The Best Shipping Practices That Will Boost Your E-commerce Sales

Introduction

Operating a successful Shopify website is not just about having great products on display that people can opt to purchase. In fact, you also need to deliver the products into the hands of the customers safely. No shopping site is complete until it established a sound ecommerce shipping and fulfillment platform for its users.

The shopping experience of a customer is not just restricted to the product and cart page of the shopping website. A service provider has to provide an excellent service to the customers all the way through, to make the experience worthwhile for them in actual terms. In terms of customer satisfaction, shipping is one such parameter that accounts for a great experience.

Pointers like excessively high shipping fees, late delivery of products and no delivery to specific areas are some of the key factors that lead to shopping cart abandonment. In fact, it is a fact that customers purchase more from your website when they are offered an option for free shipping on their order.

On the other hand, choosing a wrong shipping partner may land you in trouble as well, as it leads to the worst ecommerce shipping and fulfillment experience for the customer. Some website owners do not pay much attention to shipping options and end up remaining unprofitable even after years of operation.

This post specifically looks at shipping solution that you can practice to make things easier.

Use Shopify Printer for Printing Shipping Labels

Typically for a small business owner, printing shipping labels can be an expensive and time-consuming experience. Around the clock meetings, customer handling and inventory management practically leave no time for owners to look at any other work.

To manage their time more efficiently, small business owners can use the Shopify Shipping to streamline their shipping process by printing USPS shipping labels. The labels can be printed directly through Shopify and that too at discounted rates.

Dymo LabelWriter is one such proprietary DYMO Label™ v.8 Software to create and print addresses, folders, barcode labels, files, and shipping. The use of Dymo LabelWriter completely eliminates the hassle of using printing sheets on a standard desktop printer.

Enable Same Day Shipping Deliveries

Whenever a customer places an order, they expect a quick shipping of their delivery by default. In fact, millenials — who play an important role in e-commerce — believe that same-day delivery is an important aspect that determines the satisfaction of the customers.

Offering a same-day delivery option to customers enables the owners of the online store to give their customers an option to get their order delivered within hours of purchase. It not only helps prevent any future complaints and complications but also provides them an instant gratification.

Add Live Tracking Page for Order

One of the convenient ways to ensure hassle-free purchase is to add a live tracking page for the orders placed by the customers. Typically, a customer gets frustrated when he or she has to wait for their order to be delivered and especially when they have no information about when the product would arrive at the specified address.

Owners who run Shopify stores do not keep customers in the dark as they ship their products through UPS, Canada Post, USPS or FedEx. The customers are able to use and view the order status page to track the exact location of their package. The location is updated in real-time and the customers can even see the live map.

In case you ship your products through different carriers, you can use other Shopify apps such as Trackr and Tracktor to add real-time updates and a live map.

Take Action against Damage

Prevention is better than cure and it applies to e-commerce industry as well. The best insurance against damage is to make use of perfect packaging. Simply stating “fragile” on a product scheduled to be delivered to a customer does not necessarily mean that it with be delicately handled throughout its transit. Therefore, do not send a product to the customer as a method to test the packaging. Make sure that it is packed well and will arrive safely in the hands of the customer.

In case the product is moisture-sensitive, make sure to add silica gel so that extra moisture is absorbed in the case of excess humidity. Use inflates air bags, beans or Kraft paper as filling rather than tissue and confetti, which do not prevent damage from occurring. Properly seal everything before dispatch and consider using a master carton above all for extra protection.

Damage, loss, and claims only add to the existing operational costs. Therefore, it is important to take preventive steps in advance to reduce the risk of overhead costs. This can be achieved by talking to and planning out things with all the parties involved in the shipping of a product.

Create an Amazing Unboxing Experience

Typically, for a customer, the purchase experience does not end with the receiving of the package, the unboxing experience matters too. The moment when a customer opens the package is one of the biggest opportunities for the sellers to create a great impression on the person opening the box. It is something that a person remembers for the rest of his or her life and starts to associate the brand with that experience.

Unboxing experience is, thus, a way to gift something memorable to the customers that they would expect the least. You can add a little or a special message for the customer, stating that their order has been taken care of. Or you can simply attach a handwritten note with the very first order placed by the customer.

Make a Good Feeling

One can easily create a great impression on the customer through branded packaging. In fact, there are many consumers who write online reviews that include a point on the packaging that these reviews influence the behaviour and decisions that the customer makes in the future.

Therefore, make use of branded packaging a habit. It not only helps build brand awareness but also throws a hint of professionalism at the customer, which helps improve the overall satisfaction.

In addition, make sure not to frustrate the customers. It is important to secure the product in a packaging, but the customer should not get frustrated unfolding layers and layers of wrapping material. Avoid chances of a situation wherein the customer himself or herself damages the product unintentionally.

It’s time to make your customer happy

With the tips discussed above, you should be able to handle shipping concerns and start delivering the orders placed through your Shopify site in a streamlined manner. Remember, one of the most important keys to being successful in the e-commerce business is to know how to ship profitably. It required a significant amount of research to find the best shipping partner and you could actually end up losing money if you don’t study the market well.

Start by creating a chart that maps how much money is taken to deliver a product to the customer. Often, the little charges associated with shipping add up to form a huge amount. Therefore, be wise while making decisions related to shipping of products.