How to Create an Effective Shipping Strategy

For your business to be successful, you need to ensure that you provide only the best experience for your customers. That includes making sure that you respond to them on time, keeping your website up to date, and sending your orders on time. But there are times when handing your products over to a shipping company can be unnerving, especially since you don’t know them that well.

But since shipping plays a crucial part of your business, careful thought and planning are a must to ensure your business’ success. But how do you create an excellent shipping experience for your customers?

Although shipping and fulfillment seem like a complicated and tedious process at first glance, it can get a lot easier as long as you know where to start. To help you with the entire process, here’s an overview of what you need to know.

Mapping out an effective shipping strategy

There are a few primary factors that you need to determine to set a foundation for your shipping strategy.

First, you need to learn about the shipping rates and the methods. It will help if you decide whether you’ll be passing the entire shipping cost to the customers or you’ll offer flat-rate shipping to cover some part of the cost. Ask the transport services about the value of getting full-load transport if you’re planning to ship huge numbers of products to a reseller.

Next, consider the products’ weight. So that you can create a more streamlined process, you need to measure and update the average weight of every product that you sell. Once you have this information, you’ll find it easier to get an idea of what the total cost should be. You’ll also know how much you can price each product.

Now that you have an idea of the products’ weight, you need to choose the best packaging for your products carefully. Once you’ve decided about the types of packaging that you want to have, you can add the information to your website. Doing so gives customers the option to get more accurate shipping costs.

Shipping rates and methods

There are three options that you can offer your customers. These are free shipping, real-time carrier rates, and a flat rate.

Offering a free shipping option doesn’t mean that you’ll lose a portion of your profit. So that you can negate the costs that you’ll shoulder, you can increase the product prices to cover the expense. Another way to ensure your profit is by offering free shipping, provided that they order the minimum amount.

You can also offer them a flat rate. Flat-rate shipping suits businesses that have already established a wide array of product lines with similar weights and sizes. If you are shipping internationally you’ll face higher shipping fees. You’ll have to reflect this in your product price. When shipping internationally make sure to use a container seal for your shipping container if transporting goods by boat overseas.

Meanwhile, real-time carrier rates use the rates of carriers to generate live pricing. It allows customers to choose the service that they want and pay for it.

Handling a business is not easy. That’s why you need to understand everything about it to ensure its success. You can coordinate with a carrier about the shipping fees so that you can include them in your budget.