Did you know that 70% people in India abandon carts due to high shipping costs? Consider it something that makes or breaks your business. Listing products on your website, marketplaces, and channels requires much effort and is crucial. Finding suitable suppliers, uploading images, writing emails, finding your target audience, and doing everything to make your customers happy requires attention.
But unless you focus on shipping and fulfilment, all your efforts will be in vain. It’s all about how your customers get their hands on your products!
Read on to learn how to create a rock-solid shipping strategy and sell your unique products instantly!
How Does eCommerce Shipping Work
While discussing customer experience, the entire eCommerce experience comes down to one element—shipping and product delivery. Consider it the backbone of your business.
Most brands strive to provide a good customer experience by planning to deliver their products at the right time, but perhaps they fail to figure out where to start.
So, let’s begin with the basics of the shipping process.
1. Order Placement: The process begins with a customer placing an order. As soon as a merchant receives an order, the seller determines whether they have that product in stock and then accepts the order.
2. Order Processing: The order is picked up, packed, and labelled at the warehouse centre.
3. Carrier Selection: The carrier that provides efficient delivery, offers the fastest delivery in the shortest time, and offers the best shipping price is usually selected. This can change depending on the unique requirements of the business.
4. Shipment Pickup: The chosen shipping partner then collects the packaged order for shipment from the fulfillment centre.
5. Transit: The shipping partner transfers the parcel from the distribution centre by the desired mode of transportation to the customer’s destination.
6. Tracking: Both the business and the customer can track the status or location of the package at any point during transit using the tracking number and link provided by the courier partner.
7. Delivery: The shipping partner delivers the shipment to the customer’s location. If the customer is unavailable for delivery, delivery is rescheduled for the next day. If the package is refused, the courier takes it for Return-to-Origin (RTO).
Factors Affecting the Growth of an eCommerce Brand
Consider the right factors while creating an effective shipping process. Why? Shipping is one stage of your business where operations are not in your control; hence, deciding on an apt carrier becomes essential.
Cost-efficiency
Most of the sellers are inclined towards shipping costs. Besides increasing eCommerce sales and ensuring seamless operations, saving costs is crucial to achieving maximum revenue. Customers don’t want to pay shipping costs, which implies that it must be paid from the seller’s pocket. What can sellers do to reduce the costs?
- Use of advanced technology and eCommerce automation to save time and money.
- Use a flat shipping rate to avoid heavy shipping charges on heavier or larger products.
- Sellers can include a slight amount of shipping cost in the product cost itself.
Pro Tip: Bulk buying packaging materials can save costs in the long run. Look for aggregators who offer discounts for bulk orders.
Target customer experience
Customer experience is the linchpin of success. It’s not just about selling your products once, it’s about crafting a journey that turns one-time buyers into repetitive customers. Think of each delivery as a golden opportunity to impress and delight your customers. Every package that arrives on time and in perfect condition isn’t just a product; it’s a promise kept. Amp up your delivery game, and you’ll find your customers coming back again and again, ready to sing your praises. How can you do that?
- Send customers personalized emails like a ‘thank you’ note upon product delivery.
- Provide full order visibility with real-time order tracking.
- Ensure high order accuracy to deliver the right products to the right recipients in the right condition and state.
- Create a great unboxing experience with custom packaging.
Pro Tip: Use customer feedback to improve your delivery process continuously. Send post-delivery surveys to gather insights on their experience.
Make returns profitable
Returns can be your ticket to bring customers back. A vast majority of customers, around 80%, carefully review your returns policy before making a purchase. Additionally, approximately 72% of customers express that a seamless return process influences their decision to shop again with an eCommerce brand.
- Offer free returns.
- Ensure a quick and easy process for initiating a return, refund, or exchange.
- Mention all the details associated with returns to avoid any confusion.
Pro Tip: Ask customers what went wrong with the product, if there are size or quality issues you can offer them a free exchange. This can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one.
Build a solid online presence
The first thing anyone does when they discover a new brand is to Google it. They’re looking for credibility, reviews, and a solid online presence. This is where eCommerce success truly begins—being omnipresent on the internet.
Brand awareness is crucial, but it’s all the more important for eCommerce brands to showcase their products on multiple platforms. Social selling is a thing now! Creating a strong online presence will help you increase your brand visibility and recognition. Create profiles on each and every social media platform.
- Be active and follow the latest social media pattern.
- Create quality content either on social media or your blog to inform or to create awareness in customers about your brand.
Pro Tip: Utilize social media analytics tools to track engagement and understand which platforms and content types resonate most with your audience.
How to Develop a Solid eCommerce Shipping Strategy
- Shipping options and costs– Define clear shipping options (e.g., standard, express) and costs (free, flat rate, calculated) for customers to choose from.
- Delivery timeframes– Provide accurate estimates for when customers can expect their orders to arrive and attempt to meet these expectations.
- Packaging and inventory management– Ensure products are well-packaged for safe delivery and maintain accurate inventory levels to prevent overselling.
