#lateshipment

Personalize Customer Experience

E-commerce is not just about selling great products. When your purchase arrives, you don’t see it immediately. You see the package first. So, your first impression of the product is in the packaging. Customer experience is elevated when the packaging blows the customer away. Come up with creative packaging ideas that can please the customer, make him remember the brand and build brand recall.

Successful niche e-commerce companies have wonderful packaging ideas: handwritten notes, reusable bags etc.

Under promise. Over sell.

Shipping depends on your freight partner. People look forward to their purchase arriving at their doorstep. Don’t let them down. Promise them realistic delivery times. And to make sure your shipping partner does not let you down, make sure your delivery date is the latest date by which the carrier can deliver. By doing this, you make sure you stick to your promise. And if the product reaches the customer earlier than promised, he or she is delighted. Alternately, you can optimize your shipping cost by signing up with a unique service like LateShipment that automatically tracks all your delayed packages and retrieve refunds for eligible shipments.

Free Shipping

There is nothing better with shipping strategy than offering free shipping to your customer. It is not always the most profitable strategy though. The customer, by default likes the idea of free shipping. So, the astute business house knows to price the product accordingly. It’s all about striking a fine balance with volumes, cost prices, shipping prices.

Several sites offer free shipping with a clause. And that still works well. Order for a minimum of $X and shipping is free. So, when the customer feels he can get the product delivered for free, he adds one or two products to his cart just to make sure he avails the free shipping offer.

Communication

Marketing Teams have to be in a position to communicate shipping to your customers and may want to use shipping promotions like free or flat rate shipping to bring people to your site or increase order value. Web Design and Development Teams need to showcase the right shipping options to customers at the right time so that that these terms are clear to customers.

Convert more with great shipping options

The capital required is less and it’s possible to launch an e-commerce store without having to invest thousands of dollars in inventory up front. You needn’t pay or manage a warehouse, you don’t have to pack and ship orders, you needn’t track inventory for accounting reasons or handle returns and inbound shipments. All you do is order products and manage stock levels. You can ideally run your drop shipping enterprise from your living room. All you need is a laptop and an internet connection.

And now, we look at the disadvantages of drop shipping:

The most visible disadvantage is that margins are low. The seller who sells to you names his price and you advertise the goods on your site with minimal markup. So, unless you are a huge volume player, you don’t make huge profits. That is the sad truth. So, in order to make the business profitable, it is prudent to push volumes! If your markup is on the higher side, remember your competitors win the game. It is just as easy for them to set up the drop ship shop, as it has been for

You don’t own inventory. And that’s a double-edged sword. You have no idea if the wholesale seller you liaise with has stock of the said item. If you sell a product on your site and send the order to the wholesaler and if he says he doesn’t have it, you are answerable to the client. You are the interface to the client and you face the wrath of the irate customer. So, the remedy here is to make sure you liaise only with partners whose inventory management is solid.

Shipping uncertainties can crop up any time. You just trust the wholesaler to ship to the customer.

Does he really do his bit? Does he do it right? You have no idea! If a customer places an order for three items, and they are from separate suppliers, you bear the cost of three separate shipping charges. This can bite into your profits majorly. 

Get your facts right.

On a similar note, perform an in-depth analysis of service rates drawn up on the sites of your carrier. If express delivery and ground shipment reaches your recipient on the same day, it makes no sense to shell out the extra dollars. Don't forget to keep abreast of the fluctuating surcharges due to rapidly increasing fuel prices to protect your margins.

Thoughtful packaging helps.

A memorable branded unpacking experience will be etched in the memories of your customers for ever. And I bet, they will share their experience on social media providing the product much needed boost in sales and advertisement. Add package inserts like discounts, a personal note or small gifts, you have won their loyalty and trust.

Weight matters.

Know that shipping rates are also calculated based on dimensional weight and not just the actual weight of the package. So this complicates calculating the shipping costs even more. As if that was not enough, the billable weight would vary depending on the service type. For example , air services always take in to account only the dimensional weight while ground services factor both Diligently choose the shape and size of your box and shave your shipping costs!

Grab your refunds.

Around 12 percent of the packages are delayed and most of the major carriers like FedEx and UPS guarantee to deliver the packages on time. If your shipment is delayed even by a minute you are entitled to UPS refunds or FedEx refunds. To save you from the mind-numbing task of monitoring all your shipments, segregating the delayed packages and submitting claims for each of your hundred packages, you can simply sign up with LateShipment which automatically fetches refunds for eligible packages.

Want to get more tips on cutting your shipping costs? Attend the ShipTalk webinar on 17th Feb at 2:00 PM EST where our chief strategists will share many tricks and secret ways to slash your shipping rates.

This Forbes report here says that apart from exorbitant shipping costs, businesses also bear the additional expenses in the form of warehouse costs.

So, businesses are trying their best to bring their dimensions down to their bare minimum. 

The greatest advantage of making use of LateShipment.com is that apart from signing up, which takes minutes; you need not bother doing anything else. You continue with your operations just as you were, earlier.

LateShipment reads your daily shipments directly from UPS or FedEx. It requires no software that is to be installed in your server. So, that also means that you need not worry about integrating all other systems with this new component. Your Fedex Refunds and UPS Refunds will apear on your invoice directly.

Needless to say, these reports are very secure and cannot be read by anyone and everyone. Account holders can view these reports. They can be viewed online, saved for later use and shared.

Why are shipping reports useful?

A post-mortem analysis of shipping reports can tell organizations what kind of shipments cost them a lot. It gives a detailed record of promised time, estimated time and actual delivery time. The client organization can make use of this to mention delivery time to their clients. More importantly, the organization can make use of this data to study what kind of a deal they can strike with their shipping carrier.

Business houses get to see where they can save money, what kind of services can be made better at the shipping carrier’s end. They get a clear idea on late shipments. They can calculate the amount of money they are eligible to get, as refunds from the shipping carrier, for the shipments that are delivered later than the promised time. This data gives them a clear picture on budgeting for the years to come, with regard to shipping expenditure.

The LateShipment customer is free of paperwork and record maintenance. They don't need to have records of a shipment’s transit from source to destination, absolutely no paperwork hassle to the shipper. In case of any issue later on, there is a record of what happened that’s readily available.

An organization has consolidated reports of every shipment it has sent and received through its shipping carrier partner. It needn’t have personnel dedicated to watch every parcel sent out. It requires one account to track all shipping history.

Logistics solutions can be tailored after reading these reports. It tells you what time of booking the shipment takes the shipment to the destination in the fastest time. One can also view how exactly these shipments are carried- name of the vessel, voyage, route etc. tailored searches are also enabled in these systems.