If you are an e-commerce merchant, there is one crucial and indispensible aspect of your business that you must deal with and deal with efficiently—shipping. The nature of doing e-commerce makes shipping a key component of your business. Unfortunately, shipping, in itself, can be quite tricky at times so you need to implement a system that will work for you and your customers.
Jamie Estep of Ecommerce-blog.org cites some ideal shipping practices for e-commerce merchants. According to his article, shipping is one of the biggest complaints of e-commerce customers and as found out in a study, it is also one of the most important things to shoppers.
Here is Estep’s guide to good shipping practices for good e-commerce.
1. Have a shipping policy section on your e-commerce website. Manage your customer’s expectations. According to Estep, it does not matter if your shipping policy is rotten, just put it there. “A shipping policy should be a fallback point, not a guideline,” he added.
2. Include shipping options, time frames, and of course, prices. Estep suggests presenting this information visually. He also advised e-commerce merchants to pre-select the “best” options for customers. Start with the cheapest. As a good precautionary measure, ask your programmer to use logic to more accurately determine the delivery date of your goods. Estep reminds entrepreneurs that it is okay to deliver ahead of time, but certainly not after your promised delivery date.
3. Be careful about the promise of free shipping. If you can do it well, offering free shipping can be a great boon to your e-commerce enterprise. But Estep cautions entrepreneurs to carefully compute how offering free shipping fits into your long-term revenue prospects. Also, once you’ve started it, there is no turning back on free shipping.
4. Do not use USPS. According to Estep, UPS and FedEx provide good value for money. Finding a reliable e-commerce partner is essential to longevity in the business.
5. Ship now. If you can ship it now, don’t wait it out. A good starting step to a successful online business is being able to ship out goods on the same day as it was ordered.
6. Keep your customers informed. E-mail them every step of the way—whether it’s good news or bad news. You can also take advantage of this constant communication process to offer them incentives such as coupons. This way, you are building a relationship with your customers and paving the way for future repeat sales.