The online rates or the shipping methods have a considerable impact on diminishing cart desertion rates while driving up the additional sales. Customers are obviously fascinated by low shipping rates, good packaging, and fast shipping options because they are enticed by the competitive market rates of the products.
The E-commerce sites that have not mastered the shipping complexities are not able to reach the sales potential. Many new business owners underestimate the importance of shipping costs, which can have a significant impact on the total costs involved with getting a product out. Moreover, these online shops risk being run as a consequence of shipping mistakes eating into their profits. Additionally, for some, doing their own accounting as an e-commerce seller can be overwhelming. It can also be time-consuming, and daunting, along with plenty of other business decisions to worry about. Nonetheless, if this accounting were to be taken care of by e-commerce bookkeepers similar to those at Seller Accountant, the business owners can focus on other tasks at hand.
Luckily with a little research and the careful planning, most of these mistakes are easy to recognize and evade. Avoiding these 9 common shipping mistakes listed down can literally help the online shop owner become a confident e-retailer.
-
Mistake 1: Not offering your Customers to choose Shipping Option
No doubt, customers enjoy having innumerable shipping options. And because every consumer is different, delivery expectations also vary. While some may have a special occasion like anniversary or birthday, around the corner so they will definitely prefer the fast shipping to get the ordered gift without any delay. Others may be more interested in saving some extra amount through free shipping. Your ship is sure to become undesirable if it does not offer the suitable shipping options to accompany customers with particular parcel arrival time or the preferred shipping cost.
However, before providing them with any shipping options, it would be prudent if you choose the right logistics and courier firm that can meet the delivery demands of your business. For that, you might want to compare and contrast the courier service offered by different logistic firms. See if they can be someone you can work with; check for the costing–whether or not it is affordable. Once you have finalized your shipping partners, you can move forward to think about your customer’s shipping preferences.
Consumers are often on the lookout for the discounted and the most economical products. Offering additional discount through free shipping obviously serve as a remarkable incentive for such consumers to go ahead with the cart checkout. And if your store totally ignores free shipping, it can obviously increase cart rejection rates and completely drive down your sale conversions. Do not forget that your competition can always steal your consumers with a more economical offer.
-
Mistake 2: Not Paying any Heed to Customer Feedback
Customer feedback can actually break or make an online store. Customer reviews not only assist other potential consumers to measure their expectations with your E-commerce platform, but feedback can also assist in modifying the business methods and the policies for greater efficiencies. For example: if customers are regularly complaining about the delays of delivery, then it is obviously the time to rise to a better or an higher-end service provider or the shipping package. In contrary to this, if your parcels are always delivered before the expected schedule then you can literally downgrade to even economical shopping options and save on the shipping costs to a great extent.
-
Mistake 3: Making use of the Wrong Packaging
Packaging is undoubtedly a critical feature of the complete shipping process – right from encasing the customer’s products into a bag to delivering them to the customer’s doorstep. It’s also important to design packaging boxes that not only stand there to safeguard the product from damage that may be caused during transportation, but at the same time contributes to building the brands reputation. In fact, the type of packaging used to serve as a sign of how much you may be charged by the shipping carrier. It is vitally important for a business owner to research the most plausible options to deliver a product safely to customers. When it comes to packaging, there are many reliable service providers such as CTP Boxes (https://www.ctpboxes.com/) that can help visualize the employer’s marketing dream.
In earlier times, delivery services were actually charged depending on the parcel weight alone. But today’s carriers certainly charge based on the description that fits best to it. It can be either by weight of the package or the corresponding dimensional weight of it. Many times business owners save on the shipping cost while placing items in exactly sized boxes or choose to bubble wrap it. This can obviously result in damaging the item during the transportation. A perfect estimate is to leave around the two-inches of spacing for safety to keep the item secured.
-
Mistake 4: Shipping Expense Estimation
Sometimes shop owners are negligent in the weight pricing and pack up the products in any box without any concern for finding the specific one. This can obviously generate the overhead shipping costs like business owners are interested to break their shipping cost or not. You just need to pay very close attention to the sub-charges involved in the shipping carrier’s package like fuel sub-charges, residential delivery, weekend delivery and recipient’s signature. In case these services are not relevant or important to the customer base, there is actually no advantage to pay for these additional shipping costs.
-
Mistake 5: Not tracking the Shipping Supplies
Think that you are effectively managing the store inventory, but if nobody is keeping the track of shipping supplies then it will be really difficult to ship out the products to the consumers on time. In addition to this, while keeping an eye on the shipping supplies, you can actually establish the re-order points at a proper time and make sure that your supply stores are never exhausted.
-
Mistake 6: Not prepared for Changes in the Shipping Package
Shipping carriers make changes to their shipping policies as well as package prices every year. Most of the time, these changes occur at the beginning of the year, but these can also happen in the middle of the year. So it is actually better to get in touch with the shipping carrier so as to remain updated about the relevant alterations.
-
Mistake 7: Manual managing of the Shipping Process
Creating the shipping labels together with managing the shipping demands can definitely be a tiring job. This is such a stress that can be literally avoided by mechanizing the shipping process with the help of e-commerce shipping software. So try to take complete advantage of the shipping software – craft some customized invoices and package delivery slips to make your product look more professional.
-
Mistake 8: Ignoring the Customer Address Validation
There are chances that address registered by the customer is wrong so it should always be confirmed by the business entrepreneur. If this is overlooked there are chances for the parcel to reach the wrong address or come back to the warehouse. As a consequence, the customer may get unhappy and may also a demand a complete refund or some new piece to be sent via expedited shipment. Businesses literally pay heavy amounts for this as these not only affect the brand image but also lead to the financial loss. In such cases, the business owner has to go ahead with the shipment of the product second time from his pocket. This is such a mistake that can be completely avoided, mainly if a business makes use of some notable shipping software as they have built-in address verification features in it.
-
Mistake 9: Fail to Audit the Shipping
Most of the new business owners are surprised to see that parcels are delivered late at a higher rate than they actually anticipated. In such condition, there is a mechanism in the situation that guarantees some compensation for the business owners who are affected, but still, there are many who fail to get this. Shipping carriers do not offer a fund for the late shipments done willingly. Carrier bills also help business owners to check for the duplicate receipts, other shipping failures, and invoice mistakes.
Final Thought
If you pay very close attention to the shipping details and avoid other common mistakes, then your business can obviously secure the products in a manner that it would definitely bring up the comfortable profit margins. And if you are not successful the very first time, you need not stop. You can always play around with various package delivery services, carriers and shipping software’s to find the perfect combination for your business.