Delivery Is Currently Unavailable Because of High Order Volume Check Back Again Soon

9. Look into hybrid services

Hybrid shipping services similar UPS SurePost and FedEx SmartPost choice upwardly your orders then piece of work with other carriers like USPS to transport your packages to a sorting facility or post office location, where it is then shipped to a residential surface area for last-mile delivery. This can cut costs as much as 50% in some cases. However, the tradeoff is often a slower delivery.

Note: There are specific volume, weight, and dimension requirements.

10. Stay on top of shipping carriers pricing changes

Every yr, the major shipping carriers increment their aircraft rates as role of the annual general rate increase (GRI). These increases vary past carrier, service level, weight, and other variables, but generally equate to about a v% increase on average (though we've seen higher during the pandemic).

Additionally, carriers may implement surcharges at diverse top times (such as the holidays and Q4 or what we saw happen during the early days of the COVID-xix pandemic), when there is a surge in packages being shipped. They also implement other surcharges annually, ranging from large bundle surcharges to signature required surcharges.

Unfortunately, there is no manner to reduce shipping costs for these rate increases and surcharges, and you'll either accept to bake them into the shipping fee you charge your customers, consume the costs, or offset them some other way.

11. Encourage your customers to place orders early

During acme season or whatsoever high volume events or periods for your ecommerce business organisation (east.g., heading into Halloween for brands that sell costumes or Thanksgiving for businesses that sell turkeys), it is wise to over-communicate by when your customers need to place orders online to ensure they get delivered on time.

The carriers have their own set of cutoffs for each service during the holidays to help prevent gifts from arriving late. For customers who want to reduce aircraft costs, this will involve placing orders at the earliest cutoffs to avert paying more for expedited shipping.

On elevation of running out of fourth dimension as dates approach, at that place may be additional considerations that impact cutoffs, such as labor shortages, weather events that preclude carriers from shipping, shutdowns from COVID outbreaks, federal holidays that shut down operations, and other factors.

If you work with a 3PL, be sure to pay attention to not only their specific carrier cutoffs, but their inventory receiving cutoffs, holiday turnaround times, any SLA extensions, and general vacation schedule. Any logistics company needs to make many strides over the months leading up to the holidays to prepare for peak flavor, and any make needs to pay shut attention to relay this information to their customers.

5 questions that tin assistance save coin on shipping

Not all of the tips above are going to be applicative to your business or ameliorate your bottom line. Thinking about your electric current ecommerce shipping process, answer the post-obit questions to get an even better sense of what you lot tin can practise to cut or recover shipping costs.

1. How are yous charging for shipping?

Regardless of how much you lot're spending on aircraft, the amount yous charge customers tin too touch your margin.

The psychology of online shopping and consumer preferences is fascinating. You tin present shoppers with two scenarios where they would pay the aforementioned total price, nonetheless they would abandon their cart for the one that has a higher shipping toll.

As long as they're getting a perceived deal or the best value, they are more probable to buy.

Customers don't desire to pay for shipping, but it'due south a major expense for a small business. Consider the following ideas to implement to brand upwards your aircraft costs:

Adjust the product price to absorb the shipping cost and offering free shipping (only if yous sell expensive products).
Charge customers a reduced shipping price while simply slightly increasing the product price (e.g., accuse customers half the cost of shipping simply bake the other half into the product price).
Offer a flat charge per unit aircraft fee to all customers using a composite boilerplate shipping price across all of your orders.
Crave a minimum amount of money to be spent on your store (that'due south greater than the average gild value) in commutation for free or fast aircraft.
Put parameters in place for orders that meet different criteria to more accurately reflect the true price of shipping (e.g., accuse different aircraft fees for orders going to different countries, 1 shipping fee for orders that are over a certain cart value, etc.).
Monitor your return rate and revisit your ecommerce returns policy to run across if you should brand customers responsible for covering return shipping costs.

two. Have you tried some other carrier?

If you lot have fidelity to one shipper/carrier merely because they're closest to you, it might be worth looking into other options. Depending on the areas you lot send to, different carriers may offering cheaper rates than what you're currently paying. Use the post-obit sites to dig deeper into your specific shipping costs:

UPS Shipping Reckoner
USPS Shipping Calculator
FedEx Aircraft Computer
DHL Shipping Estimator

3. Are you using the right packaging?

Many pocket-size businesses make mutual packing mistakes that increment their costs, like using as well big package dimensions or actress package weight. Others employ boxes when they could use a poly mailer or padded envelope to decrease the weight and dimensions.

If yous apply custom branded boxes, inserts, and other fancy packing supplies like shredded paper filler or custom tissue newspaper, and you are struggling to proceed shipping costs downward, you could probably save coin past ditching those.

If you lot insist on using branded boxes, brand sure they don't have dimensions that fall exterior of standard box sizes major carriers utilise, or y'all may face up additional fees.

