You have a growing e-commerce business selling on Amazon, E-Bay, Etsy and more. You are spending a fortune in shipping with UPS, FedEx or the US Post Office, now what?

We are ALL customers. Even if you are a business owner you are still a customer of someone else’s product and want to spend less money to get your product for yourself or sent to your customer.

The Ups.com websites article titled Smarter Strategies For Free Shipping says, “Consumers generally choose to shop in the Web channel for one of three primary reasons: The Web offers convenience, it offers a broader selection than what is available in physical stores or other channels, and it offers value.” Mentioned in one of our previous blog posts about how small businesses successfully compete with larger ones, we discussed a consumer’s mind set when purchasing an item and upon check out the shipping costs defers them from making the purchase. In the same UPS article, it says, “One of the key reasons that consumers abandon shopping carts after expressing interest in purchasing a product is that shipping fees are unexpectedly high. Forty-four percent of Web shoppers surveyed in Q3 2009 said that they didn’t complete online transactions because shipping and handling costs were too high.”

I think we can all agree and have experienced it from at least one of the two sides. There are articles all over the internet that have helpful tips and advice on how to offer free shipping to drive in sales. One of these websites being Shopify.com and their amazing blog! One of their articles is titled How to Choose a Shipping Strategy for Your Online Store, we are not the only ones who understand the ‘abandoned cart’ problem. Shopify mentions a few options for shop owners and one of them is to offer Free Shipping, this article says, “Offering free shipping – usually just for domestic orders – is a sure-fire way to get your customer’s attention, however, depending on your margins, it can also potentially cut into your profits.” It goes on to say, “The marketing punch that displaying ‘Free Shipping’ on your website provides can be a significant advantage over any competitors that don’t offer the same perk. Deciding to offer free shipping will require you to either absorb the cost or slightly increase your prices to cover it.”

Clearly, there are some great benefits of free shipping. This step in your business can be a big one depending on what kind of prices you are charging. The only issue with this is at the end of the day whether you choose to offer free shipping or not, your shipping prices are the same. At FirstMile you will be given a discount on your shipping rates which will absolutely save you money at the end of the day whether you offer free shipping or not. Find more on how to lower shipping costs at firstmile.com.

Articles used in this post:

https://www.shopify.com/blog/8343330-how-to-choose-a-shipping-strategy-for-your-online-store

https://www.ups.com/media/en/Smarter_Strategies_for_Free_Shipping.pdf