Definitive Guide to Shipping for Ecommerce Sites

Yes, we are now talking about Shipping Management in Ecommerce Sites. After a couple of sessions to this blog on various ecommerce features and topics such as shopping cart development, ecommerce platforms, storefronts, ecommerce marketing and SEO, why we forget about Shipping and Payment section of any online shopping store. Shipping services plays an important part for building long-term relationships with Customers. An online storeowner finds most of the queries on shipping services by customers.

This definitive guide on online shipping is especially dedicated to online retailers. In my knowledge and examinations of other sites, shipping costs and delivery time are the greatest customer grievance that online retailers receive; a recent study defends shipping to be one of the most significant things to customers. Even if the shipping is free, shoppers frequently have impure anticipations on how quickly their order will reach them. If it is not free, there are consistently complaints about the cost even when the retailer instantly passes down charges with no markup.
In my definitive guide to e commerce shipping, I have covered three main areas in relation with shipping – its presentation on site, how it could be charged and managing the shipping services….so what I recommend to have best shipping methods are as follows,
  • Do not forget Shipping Policy section
  • Must show – Shipping options, fees and time frame of delivery
  • Make sure when you offer free shipping
  • Never use United States Postal Services (USPS)
  • Stay up to date on shipping status with customers
DO NOT FORGET SHIPPING POLICY SECTION:
It must be. I have noticed this on many sites. It does not matter what you stated in your shipping policy, it could be simple and make sure it is your commitments to your customers. So, You can only act according to this policy if you have provided rather it create bad impression of your business by customers. It mainly covers the things like shipping within so and so hours, refund policy etc

MUST SHOW – SHIPPING OPTIONS, FEES AND TIME FRAME OF DELIVERY:
  • Make sure to indicate shipping options with their fees and delivery time
  • Radio buttons are the best way to represent all available shipping options
  • Make sure to use logic or tools for calculating accurate delivery time-frame
MAKE SURE, WHEN YOU OFFER FREE SHIPPING:
Free Shipping is extreme. It can drive sales and give a company an immense competitive edge. Free shipping is a great enough reward that many people will choose a more costly comprehensive price, over an item with expensive shipping costs. Even so, free shipping is not great when you have to cancel it. If you have an established website, canceling free shipping can precisely destroy the business. Particularly, in the case of repeat consumers, you can lose a set of business when you go back to a paid shipping form. These are even practices to limited time free shipping. 
NEVER USE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICES (USPS):    
For some category of products, the USPC can be considered. E.g. low-ticket products or those that can be compressed into a pre-paid priority box or in an envelope. If your customer has no expectation for the parcel to get there in the next week, month... etc., then it is good to hire this and this is why most of the successful online retailers use UPS or Fedex in spite of having expensive. 
STAY UP TO DATE ON SHIPPING STATUS WITH CUSTOMERS:
Through every step of the buying to shipping to delivery process, your customer should be taken cared and informed by you in all terms of shipping order status especially on the status of their order even if your order management system is so strong. In this area, you have 100% of control and there is no reason to do so. Send an email informing them that you received the order. Email to inform them the order has been shipped. Email to inform them about that you missed the orders and it has been backed. Finally, the email to inform them it was delivered and follow-up in a few days to make sure they go to it, and these are the things that the customers wanted. 

We, Ydeveloper understand what is to be required by customers while designing and developing an ecommerce website and the kind of ecommerce features needs to be implemented based on this. They recently refreshed all their ecommerce services and now offer them under the “e-Smart eCommerce Suite”. So, let us see “Top 5 Reasons to opt for e-Smart eCommerce Suite”. 

Share your thoughts on Shipping and its management!