Top 8 Shipping Tools for Small Online Stores
Are you overwhelmed by all of the tools and services in the app store? Focus on these 5 basic areas to enhance your shipping process.
People prefer online shopping mainly for lower prices and comfortable delivery of products, and eCommerce merchants should keep in mind that the delivery process is a crucial part of the shopping experience. From the moment they click ‘Buy’ to when it ends up on their doorstep, it’s rather a complex activity which can make or break a business in multiple ways. This post covers the list of top tools for small online store owners which can hopefully help you to manage your shipping.
Where a customer’s journey ends, a seller’s beggins
After a customer finishes their order it’s merchant’s duty to deliver products successfully and as fast as humanly possible, and is one of the biggest factors that determines how competitive a business is when it comes to satisfying their customers. Each activity that accompanies a product on its ways to a customer makes an impression and this helps to build brand’s image.
While delivery can be a complicated process for huge franchises, small stores and businesses usually have an advantage when it comes to getting things out on time. In order to create a proper delivery strategy it’s useful to focus on these 5 areas:
- packaging
- labeling
- shipping & shipping tracking
- reporting
- reviews
Get inspired by the number of tools and partners we found the best in specific fields:
1. Packaging
When delivered to a customer, a package design is what makes the first impression. No matter what the product or service is, a splendid presentation is a very important part of a marketing strategy, and proper packaging serves three important roles: product protection, brand visibility, and a personal touch meant to connect with the consumer.
First of all, take a look at some examples of packaging inspiration to help develop your own product packaging design. Then, find a proper supplier who can provide the most fitting packaging for your products. But remember — smaller is always easier, and in the end minimalism usually wins. The simpler the better.
When it comes to packaging, we recommend Uline from Canada or Rajapack from the UK. Because of its long tradition and large size they’ve been historically reliable and flexible partners for small businesses. Their main advantages are:
- various sizes and materials, unique ideas of packaging
- discounted prices
- great customer services
- Uline does distribution in the US, Canada and Mexico
- Rajapack serves from the UK across the Europe
2. Labelling
When a merchant starts a business doing 10 orders per month it might seem appropriate and natural to handwrite an address on every package. But as a business grows, this activity should become more and more automated. Some smart tools, such as Shippo, ShippingEasy, and Stamps.com, can save you plenty of time and prevent possible mistakes.
Let’s take a closer look at the ShippingEasy — the shipping app that includes an additional labelling service.
- it enables syncing, managing, processing and printing shipping labels
- it provides automated order tracking status for customers
- it sends email / SMS notification about order status update
- it includes nice reporting of inventory, orders, shipments and custom reports
- it provides a package insurance service
- it can identify an invalid address, recognize the same addresses and put orders together which saves you money on postage
- it’s free up to 50 orders per month, with basic plan starting at $29 monthly
3. Shipping & Shipment Tracking
Having a good shipping partner is your key to success. As you expand, it’s common to work with several courier companies at once, and with a growing number of orders each day it can become easy to lose track of certain orders, and even more of a headache when a package goes missing. This requires finding a shipment tracking tool that will allow you to monitor all your shipments in one place. AfterShip , with its 800+ positive reviews in Shopify app-store, is considered a top shipment service.
Why AfterShip?
- it generates tracking link customers can use for auto-tracking of all shipments in one place
- it allows you to insert your brand logo and store url to the tracking page
- it provides email / SMS notification about any delivery update
- it supports UPS, FedEx, USPS, China Post and 350+ couriers worldwide
- it offers nice reports of your shipping performance
- connect with your socials networks— Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and display your latest photos
- it’s free up to 100 shipments per month, with premium starting at $10 monthly
4. Reporting
Shipping is always tied to charging your customers, and therefore it’s incumbent upon you to make up the slack by finding ways to counter these expenses while still making it appealing and affordable to your clientele. That means offering services they actually want, not those you think they might want.
Your only guide here is your own data. That’s why it’s so vital to include a good reporting tool when trying to enhance your delivery strategy. In fact, this should be the very first tool you decide upon.
Let’s take a look at MonkeyData. It’s not a typical delivery tool and it’s not meant to be. It’s a reporting tool for online stores, and is able to provide valuable insights across a spectrum of business data, including shipping and payment overview. Monitoring both shipping and payment methods is a matter of course, but compared to the other reporting apps, MonkeyData provides several extremely useful dashboards:
- the most frequent combination of shipping & payment
- the ratio of successful orders by shipping types
- reasons for order cancellation including undelivered items
- average order processing time
- time comparison & forecasting the trends
- it only costs $10,80 monthly for startup stores (up to 50 orders per month)
Having all this information in one place gives a full picture of your customer’s preferences and needs, and offers a great baseline for further decisions when trying to find other tools and services.
5. Reviews
How can you test whether your delivery strategy is good enough? The simplest method is to ask your users for their feedback. You can find the tools for product reviews, such as Yotpo , offering much more than just that. Yotpo collects product reviews that you can incorporate into your content strategy, and allows for a fully social integration that can engage customers with user-generated content.
Ask them to take a photo after they receive a package and to share it on their Facebook feed or make a shout-out via Twitter. Not only will they will be happy to share, but this will also encourage the digital reach of your business — especially when your packaging is attractive and unique. Consider your packaging presentation, though.
What else is Yotpo good for?
- shoppable Instagram, where customers can purchase a product directly from your feed
- product recommendation — also allows feedback about delivery satisfaction
- enables comments, which lets users rate a product, but also makes it easier to address problems
- drives your marketing and SEO
- it’s free! — review generation and on-site display is available free of charge (Additional revenue generating features at additional cost)
“70% of online customers rely on reviews to make buying decisions. Don’t leave it to chance.”
Summary
Many new online merchants aren’t aware of the complex world of shipping.This post hopefully helped you to get a better picture of the possibilities for small business and how to enhance your delivery with the less effort and greater returns.
Good luck and deliver (with) the joy!
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