If your product packaging can exist manufactured so it's send-gear up, you can salvage on shipping costs by but slapping a label on it.

4. Where are your orders aircraft to?

Understanding patterns in shipping destinations can assistance to place where you should be aircraft from. If you're shipping internationally and it'south costing y'all a lot of money, you may want to reconsider or instead work with an international fulfillment provider like ShipBob that operates locations across the earth.

For domestic orders, yous can't control or e'er predict shipping destinations, only you tin control where you fulfill orders from. Working with a 3rd-party logistics (3PL) company, you can utilise their ecommerce warehouses to store your inventory and transport from locations that are closer to your customers.

This tin significantly reduce your average shipping toll when yous multiply out those cost savings across all orders.

"We partnered with ShipBob to scale up operations in the The states, and we've seen a reduction of 70% on aircraft costs. At present, we tin can comfortably assign a shipping cost to each club by pinpointing the product weight and destination zip code. In comparing to shipping products to the United states from Canada, which can be extremely variable in cost, fulfillment past ShipBob is much easier to estimate."

Greg MacDonald, CEO & Founder of Bathorium

v. Have you lot tried using a aircraft or fulfillment partner?

Companies like ShipStation and Stamps.com have free trials for small businesses managing aircraft themselves.

Some other big money and time-saver is outsourcing club fulfillment to a 3PL company that stores inventory, packs orders, and ships packages for you.

"Final July, Prymal reached $forty,000 in revenue. After switching to ShipBob just iv months later on in November, we are reaching $160,000 a month in revenue — that'due south 300% growth. We're also saving $8,000 per month in fulfillment costs."

Courtney Lee, founder of Prymal

In addition to obvious direct costs similar stamp, outsourcing shipping and fulfillment means you have new fourth dimension to focus on areas of your business that bulldoze sales, unlike packing boxes and running to the post function equally orders come in everyday.

How outsourcing fulfillment to ShipBob reduces aircraft costs

Sometimes, the best way to reduce aircraft costs and calibration is to partner with a professional fulfillment visitor. ShipBob provides inventory direction, warehousing, and other ecommerce fulfillment services, and as well helps brands compete with large retailers.

Majority shipping discounts

With thousands of customers, ShipBob is able to negotiate bulk discounts from shipping companies such equally UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL to provide amend rates to customers for expedited shipping, 2-day shipping, international shipping, and other speeds and services.

Optimize fulfillment locations to be closer to your customers

ShipBob helps ecommerce sellers cull the best location in the Usa to store their inventory closest to the well-nigh customers using aircraft destinations from their sales history. By cutting downward the altitude an order has to travel, information technology tin be delivered quicker and at less toll.

You can also use multiple ShipBob facilities to efficiently reach even more than customers.

"ShipBob has fulfillment centers all over the US, so we're not express to shipping from one location. Even though nosotros're located near their fulfillment eye in the Northeast, information technology'due south actually more advantageous for usa to ship from elsewhere. If we kept shipping simply from the East Coast, it would exist expensive to transport to the Westward Coast."

Ryan Casas, COO of iloveplum

Gratuitous packaging

With ShipBob, there are no split line items for picking, packing, or packaging supplies. We employ plain brown boxes and packing materials to not overwhelm your customers with our make, but permit them focus on unboxing your product. Merchants can also ship custom branded boxes, poly mailers, and inserts to utilize for their orders.

First shipping costs from boosted revenue

With ShipBob's 2-Day Limited Shipping plan that can be enabled for all ecommerce stores, yous can meet customer expectations, get more shoppers to complete their purchases, and drive lifelong customers.

Every bit a result, ShipBob customers have experienced an 18% reduction in cart abandonment rate and a 97% increment in their average social club value.

Past outsourcing retail fulfillment, you lot can also go time back to focus on other tasks that bulldoze new customers to your website.

One ShipBob customer saved 120+ hours per week beyond three employees to focus on higher dollar activities, and another was able to grow their business concern 291% twelvemonth over year.

"When I was shipping orders myself, what I paid per order is the same toll now to choice, pack, and ship orders through ShipBob. It'southward even much cheaper to ship to certain countries, which used to have ages and often got lost with localized post here.

At present, I have very transparent pricing, and I can easily run and plan my business. I likewise similar that I'm billed correct away. My one-time carrier billed monthly, which would drain a huge sum of Euros from my account at once. My cash flow has improved."

Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy

Decision

Aircraft and handling are unavoidable logistics costs when running an ecommerce business organisation. Having the right strategy in place helps you reduce shipping costs and ultimately grow your business.

"ShipBob's advanced software helps us quickly understand shipping costs and how to better shipping times by being closer to where our customers are."

Andrea Lisbona, Founder & CEO of Touchland

Request a pricing quote from ShipBob to learn more and run into how we can help.

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Source: https://www.shipbob.com/ecommerce-shipping/reduce-shipping-costs/