Shipping rates could be defined as the additional charge beside the prices of the items your customers bought. Shipping rates will often be shown at the checkout page.
You could either provide your customers several shipping methods and rates available or just let them choose one or two options.
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1. Integrating shipping rates into products’ prices
88% of shoppers are in favor of free shipping. Therefore, if you could not afford free shipping for your customers, an advice here is to add up the shipping costs into the original prices of products or motivate your customers to buy more to enjoy free shipping. However, you sure do not want the price of your products added up too much when compared to that of your competitors.
Therefore, it is important to keep in mind:
- How your competitors dealing with shipping rates
- Profit Margins
- Customers insights, how much they want to pay for shipping and such.
2. Opting for shipping platforms
Waiting in line at the post office is just something nostalgic for the millenials and elders. Not only the whole process was long and tedious, it was also costly as well. Therefore, it is recommended that you should opt for a shipping platform for a more convenient and cheaper shipping progress.
3. Checking USPS rates
In most cases, it is likely that your items come in different shapes and sizes and while you could use one sized boxes for everything, it also depends on the quantity of customers’ orders. Therefore, it is hard to budget for shipping rates in this case.
An advice for you is to check to see whether you are qualified for flat rate shipping. As long as your package is less than 70 lbs, you can ship your items to any state with one priced shipping rate, no matter how big your package is.
4. Reusing boxes
If you sell fragile products, it is likely that you often have to spend an extra budget on packaging. Bubble wrap, paper or crinkle paper, new costs are just gradually increasing.
But it is also likely that your business has its own packages (e.g. inventory and supplies). Therefore, it is totally possible to reuse the packaging from your own orders if they are still in good condition.
5. Choosing a proper shipping rate that suit your products
If all your products are light-weighted, at the same size, your best shipping strategy will be definitely different than if your products are in a variety of sizes and weights. If you find yourself in the former case, flat rate is your choice. If you are in the latter case, the weight-based rate is better.
