Building Accurate Options in the Payment Process
When shipping products to customers across the country or around the world, brands need to select the best options available in terms of cost, as well as present choices clearly. Too many options can be overwhelming, while too few can lead to cart abandonment.
Shopify Plus certified app partners include shipping tools to help increase conversion by giving customers options, while protecting brands from any fluctuations or external factors affecting shipping costs.
ShipperHQ works with Shopify Plus brands to calculate the most accurate shipping rates and provide relevant delivery options based on factors like customer location, product dimensions, weight, type, price, and quantity filters. Additionally, merchants can display details about delivery date and time during the checkout process and apply custom shipping rules around peak times, loyalty, discounts, or other incentives.
Tecovas was founded in 2015 as a company specializing in selling handcrafted western boots directly to consumers for under $300. Noah Solomon, the digital manager at Tecovas, emphasizes the importance of the buying experience and how shipping plays a key role.
“We want to try to provide an experience that is very close to the in-store shopping experience for those who cannot visit, so fast and free shipping is the most important place to start.”
The company wanted to eliminate vague time windows (like 3-6 days) and provide more precise options that allow customers to make a decision based on the time and costs they are willing to pay. Using ShipperHQ, Tecovas can present the best possible options to customers based on their address and specified delivery date instead of a range.
During the holiday shopping season, it is particularly important to be transparent with customers about delivery expectations. In fact, in a recent consumer survey conducted by ShipperHQ, they found that 82% of people prefer to shop from a seller that provides estimates of actual delivery dates. And 44% of them are even willing to pay a higher amount at checkout to receive this information.
Doing so is not just better for the shopper, but also better from a logistical standpoint.
“We are able to save on labor costs by streamlining the order fulfillment process. Since we now provide our customers with accurate delivery date information – which takes into account actual transit time – we can ship our orders more efficiently,” says Solomon.
Adding More Shipping Companies at Lower Costs
As businesses expand their reach to customers across regions, the costs incurred for shipping items can vary significantly. Many businesses start leveraging their own national postal service, and it is in the mutual interest of both the company and the carrier to find the lowest cost.
However, the company may not actually get the best price with its default shipping option due to the geographical reach of the carriers, along with other factors like the dimensions and weight of the items and urgent demand.
The Cookie Countess sells high-quality decorating tools and supplies to create professionally designed treats for cookies, cakes, cupcakes, macarons, and other delectable dishes. Over the years, the brand has expanded globally, and for each country it serves, it must calculate different shipping costs, services, and customs paperwork.
The team chose Shippo, connecting the certified app to their store in just a few minutes. Each time an order is fulfilled in Shippo, the fulfillment status and tracking information automatically sync with Shopify in real time, ensuring no discrepancies between the tools. The integration means that The Cookie Countess gets the best rates from UPS, DHL, and other shipping companies.
“We have
Some of our package types are automatically loaded into the ‘Saved Packages’ section in Shippo to make it easier to select the most frequently used boxes without having to enter them every time. We also print our shipping labels directly on a thermal printer and can process a label from start to finish in under 40 seconds,” says John Ramos, founder and co-owner of The Cookie Countess.
Opening New Markets Through Shipping
This allows brands to access vast new markets of potential customers when going global. It’s easier than ever to build a story and message that target a community, regardless of where members reside; however, global expansion brings new complexities to operations. There are administrative aspects to manage, the need to build a reliable and speedy network to deliver goods worldwide, and challenges in serving different countries while considering varied customs regulations, taxes, and duties.
Biaggi offers a range of foldable bags and travel bags for travelers. The product nature itself targets a global audience; however, the brand hesitated to commit to international expansion due to inexperience with shipping and global logistics. Their products were higher-priced and larger in size. The company did not have internal team members to manage multiple carriers or automated shipping tools, leading to increased shipping costs and higher operational costs as well as longer delivery times for customers.
Biaggi worked with Easyship, which integrates directly into the checkout process in Shopify, synchronizes product details, displays dynamic pricing and delivery times to anywhere in the world, generates labels, and streamlines order status and tracking updates. It allows brands access to 50 shipping partner companies, obtaining the best pre-negotiated rates for services from postal to express, or they can tie in their own rates. The integration covers tax and duty automation, and the result is that customers anywhere can see clear and transparent options: cheapest, fastest, or best value.
“We weren’t offering international shipping because the costs were too high, and while we were willing to contribute to shipping costs for customers, we had no way to implement that. Easyship provided us with solutions to these problems, and now we can easily offer 3 shipping options to every international customer at checkout,” says Biaggi founder Steven Hirsch.
This allowed Biaggi to ship its products immediately to anywhere in the world. The team saved time on tedious operational tasks, as support hours decreased from 5-10 hours to less than one hour per week. By expanding to a global audience, Biaggi grew by 20% in revenue while reducing over $100,000 in annual shipping costs, leading to further growth for the company.
Making Exchanges More Attractive Than Returns
Over 50% of returns are simply because the customer has the wrong size. They aren’t returning because they want a refund; they are returning because they want a different product. This is especially true for online brands with multiple size variants. But other industries face similar issues
Source: https://www.shopify.com/hk-en/enterprise/increase-conversion-aov-and-repeat-purchase-with-shipping-and-returns-apps
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