- Shipping partners or software– Partner with a courier aggregator or get eCommerce shipping software to streamline the shipping process, print labels, and manage orders efficiently.
- Communication and returns– Keep customers informed about their orders, provide tracking information, and establish a clear and customer-friendly returns process.
What Can You Do To Minimise Costs?
Negotiate Rates
If you have high-volume shipping orders, you can negotiate for discounts and low shipping rates. To save costs, you can also partner with an aggregator like RapidShyp. The aggregators have pre-negotiated rates with multiple carriers, making it light on sellers’ pockets.
Pro Tip: Combine shipments to get bulk discounts from carriers. This can significantly reduce costs for high-volume shippers.
Optimize Packaging
Compact packing is a crucial tip for managing shipping costs. It helps avoid excessive weight charges. One can save money by buying lightweight packaging material. While optimising the cost, don’t forget to ensure the safety of the shipped product.
Pro Tip: Use customisable packaging solutions that adjust to the size of the product, reducing waste and shipping costs.
Shipping Aggregator
Companies should use shipping Aggregators to streamline their business shipping process. Everything can be sorted from order management to invoice creation, at one stop. Hence, you don’t have to burn cash to buy multiple software.
Pro Tip: Choose an aggregator that offers predictive analytics to proactively anticipate shipping dates and manage customer expectations.
Secrets to Success for Optimising eCommerce Shipping
There is much more to optimising eCommerce shipping than just minimising costs. We are here to help you with it!
Managing inventory efficiently
Track your inventory in real-time, seeing the status and quantity available across all your eCommerce warehouses and sales channels. Set reorder points to keep the right amount of stock and prevent running out by planning timely restocks. Use historical data to prevent having too much stock.
Protect orders in transit
The most critical step of eCommerce delivery is ensuring your customers don’t receive damaged products. Such damages are common in transit. You must ensure appropriate materials are used in the product’s packaging to prevent it.
Optimize delivery routes
To increase shipping speed and improve last-mile delivery, you must first optimise your delivery routes. Your order must be shipped automatically from the optimal warehouse based on inventory availability, customer location, etc.
Manage returns effectively
Ensure a quick and easy process for initiating a return. Align return shipping of the product and conduct quality checks. Ensure the returned product is restocked in your available inventory and is re-sellable quickly.
Using appropriate software
It’s essential for the company to have a reliable shipping software solution to manage orders, shipments, and inventory. Shipping software like RapidShyp helps sellers with order management and integrates multiple sales channels and marketplaces on a single platform.
Carriers
Most shipping aggregators provide multiple carrier options, giving customers various choices. The main benefit of using a shipping aggregator is that sellers gain access to numerous courier partners, ensuring 100% pin code coverage, which no single courier can achieve alone.
Effects of Having High Shipping Rates on Business
Buyers feel more satisfied with their purchase when they pay less. Offering anything ‘free’ excites them even more. That’s why the ‘free shipping’ option attracts and retains more customers compared to the ‘no free shipping’ option, ultimately driving higher sales.
This is immediately reflected in the number of conversions and the sales the business can achieve.
With free shipping, the order size will also increase. If there are no shipping charges, it will only motivate the customer to buy more products. Therefore, no shipping charges will work out and will be of great attention to the customers. It is considered a huge bonus to engage customers into buying more products. Some of the benefits of offering free shipping:-
- Lowers Cart Abandonment Rate: Many shoppers abandon their carts because of high shipping rates. Offering free shipping makes it easier for customers to hit Purchase. Free shipping can increase the chances of buyers purchasing from your online store.
- Customer Loyalty: Shoppers look forward to shopping from free shipping stores. Providing free returns and fast deliveries can strengthen it further. Customer loyalty is important, as consumers tend to repeat purchases from companies offering free shipping.
- Helps to stay competitive: Many companies charge for shipping, but your company can get an edge over them by offering free shipping to your customers. This increases the company’s sales and makes the customer satisfied with the purchase.
- Higher Conversion Rate: As your cart abandon rate decreases, you gain an edge over your competitors and witness repeat purchases. This will raise your conversion rate.
Navigate Shipping Challenges At Ease With RapidShyp
Shipping makes all the difference. Choosing the right delivery partner can be challenging, but finding an aggregator that sorts multiple courier partners quickly can be a game changer. Let’s get into how RapidShyp helps:
Dedicated Shipping Advisors
Who wouldn’t like it if someone recommended how to reduce shipping costs to them? Our dedicated shipping advisors help sellers manage and reduce shipping costs, providing expert recommendations and resolving weight discrepancies.
Tracking
The tech-driven tracking system allows businesses and customers to track their shipments in real-time. After all, transparency is the key to customer satisfaction.
Labelling
RapidShyp offers a label generator that quickly names and tags packages for error-free shipping.
Economical Shipping
RapidShyp offers economical shipping charges starting at Rs 25 and ensures that packages are delivered safely and timely to the customer’s location.
To know more about our amazing tech-enabled shipping platform, schedule a demo with us.
