How can we providing flexible shipping options for small business?
For any online business to flourish amidst the competitive web market, it’s mandatory for them to live up to the expectations of their customers. In an online business, the last step in a normal transaction process is the shipping of the product. Shipping the most important step. Your customer gets to see and touch the original product only after it reaches them in a suitable condition. Therefore, customer satisfaction largely depends on how an ecommerce business manages the shipping of the ordered products. Large enterprises often manage to tackle it with ease given the experience and resources they have but small businesses often get it wrong which affects their revenues adversely.
In this blog we have discussed how you can optimize ecommerce shipping for small businesses without messing it up.
By providing flexible shipping options
Online market has evolved greatly in the last decade. It’s no more the same when people had to compromise just because they are getting to shop from their homes. With so many options available to customers, you need to provide them the best they can get. Being a small enterprise you need to take care that your standard delivery of orders aren’t taking too long to reach your customers. Besides, optimize your shipping options by providing one-two day deliveries. You can also offer fix their own delivery dates using a suitable delivery data scheduler. Just remember, flexibility is the key to happy and returning customers.
By keeping up to your commitments
Offering many things might attract customers to your ecommerce but not fulfilling them does a greater damage than that. You should everything possible to fulfill all your delivery commitments. If you are offering one day delivery and charging extra for it, you should make sure that your customer gets the package timely. Negative publicity is what you cannot afford while your business is still growing and yet to make a mark. So, before offering different shipping options, make sure you will be able to fulfill them or you might lose your customers.
By carefully choosing your logistics partner
Everything is sort of inter-related when it comes to providing seamless shipping experience to your customers. To ensure that you are keeping up your promises and fulfilling various shipping options, you need to shake hands with a trustable shipping partner. You won’t be handling the shipping first hand so it becomes important that the one you choose is accountable for their job. While making a contract with your courier partner, get things cleared about charges and their ability to ship in less than the standard delivery time. Safety of your packages is also of utmost important. All the packages should reach your customer in its best conditions. You need to have clear words with your courier partner for that. And if you want to be absolutely sure of the shipping, you can integrate your store with leading shipping partners like FedEx, DHL, Australia Post, UPS, etc. Especially for Australian merchants, Australia Post Shipping is hands down the best way to deliver your goods.
By efficiently managing your inventory
For the efficient commencement of the shipping process, it is important that the shipment leaves your warehouse immediately. Inventory management becomes crucial here. You should always have a balanced inventory so that your customers don’t have to wait for long to get their products delivered. If you deal in products like apparels and footwear, you have to be more careful about keeping stock of different colors and sizes of the products. If your business doesn’t keep warehouse and depends on directly shipping products from vendors, keep the terms clear with your vendors on how you plan to manage transactions smoothly. Any miscommunications at end moment can affect your business.
What else can you do?
Other than the above mentioned ways, you should keep a few other things in mind. Ensure that your delivery charges are reasonable. Nobody wants to pay a shipping charge that increases the cost of their product alarmingly. From time to time, offer free shipping and discounts on minimum purchases for your royal customers. These are some tried and tested rules which works for most of the small scale online businesses. Other then these, it depends on the kind of products and transactions your business deals in. For example, if you are selling electronic goods, you might have to go an extra mile to please your customers by providing installation and other required services along with the product delivery.
