The topic of shipping is equally important for online retailers and customers. Online shop shipping is a decisive purchasing criterion for many consumers. Nowadays, nobody wants to wait forever for their goods or be surprised by hidden shipping costs during the checkout process. The bar is therefore set high for online shops in order to offer customers an optimal shopping experience.
Shipping can be a big challenge for retailers. It’s important to keep customers happy, but also to weigh up the costs and effort so that the online shop remains profitable.
In this article, we’ll show you everything you need to know about online shop shipping. Find out how you can structure your shipping, why good returns management is so important, and get tips for optimal online shop shipping.
Online Shop Shipping: The Most Important Things at a Glance
- Offer various shipping options
- Insure your shipments
- Offer sufficient customer support including shipping tracking
- Enable fast shipping and easy returns
- Set a minimum purchase value for free shipping
Why is the topic of online shop shipping so important?
As already mentioned, mexico email list shipping is a decisive purchasing criterion in e-commerce. The majority of consumers expect free and fast delivery of goods. In a competitive environment with sometimes low margins , such a requirement from customers can make some shops sweat. For retailers, free shipping is at odds with their own profitability.
However, how effective is social media marketing for e-commerce? it is the seemingly small things that can tip the scales. The risk of numerous purchases being abandoned is particularly high if the shipping service is unsatisfactory. The most common reasons for a purchase being abandoned include:
- hidden and non-transparent shipping costs
- excessive shipping costs
- delivery times that are too long
- costs for returning the goods
To avoid numerous purchase cancellations, china phone numbers we will show you below how you can optimize your online shop shipping.
Reading tip: In this article we give you tips on how to prevent shopping cart abandonment !
What do customers want when it comes to shipping?
The first step to optimized shipping is understanding the needs of consumers. This is the only way you can build a convincing shipping service right from the start.
- Fast and free shipping as possible: Fast and free delivery is seen by the majority of consumers as the standard in e-commerce. Therefore, speed and cost efficiency are important if you want to prevail in the competition.
- Choice of shipping service provider: A study by Sendcloud (2021) comes to the conclusion that the shipping company is important for around 50% of consumers. European consumers clearly tend towards the respective national parcel services. In our case in Germany, this means DHL.
- Climate-neutral shipping: Over half of the consumers surveyed by Sendcloud are environmentally conscious and take a critical look at the packaging materials used in online shopping. Climate-neutral shipping and recyclable shipping materials can set you apart from the competition.
- Tracking notifications: Although shipment tracking is part of the repertoire for many shops these days, tracking notifications are a must!
- Free returns: The returns process is a powerful tool for customer satisfaction and loyalty – with a simple returns process, you stay in the minds of your customers.
Reading tip: In this article you will find all information about shipping times and their influence!
Shipping methods at a glance
As you can see, shipping is a challenge for many online shops for good reason. Nevertheless, it is worth investing a little more time and effort into setting up an optimal shipping process.
If you’re already starting to sweat at the thought of shipping, we can reassure you. These days, you don’t have to handle fulfillment on your own. Below, we’ll take a closer look at how you can best organize your shipping.
self-shipping
The most obvious shipping method is self-shipping, where you have control over the entire shipping process. You take care of the order receipt, picking the products, packing the goods and shipping. This shipping method is particularly suitable for beginners in e-commerce with a low order volume.
Storing your goods takes up a lot of space depending on their size and weight. If you have to use external storage facilities, you should definitely take the resulting costs into account when calculating your own shipping.