How to Reduce Your eCommerce Store’s Shipping Costs

The technology that we have nowadays makes it possible for us to order items from eCommerce stores from anywhere we have access to a connected device. From shopping for clothes to ordering your groceries and tech gadgets – name it and you can order almost everything you need online. Along with this demand comes the rise of eCommerce online stores. Now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a well-known brand or you’ve just started your business – as long as you have a great product that appeals to your target audience, you will have your share of customers.

With that said, you will need to choose the best eCommerce shipping solution to ship out your products. There are several factors that you should consider when choosing one. Of course, your priority should be the time of shipping, and the priority of shipping as it is one way you can increase positive customer feedback. Another is the safety of your parcels, especially if you’re shipping fragile items. You wouldn’t want your items to arrive as damaged goods to your customers. And lastly, you have to consider the cost of shipping.

Shipping costs are usually shouldered by the customer. However, offering free or discounts on shipping fees are two ways that you can get your customers to buy your product. If a customer sees two sellers offering the same product but sees one with a lower shipping fee rate, the seller with a lower shipping fee will likely get the sale.

As a seller, you should use lower shipping fees and Inventory Management Software to your advantage. With that said, here’s how you can reduce your store’s shipping costs.

1. Do your research

It’s a fact that there are a lot of shipping companies that cater to Canada and other neighboring countries. Aside from shipping time, these companies vary greatly with their shipping rates. When looking for a courier service you can get a higher quotation for the same shipping time and size of the parcel from one courier and get a lower quote from a different courier. So the key here is to do your research.

It’s not exactly easy and time effective to scour the couriers’ pages one by one to see their rates. But with Ship Expert, you can enter the weight and dimensions of your parcel and instantly get  comparisons of the top couriers and their best discounted prices. Best of all, it integrates with virtually every e-commerce platform to automate all shipping – saving you and your customers money.

2. Use your chosen courier’s packaging

Most eCommerce stores opt to use their own packaging to make their items more presentable to the customer. However, using your own packaging might cost you some extra money.

If you go beyond the allowed dimensions for a regular-sized parcel, your courier can charge you additional dimensional fees. Shipping companies apply these extra charges so they can fully maximize the storage and shipping areas. With that, it’s better to use the courier’s packaging instead. This way, you’re guaranteed that you won’t be charged with any other additional charges.

3. Get shipping rate discounts

Discounted shipping rates aren’t just for your customers; they’re for you to enjoy too! You can definitely score some shipping rate discounts by contacting your chosen courier. Usually, they give out discounts based on the volume of packages you’re going to send over.

The more packages that you will send out for shipping, the greater the discounts the shipping company can offer you. If it’s possible for you to strategize your ship outs and send these out by bulk, you can definitely score in greater discounts compared to when you send packages individually. An alternative is to use an e-commerce shipping solution that provides those bulk discounted shipping rates regardless of your shipping volume.

4. Maximize flat-rate shipping

Flat-rate shipping is when a courier will charge you a flat rate for your shipped items. Here, the size and weight of your parcels won’t matter. So if your chosen courier offers flat-rate shipping, it’s very important that you maximize it. You can choose to ship out bigger and heavier items with flat-rate shipping rates since these items will usually cost more to ship if they were regularly-priced. This way, you can save a lot of money by having your bulkier and heavier items shipped with flat-rates and having those smaller and lighter parcels shipped with its original pricing.

However, if you mostly have smaller and lighter parcels like clothes, you can choose to either ship these in bulk so you can maximize the flat-rate shipping or just do some calculations and see which one would be better for you.

5. Buy shipping supplies in bulk

Aside from negotiating and working around shipping rates, you can also save money by buying your shipping supplies in bulk. The air pillows, boxes, packaging tapes, and other supplies for shipping will all fall under the costs that you have to factor in for shipping. This will definitely be of help, especially if you have a large volume of orders to fulfill. But even if your volumes are just a few, these supplies don’t expire so you are bound to use them up anyway.

Summary

Giving free or discounted shipping rates to your customers is one of the effective ways that you can entice them to choose your products instead of your competitors’. However, you shouldn’t place these costs on you. There are a lot of ways on how you can get around shipping fees. This article gave you five proven methods on how you can do just this.