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Take a Closer Look at Your Shipping
By Sarah Pearson Published: 20/01/2009
There is no doubt that the Internet has opened tons of doorways for businesses by offering an easy and affordable way to bring your goods and services to thousands more customers than you could in the past with just a bricks and mortar storefront. Setting up a webstore affords you the opportunity to reach so many more people that local print, radio or TV advertising can, which blows your potential earnings right up into the stratosphere.
Savvy business owners, from the small to the large, and everything in between, have learned that taking advantage of what the Internet can provide really boosts sales. Offering online sales in addition to (or instead of) your physical storefront is the key to success for many out there, and it is particularly useful for the small business owner and wholesale supplier.
With very low comparative overhead, you can bring in more sales in a month online than you may see in 6 months from the street, simply because you can reach a wider audience when you go virtual. If you already have a webstore set up, then you are well aware of its possibilities. But whether you have had an online presence established for a time now or you are just starting out, it never hurts to have a look at what you are offering your customers and see how you can make it better. In fact, it could do a world of good, bringing in fresh amounts of business you didn't have before.
One such way of doing it is by taking stock of your shipping policies. Many online retailers and wholesalers focus only on actual product prices and promoting the products themselves, but if you give some of that focus to your shipping, you will see some big results.
One of the biggest deterrents for a customer shopping online is the shipping price. A product itself may be priced considerably lower than they will find in their local shopping center, but if the shipping price is high, that could eat up the savings and therefore cause the customer to shy away from buying from you. After all, why go to the hassle of ordering online and waiting a few days for it to ship and spend time in transit in order to get the item in hand when, for the same price, they could just pop out to that shopping center and get the item right away?
To that end, it is always a good idea to periodically assess your shipping rates to make sure that they are still reasonable. If you feel they are, then you might try a few tests anyway to see what the response is like. Offering a promotional shipping code (such as “order X amount, get half- price or free shipping”) or free shipping on certain items you are trying to move might make all the difference in the number of orders you see. If your shipping prices are already as low as they can go for single items, try combining them – say, if your customer orders Product A and Product B together, they ship for the price of a single item. Often, putting two items in a box will not cost you much more, and if it does, then you've already sold another item anyway, which makes up for it – taking a small loss on shipping equals another sale for you. Just remember to make sure the free item isn't worth less than the loss, and you may be surprised at the revenue a promotion like this brings in!
