your customers.

There are a number of ecommerce delivery solutions available. However, you should determine which ecommerce shipping solutions will be the best fit for your company. For instance, you may want to find the cheapest shipping for small business. But, the cheapest types of shipping options may not be best for your small business.

So, how do you find out what will work for your business? One way is to learn how to use a shipping and handling costs calculator. For starters, check out a UPS shipping calculator and calculators for other major carriers to compare rates for ground and air services. Or, help your customers figure out shipping costs by installing a free shipping calculator for website widget on your ecommerce site.

These are just a few general examples. So, let’s look at six specific ecommerce shipping best practices that can help you increase sales and satisfy your customers:

1. Offer Free Shipping

Marketing studies have found that free shipping brings customers back to a business. And, customers will even buy more than they originally planned just to qualify for free shipping. While free shipping appeals to customers, make sure you can afford it. One way to pay for shipping is to raise the price of your product to cover the shipping cost. Another way is setting a minimum order amount to qualify for free shipping. Whatever you decide, make sure that your free shipping strategy works just as well for you as it does your customers.

2. Automate Your Shipping Notifications

Customers want to track their package from the time it leaves your business, to the time a carrier picks it up, to the time that it arrives on their doorstep or in their mailbox. So, it goes without saying that manually sending emails or text messages to your customers will not work. You may think that you cannot afford to automate any aspects of your business. Think again. It is imperative to find an affordable way to integrate automated shipping notifications into your ecommerce shipping strategy.

3. Use Web Push Notifications

Web push notifications are not just for sending breaking news alerts. You can use them to update your customers on their order status. Web push notifications are the messages that you see in the upper (or bottom) right-hand corner of a desktop or mobile device when a browser is open. When you send a shipping notification, your customers will click on the message and go to the webpage that provides tracking information. However, you must ask customers for permission to send them updates and install a code on your website provided by a web push company. The beauty of web push notifications is that your customers are staying informed about their delivery without having to continuously check email or text messages.

4. Use the Shopify Shipping Method

Whether or not you have a store on Shopify, the e-commerce platform has a range of shipping strategies that other online businesses can benefit from. For one, Shopify shipping helps “shop” owners determine what to charge for shipping on Shopify. Using a Shopify shipping calculator helps to figure shipping rates from UPS, DHL, USPS, and other major carriers. Take a look at the platform’s complete plan, including Shopify international shipping and Shopify shipping uk, to get an idea of shipping strategies that might work best for your company.

5. Use Ecommerce Shipping Software

Ecommerce shipping software is a shipping management platform that labels and tracks your orders. The software also provides analytics and reports and manages inventory. The investment in shipping software is well worth it in the long run.

6. Provide a Post-Purchase Experience

A post-purchase experience is your chance to build a relationship with your customers by thanking them for their purchase or offering a discount on future purchases. Rather than saying, “goodbye” after your customer clicks the “buy” button, your post-purchase experience should tell customers, ”we’re just getting started.”

So, it all adds up to this: Developing a strategy on how to ship products to customers involves different types of shipping methods. When you discover how to calculate shipping costs for online store, you are on your way to growing your brand, increasing your sales, and effectively running an ecommerce business.