Those who say that shipping is a minor factor that is less important than the business itself, won’t reach success. Without a proper shipping system and shipping tips, your business simply won’t survive in the ocean of the best companies with the best shipping services!
Let’s accept that the more we proceed, the more customers’ expectations are increasing. Amazon’s experience speaks for itself: Amazon Prime helps customers get their products as fast as it is possible, and it’s quite normal that customers are getting spoiled more and more!
The shipping system, together with its rates should be properly calculated. If you don’t do your calculations right, you will either fail your shipping or spend more money and fail your business! If you need to understand your shipping costs, you will need to take into account These factors include the service and rapidity of your shipping – how fast you want to ship the products, dimensions and weight, the end of your journey – more popular as a destination, and the shipping volume.
What is Service and Speed
All small business owners know that the speed of their shipping is connected to the price. The faster your shipping, the more expensive your shipping is. Remember that your shipping costs highly depend on you and your business: understand what you want, and then you will have the answer.
Try to understand the time of the arrival – when is the perfect time for your product to arrive? Do you want to have guarantees or delivery commitments for your products? And what do you think, would it be better to track your packages? Remember, everything depends on your answers! Do you need the addressee to sign for confirmation? Do they have commercial or residential addresses? (to know more about their difference, contact us), or maybe you intend to sell, and obviously, ship dangerous and hazardous products? Consider everything before you make your decision! Much depends on your objectivity, and the willingness to have a successful shipping system! If you’re not ready for this, contact professionals like us at Jerome Basilio!
What is Dimension? What is Weight?
Let’s think logically, in which case shipping will cost you more?
Situation A – you ship a light phone case
Situation B – you ship a heavy desk
Of course, you would choose the second option. And the question is not about their importance, it’s about their weight and dimension. Now, it’s not a secret anymore that heavy products always cost more to ship! However, there’s the word dimension in the title for some reason! Some couriers take into account the dimensions, that is the product’s size. This means that if you’re selling large card boxes that are lighter than a small, collectible and heavy knife, you will pay more for the boxes.
But There’s Also Cubic Pricing!
According to USPS’ website, Cubic Pricing is a way for high volume shipping customers to get cheap shipping rates on small but heavy packages. For customers to qualify for this affordable shipping option, they must ship a minimum of 50,000 packages a year, and packages must weigh less than 20 pounds and measure no more than 0.5 cubic feet.
Ah, Distance….!
Distance changes people, but not small business owners! If you want to accurately know your shipping costs, you should not forget about the distance! By saying distance, we mean space between points A and B. In this case, A would be the address of the shipping figure, and B – the recipient. For more questions regarding the distance and shipping, contact us!
Small Business Shipping Tips to Reduce Your Shipping Costs
All of our clients are worried about their shipping costs, and their shipping strategy. However, we at Jerome Basilio think that if you know some secrets, you can achieve whatever you want! That’s why we decided to share with you some tips that can appear to be useful for saving money and having a top-notch shipping strategy at the same time.
Tip 1
Always do your research, and never let your intuition come up with the first idea. If you want to choose the right courier, you need options. Without them, you will be so limited, that you will choose whatever you see on the road. That’s not how a small business is operated! Do your research, analyze costs of couriers, their services and different programs and solutions that they offer, and so on. You can even visit their website, understand how their customer service works, and what they are ready to provide! If you think that you found a perfect courier for your small business, contact them, and negotiate about their conditions, discounts, strategies, and so forth!
Tip 2
If you want to make your shipping faster and more efficient, you can always use modern technologies and softwares. In other words, you can automate the shipping process in order to avoid human mistakes and errors. Apart from that, you won’t have to pay your human-employees: instead, you will only pay once for your automated friend, and forget about all those unnecessary efforts!
But wait, here’s one more thing. Never overestimate automation! Just like humans, robots make mistakes too, but in this case, they are called technical errors and glitches. If an error is made, your shipping system and strategy will get hurt! That’s why you have to trust the automation process to industry professionals who are working together with us, at Jerome Basilio!
Tip 3
Offer free shipping to your customers! How would that help you save some money? Well, sometimes it works even better than the paid shipping! For example, you can increase the price of the products that you sell! By doing so, you will not only cover the costs of your shipping but what’s more important, you will attract customers who are more than obsessed with the free stuff!
There are other free shipping techniques that will not only bring you more customers, but will also help you save money, and spend it on more important things! To know more about these methods, contact us with the email and/or phone number that is provided on our website. We’re waiting for you!
Returns
We will finish this article with returns. Sadly, even the most beautiful products can be sent back. This, of course, highly depends on the recipient, their tastes, sizes, and expectations. You can sell the best products of the market, but still, find some of your items returned….Why? Just because seeing the image of a product, and touching it in real life are two completely different feelings.
Examples…
For example, you are selling retro-styled T-shirts, and you listed images of models wearing your product. When a customer orders the product and receives the long-awaited T-shirt, they may feel that the quality, material, or fabric are different from what they initially expected. Sometimes you are not guilty of returns, and sometimes you don’t get returns at all! But still, you have to plan ahead your actions related to product returns.
Your small business should have a well-planned return policy that will ensure customers that they are dealing with an honest, legitimate, and scrupulous company. In this case, most of your customers will stay and continue using your products, even after a return! Why? Because customers want to trust someone! If you properly handle their return, without conflicts or fights, they will trust you and your business. They will know that the next time they order a product for you, they will receive it in a good condition, and if something unplanned happens, they will be able to return the product with a clear conscious!
Conclusion
As you can see, there are certain unrecorded rules that are followed by business owners. To have the best small business shipping system, you need to calculate your shipping costs, talk to carriers, discuss the price and their services, and so forth. But at the end of the day, our specialists at Jerome Basilio know that a good small business shipping strategy is created together with industry professionals. If you want to have yours, contact us, and we will make your small business journey even more colorful and interesting!
