Once you have established yourself as an online retailer of repute and have a growing customer base you will find that shipping is very much the backbone of your operation. So, it is worth looking at how to get the best deal on bulk shipping and where it fits into your business plan.
Here are some top tips for taking your postage to the next stage:
Compare the price
Thanks to the deregulation of the postal service in the UK, not to mention the already burgeoning global courier market, there are many companies vying for regulator delivery business.
So your first port of call is to look at what you are shipping, both in terms of goods and volume, and then shop around the websites of each company and work out how much it costs. Alternatively, you can let one of the many price comparison websites help you. Parcel2Go for example can offer price comparison on a case by case basis across many carriers.
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To try and work out comparisons on longer-term deals for bulk shipping, Postagesupermarket.com can also be very helpful.
Negotiate rates and times
If you are doing a lot of shipping – which as your business grows will hopefully be the case – then don’t be afraid to talk to the leading carriers, such as Royal Mail, UK Post and even the likes of UPS and DHL about doing a deal. You may think that you are too small, but most companies will, for the sake of some regular business, look at doing something for you. No harm in asking.
Can you integrate with their system
Once you do have deal with a courier or postal company – either with or without special rates – it is often worth looking at whether you can integrate your order system with theirs. Cloud computing and the internet often let you use the postal company’s order system so that you can just have one set of securely stored data for each order. FedEx for example let you do this.
If not, there are many different kinds of courier management software on the market that will help you integrate – or at least streamline – your ordering and courier management for your goods, saving you time and effort, such as BrightPearl.
Offer a range of options
While many of the software and service talked about thus far are aimed at saving you time and money, it is also worth looking at the role mail and shipping can play in helping to attract and retail customers.
One of the first things to consider is that it is best to try and offer a range of delivery options to your customers – at the very least express and standard delivery options. Who knows, in years to come you may also be able to add in Drone delivery too, if Amazon’s idea hold water and the regulations are changed.
The key thing is to weigh up the cost of these and how to pass it on to the customers. Most large businesses make money on their shipping – through a combination of doing a deal with the shipping company that they don’t pass on and through over charging for express delivery.
At the very least you need to be able to offer shipping that is cost neutral to your business, but with an option that maybe makes you a little profit. However, don’t be greedy: good rates and a range of delivery options is one of the key customer retainer tools there is.
Weight up benefits of free shipping
While customers are going to like having a choice of delivery options and you like to make money from them, there is another approach: free delivery.
This may, on the face of it, appear to be a reckless extra cost to your business, but it can in many ways act as a great way to get business – especially if your competitors aren’t offering free delivery. It is one of the things that makes people keep coming back for more. Look at it as a marketing or CRM cost.
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