Shipping is a crucial part of an eCommerce business. It involves a series of steps which include picking the ordered product from the warehouse, packing it, labeling it with receipt and brand, and then delivering it to the customer’s address, taking feedback, etc.
The shipping of the product is the final fulfillment of the customer.
Since, buying, selling, payment, confirmation, feedback, queries, and other related informational data, all can follow the internet channel and pass-on between buyers and sellers within seconds but there is no magical teleportation possible for real-material-products. And we even don’t have Anywhere Door (Doremon’s gadget) for making deliveries.
So, all we can do is use HUMAN ways — carry the product manually to the customer’s door, ring the bell, and finally hand over the product to the customer, smile, and thank them for buying.
Online shopping is carried out at marketplaces offering products ranging from an everyday toothbrush to home theater, from food to fashion, medicines to electronics, etc. Shipping such a diverse variety of products with one common guideline is an unsound and deadly strategy for your eCommerce business.
Deciding the shipping method depends on several factors such as product, audience, location, budgets, margin, etc. Further, it should be done in a way that keeps the buyers convinced without any loss to the retailer.
WooCommece Solutions for Happy Shipping
Along with the shipping process, retailers also have to care about other additional services that are equally crucial for happy shipping. Some of these services include:
- Allowing multiple shipping addresses
- Order tracking of products
- Return, refund, and exchange
WooCommerce store owners, these additional services can easily and effectively be implemented using dedicated plugins for each. Here are my top suggestions for you.
These plugins boost the quality of your shipping process for your WooCommerce store. It makes your customer shipping experience equally pleasant as the shopping experiences. This increases the retention rate and purchase frequency.
Now let’s continue our discussion on eCommerce shipping.
Table of Contents
Why Care About Shipping?
Even if you are not a shipping company, still you need to care about shipping the product(s) your customers have bought from you.
If you don’t — you are abandoned.
Online shopping is worth it to customers just because it allows them to collect their purchased products at their doorstep after some effort on the internet.
Hence, ignoring or underestimating shipping, or not caring about shipping the product your shoppers have bought will go against the eCommerce ideology; making your entire eCommerce business meaningless and incomplete.
On the other hand, an eStore that provides fast and low-cost (sometimes free delivery services) shipping facilities attracts buyers easily.
The concept is simple — the retailer deserves the paid amount only if the buyer owns the product in their hand.
How to Conduct Shipping for Your eCommerce Business?
There are three ways for achieving order fulfillment. Factors such as the volume of the order, shipping distance, budget, team, etc. determine which way of shipping will suit your business.
Let’s check the three common ways of shipping pertaining to the eCommerce business:
- In-house fulfillment
- Third-party outsourcing
- Dropshipping
In-House Fulfilment:
It is also known as self-fulfillment. Here, the retailers themselves carry out the shipping process. They pack the product, label it, and then deliver it to the customer address.
In-house fulfillment works fine for small eCommerce businesses where a low volume of orders is received. It becomes time-consuming when the volume increases.
Bonus tip: As an eCommerce business owner, shipping is not your revenue-generating activity; hence investing time and effort in it will never expand your revenue. The best you can do is invest this time and effort into getting more buyers, running a marketing campaign, and growing your eCommerce website or eStore.
Third-Party Outsourcing
this is the second way. Shipping is a whole great effort in itself and it is not easy to successfully regulate both online selling and shipping, together.
Hence, the majority of the retailers or merchants choose to partner with shipping companies and carry out the order fulfillment.
The image below shows the top eCommerce shipping carriers in the world:
These shipping companies work domestically as well as internationally.
Their shipping rate varies based on the plan you choose and depends on several factors such as product size, weight, shipping distance, etc.
The rate of shipping a medium-sized product from Portland (zip code – 97201) to Bell Gardens (ZIP code – 90201) by UPS is.
Dropshipping
It is a way of conducting eCommerce shipping by smartly managing the supply chain.
In this, the retailer neither has the stock of the product and neither they perform the shipping.
Dropshipping based eCommerce businesses merchandise the product, take orders and shipping details from the buyers, and pass it on to the wholesalers or manufacturers who handle the rest of the shipping process.
Since all the above three shipping ways cost money, let’s see how to manage the shipping cost.
Managing the Shipping Cost
Shipping is never free. Someone has to pay for it.
The question is:
Who would pay the shipping charges? The buyer or the seller?
Once again the answer is:
It depends.
It depends on several factors but as an eCommerce business owner, you must try not to burden your happy customers with shipping charges, if you can afford it.
Shipping is a bunch of variables— variable product, prices, dimensions, the variable cost of products, variable shipping distances, variable margins, etc. and hence the shipping cost is a variable too.
As a result, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for shipping.
But, a well researched and thought-out strategy framed particularly for your product would help you manage shipping costs that neither makes you lose customers nor your money.
The USPS has classified the United States into zones ranging from Zone 1 to Zone 8 to manage domestic shipping. This classification helps to best decide the cost, timing, and get an idea of shipping efficiency. For a shipper located at the center of the USA, the zones will be like.
The rates by shipping carriers/companies vary based on zones.
Products that are heavy-weight or large in size will cost more. The good practice is that buyers and sellers should partially share the cost.
Whereas offering free shipping is a great way of avoiding cart abandonment.
Best Shipping Schemes
Your customer’s fulfillment expectation is a variable too. That means, some buyers want the product immediately and are ready to pay for it while there are buyers who have no hurry and want the product with the least cost.
Such variable priorities can only be managed with varied shipping schemes.
Here are some of them.
