Shipping and shopping go hand-in-hand nowadays, so ensuring your shipping strategy is as effective as possible should top your priority list. First, evaluate your current shipping efforts to help strengthen your parcel efficiency.
To assess your shipping strategy, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Is the shipping strategy you offer what your customers want?
Whether it’s same-day, overnight, ground, or express shipping, the options you offer matter. Identify what shipping preferences are ideal for your target audience, then aim to please them when offering shipping choices that cater to your core demographics. This should include a review of your pricing options, as well, when it comes to shipping.
You may offer a flat rate shipping fee or real-time rates based on package weight, departing and destination countries, tracking information, insurance, and all other factors influencing shipping. Reviewing these options can help you identify whether or not they align with your customer preferences.
2. Is free shipping among the shipping options you offer?
While shipping is not free to the shipper, shippers need to consider offering free shipping to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Free shipping can be incorporated into your shipping strategy in various ways, including the option for free shipping based on a minimum order.
Other ways to introduce this as an option include increasing product prices to cover the costs of shipping or at least cover partial shipping costs. Some businesses also opt to pay for shipping out of the margin on inventory sold to retain customers and attract new ones. Either way, incorporating free shipping among your options can help attract and retain customer sales – something any business can appreciate.
3. Do you offer a multi-carrier shipping strategy?
Incorporating a multi-carrier strategy can help companies enhance their overall shipping efficiencies while reducing parcel overhead. The most favorable carriers based on transit time, pickup locations, and more can be identified through data–ultimately helping shippers reduce unexpected fees and meet shipping expectations. Reviewing your existing shipping strategy, consider how multi-carriers may make sense for your business.
4. Are you satisfied with your parcel overhead expenses?
Companies often settle for quick strategies versus the right ones that can best support their unique shipping needs. Considering this, evaluating your current parcel overhead can help you identify ways to strengthen your shipping efforts and save you money. Among the most beneficial ways to do this include incorporating a parcel auditing strategy into your shipping efforts, such as Refund Retriever offers.
By auditing your weekly FedEx and UPS invoices, Refund Retriever detects issues with your shipments, applies for refunds identified that the carrier may not do otherwise, and then confirms those refunds appear in your account. The best part? Refund Retriever charges a percent of the value of the detected and verified refunds – helping your business save money while eliminating a responsibility from your to-do list.
5. Do you work with shipping experts to help manage your shipping needs?
Working with experts can offer you guided insight on best practices across all shipping touchpoints, including warehouse management, fulfillment, e-commerce processing, parcel delivery options, shipping fees, and more. Companies that include BigCommerce, ShipWorks, 3d Cart, Shopify, and SkuVault are examples of expert resources to refer to. For a complete list of suggested solutions to help your shipping business, click here.
Finally, remember that your needs will undoubtedly shift as your business grows and the marketplace evolves. Understanding the variables that impact your shipping strategy will be among the best ways to keep your business strong and healthy – ultimately helping you achieve long-term success. Aim to review your shipping process at least bi-annually, but don’t worry about having to do it alone. Through expert resources and real-time data, your journey toward shipping success will become more vital and less complicated along the way.
