If you own an online business where you’re selling a physical product then you can expect to do some shipping to customers. When it comes to e-commerce businesses, the business itself is shipping the product to customers through a third party (such as UPS or USPS). Shipping is a major thing, in fact, the customer can love your product but if the shipping service is bad, this could severely damage the reputation of your business. It’s important to implement a strong shipping strategy as you not only need to make the customer happy, but you need to make yourself happy as well. So here are some tips and ideas for implementing good shipping strategies for your business.
The unboxing experience
The unboxing experience is everything nowadays. If you’re a small business then you can count on customers expecting to have a nice unboxing experience. Since this is such a major priority, there are even TikTok and YouTube channels that are solely dedicated to reviewing and showing off their unboxing experience from small brands.
So it’s important to put this into consideration, but of course, this is going to depend on who your targeted customer is and what you’re selling. If you’re selling power tools then you don’t have to worry about creating an unboxing experience but if you’re selling something handmade such as candles then customers are going to expect an unboxing experience. This is going to impress your customers so try to not skip out on this.
Determine your shipping costs
When it comes to shipping costs, there are several things that you need to keep in mind. Do you plan to do only domestic shipping? What about international shipping? Do you plan to do the standard shipping or will allow customers to pay more for priority? The goal should be to get around 40% profit margin if not more.
Make sure to have a scale to weigh the products as weight tends to affect shipping prices as well. Depending on what type of website you use for your business, such as WooCommerce or Shopify, you could get some useful pointers from them.
Choose the most reliable shipping company
If you’re only beginning with shipping your products to customers, just know that the journey of finding the right shipping company can be a rocky start. It’s not fun to think about but there is a chance you may need to try out multiple companies and see which one works. There are plenty of things to keep in mind like how easy it is to ship a product, how much it costs, the service, but the service on the customer’s end as well for getting the package.
Properly determine shipping cost
Someone has to pay for shipping, whether it be you or the customer. While you could save money on UPS shipping, it’s still important to know that money needs to be spent on shipping. One tip that many small business owners use is giving out free shipping. Customers are attracted to free shipping and it makes them feel as if they’re getting a great deal. Of course, if you’re looking to make a profit, that will mean that you’ll have to raise your prices a bit. But this illusion has been known to work on customers.
P.S. This post contains affiliate links.