1. Same-Day Delivery
In this, the product is delivered on the same day of order placement. Due to such fast delivery features, the shipping cost tends to be higher than other options.
The charges vary based on product size and weight, shipping carriers, price and margin of the product, etc.
2. Overnight Delivery
As the name suggests, the product/order is delivered to the customer on the very next day. All it takes is just a night, and the customers receive the product on the next business day of the order placement.
Under this category, there is a timing-based classification. UPS offers the following options in overnight shipping:
3. Two-Day Delivery
Here, the delivery of the product takes place within two business days after the order placement.
Charges are lower than overnight and one-day shipping while higher than standard shipping.
4. Standard Delivery
Standard shipping is the normal way of shipping the product. It is neither prioritized for quick shipping nor charged extra.
It is the cheapest form of shipping that a retailer can offer to their customers.
Generally, standard shipping takes 3-5 days for delivery.
What eCommerce Shipping is Composed Of?
eCommerce shipping involves a series of steps that finally lead to this fulfillment for the customers.
They are:
1. Picking the product
The shipping carrier or company you have an agreement with picks the product from the warehouse or the retailer store and takes it to their packing center.
2. Packing the product
The shipping company packs the product based on the package size and weight.
3. Labeling and branding
Next, the package is labeled with the company logo and detail. This is done for branding.
4. Delivery
After the package labelling, the package is transported to their respected address by delivery team.
5. Customer Services
These include services such as live tracking, delivery verification, etc, for smooth and happy shipping for customers.
6. Return Processing
If the customers change their minds or if the product received is damaged or if the product doesn’t meet the customer’s expectations, the customer will appeal for the return or replacement of the product.
The shipping carriers need to look after this.
Most of the products undergo the above-mentioned steps before reaching their rightful owner.
eCommerce Shipping Best Practices
Your eCommerce business earns you profit by selling products and therefore you must not try to earn from shipping.
If you try, you would increase the overall margin of the product giving a reason to your customers to abandon you.
8 Ways To Recover Abandoned Cart
Here are some practices that can make the shipping experience of your customers relieving:
1. Try to Offer Free Shipping
Shipping is never free but offering free shipping services in selected cases proves to be highly favorable for your eCommerce business.
Customers love free shipping. And they love retailers who offer them free shipping.
How are you going to do it?
There is no one way. It depends on the cost of the product, margin and shipping length, etc.
Setting a minimum purchase threshold for free shipping increases the average order value and helps to boost the overall revenue.
2. $5 Trick
Shipping charges are a mote in the customer’s eyes.
It’s not always possible to eliminate it but you could probably make it smaller and smaller that hurts your customers less.
Here is a trick that will help you:
If the product price is considerably much larger than shipping charges, the best practice is to cut out $5 from the shipping cost and add it to the product price.
3. Fast Shipping
Shipping timing particularly depends on the scheme your customers opt for. Same-day or overnight shipping is the fastest of all whereas two days and standard shipping takes time.
Shipping agencies must ensure that shipping under these categories is fast and on-time.
MWB WooCommerce Shipment Map
4. Provide Product Tracking Services
Every shipping carrier provides tracking facilities. All you need to do is enter the tracking id and get the information you are looking for.
Providing real-time order tracking improves the purchase frequency of your customers. All major shipping carriers provide this feature.
WooCommerce Order Tracker plugin provides an easy way to interface this tracking information directly to your customer.
Customers love to check the progress of their order delivery. The closer the product gets to delivery, the more cheerful your customer becomes.
It keeps the customers well informed and reduces the possibility of unnecessary inquiry calls.
Enhanced WooCommerce Shipment Tracking
5. Don’t Overpromise
Promising is setting up expectations. Promises when unfulfilled are more detrimental than normal unfulfillment.
Overpromising leads to unfulfillment of promises.
If customers are expecting delivery on a certain day and products don’t arrive, chances are that it would be the last time you would serve that customer.
Write down a well-thought shipping policy for your store. And, whatever promises or commitments you make, ensure their fulfillment.
The best practice is to keep your promising-confidence down and if possible, do little more than what you promised.
Wrapping Up
Although eCommerce shipping is not the core part of your business, it’s still your burden.
Selling a product on an eCommerce site is just an agreement until the shipping of the product is not complete.
Shipping turns your customers into consumers and it’s then when the customers finally hold-off the paid amount for you. So, you must care about the shipping.
There are multiple ways for conducting eCommerce shipping and the most common is outsourcing with a third-party carrier. I have mentioned the list of top eCommerce carriers already in the body of the article for your to check. Their rates vary based on product and parameters such as weight, dimensions, shipping distance, and the carriers’ standard.
Another major concern in eCommerce shipping is managing the cost incurred. An eCommerce owner has the liability to decide best for their customer. Making the experience perfect for your customers is doing best for your business.
The best practice is to keep the cost low and this can be achieved by proper strategy such as a $5 trick, setting a minimum purchase threshold, privileging loyal and regular customers, etc. which are discussed above in detail.
View Comments (3)
Well done Satya, I was going to start my e-commerce shipping business and surely this article has helped me a lot.
Hi there! You said so true that “The shipping of the product is the final fulfilment of the customer.” Yes, I care about shipping the products that my customers have bought from my site. Thanks a lot for sharing these important points regarding eCom shipping. And, the shipping schemes that you have shared are so much worthy for us. Keep writing, keep sharing!!
Hi... Caring about customer's fulfilment is caring about your business. It's good to hear that you take speical care of shipping in your eCommerce site. And, thank you for writing back your opinion. I highly appreciate.