Alt Text: Thinking about the eCommerce shipping considerations
People make online purchases for convenience. It is better and faster than visiting brick-and-mortar stores, as they can easily compare products and prices without exerting too much effort. Thanks to improving logistics technology, eCommerce shipping has become more accessible and available to everyone. The growing market success of online marketplaces also created an avenue for entrepreneurs to expand their businesses.
The correct shipping strategy is necessary if you want a thriving career in your eCommerce business. Shipping is essential in this industry, so you must consider all the factors affecting it. Here are the 5 important eCommerce shipping considerations – a startup guide ensuring you the proper way to go around the industry.
Excellent Team
Before proceeding with everything else, creating a team that will help you accomplish your tasks is crucial. The groups you must hire in your business are the marketing, web designer and developer, and fulfillment teams. These people have different roles but have the same mission: to provide the ultimate customer experience. Take note creating teams is not only applicable to big companies. Even for a small business, you can give the people involved to ensure their responsibilities.
Marketing Team.
As the name suggests, your marketing team is responsible for marketing your brand to your potential customers, including creating ideas to make your eCommerce platform more attractive, developing strategies to keep customer loyalty, and increasing traffic to your eCommerce website.
Thus, the marketing team plays a crucial role in growing your business, reaching your target audience, and keeping your competitive edge over competitors. They ensure that all strategies created are executed correctly, driving brand awareness, customer acquisition, and revenue generation.
Web Designer/Developer and Graphics Team.
Your eCommerce platform should be secure, seamless, and user-friendly for your customers. A dedicated web developer and designer in your business guarantee that your website is professionally designed, optimized for user experience and search engines, and capable of efficiently supporting your business goals.
As they provide expertise in technical and creative aspects, you can have a functional and visually appealing online presence.
Meanwhile, if your online store is part of an online marketplace, such as Amazon, Esty, eBay, and Shopify, graphics and other promotional materials are also needed for content marketing. Thus, the graphics design team can help you with visual communication, brand identification, marketing materials, user interface design, and problem resolution.
Their skills and creativity help your brand stand out, maintain consistency, engage with your target audience, and contribute to the success and growth of your business.
Fulfillment Team.
They are responsible for order management and order fulfillment. They ensure all products are ready, tightly secured, and not damaged before shipping. In other words, they are in charge of keeping the orders complete.
Ensure that each group knows and understands your company’s goals to collaborate more easily. However, a great team can only be possible with exemplary leadership and a set of goals, so remember to communicate with them.
By having a dedicated team managing fulfillment, you can focus on other aspects of your business while providing an excellent experience for your customers.
Right Goals
Alt Text: What are the right goals?
An eCommerce business operating without a plan is like a man walking blindly. They need to figure out where to go, what to do, and how to achieve success. When a business does not set the proper goals, the team becomes unorganized, aimless, and uncooperative. The right goals will help you develop your properties right in providing high-quality customer service, especially for international shipping. However, how do you create the right plans?
Go SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound – with your goals.
Your goals have to be well-defined, have precise parameters, realistic, compatible with your business, and achievable within a specific time frame. Such purposes will help you provide the fastest shipping with the best rate.
Shipping Method
Choosing the correct shipping method is crucial to success in the customer’s shopping journey. Moreover, it affects customer satisfaction, product protection, delivery speed, tracking capabilities, and environmental consideration.
There are numerous shipping methods you can provide your customers. Depending on the option they choose, the shipping cost can vary. So, ensure that your customers understand each shipping option’s differences and pros and cons to avoid any misunderstanding.
It is an eCommerce challenge to prevent this from happening, as this can be a frequent scenario for numerous eCommerce platforms. You can offer options like express shipping USPS, same-day, or overnight delivery.
Packaging Material
If you have recently been a business owner, you probably have seen numerous packing videos on social media sites like Tiktok. Plenty of these videos create custom packaging, which is fine. It positively impacts your business, including brand representation, differentiation, customer experience, and product protection.
However, your customers expect you to send their orders in perfect condition. It would help if you guaranteed that the items are nicely packed and intact, regardless of how unique your packaging is. Check your packaging to see if it serves its purpose, is cost-effective, compliant, and operationally efficient. Considering these factors, you can provide customers with a positive and memorable brand experience.
Shipping Discount and Promo Codes
Of course, you should remember to provide shipping discounts and promo codes for your customers. It can make them interested in choosing your business over the others. It can also be your way of showing appreciation for choosing your products over your competitors.
Providing shipping discounts can cost your online store more. However, with the right eCommerce shipping strategy, you can provide your customer’s vouchers, promo codes, or free shipping, especially for international shipping.
What should you do?
Alt Text: How can I ship with Stallion Express?
ECommerce business owners must have a strategic plan to maximize their eCommerce shipping opportunities.
Now that you have covered some of the most important shipping considerations, go ahead, apply them and start saving money on shipping today!
Author Bio:
Diana leads the growth marketing initiatives at Stallion Express. She is obsessed with equipping eCommerce entrepreneurs with everything they need to scale their online businesses. You can catch her doing yoga or hitting the tennis courts in her spare time.
