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When you run an eCommerce business, once someone makes a purchase, their experience with your brand is really just beginning. If you read eCommerce eBooks from experts, you’ll hear a lot about how important shipping is. Your customers expect seamlessness in shipping, but at the same time, you have to consider your costs. 

The following are some general shipping tips for your eCommerce business. 

1. Clarity Is Most Important

The biggest thing you should keep in mind with shipping for your eCommerce business is to be clear. People appreciate clarity and transparency. Even if they’re going to have to pay for shipping, or your shipping isn’t as fast as, say, Amazon, if you’re clear from the start, it’ll improve the customer experience. 

You want to let your customers know when you’re charging them for shipping. If you have free shipping, make it the first thing they see on a landing page for a product. 

If there could be delays, put this information front and center on the product’s landing page as well. 

Managing expectations is so important to make customers happy with the fulfillment and shipping process of your store. 

Nobody wants to be unpleasantly surprised by costs that go up significantly at checkout because of shipping. If you have any hidden charges at checkout, or your shipping costs weren’t already made clear, expect a lot of abandoned carts. 

2. Think About Weight

If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, you need to remain efficient. To be efficient, you should continuously update product weights. When you commit to regularly updating product weights, it’s going to help you gain control over the costs, and you can charge the right shipping fees. 

3. Could You Offer Same-Day Delivery?

Increasingly, bigger retailers are offering same-day delivery when feasible. If you’re a smaller business, it can get trickier but not out of the question to offer a similar service. You do need to have a reliable courier carrier, and the better they are, the better service you’ll be able to provide to customers. 

Choose a courier that tracks the progress of orders and allows customers to see where their order is at any given moment. 

If you are a small business but you plan ahead and rely on automation solutions, you can offer same-day delivery that’s on par with what big retailers in your area are offering. 

4. Provide An Estimated Delivery Date

One of the ways to reduce friction and improve satisfaction on every order that someone places with you are to include an expected date of delivery. This can go back to the idea of clarity—put it where it’s easy to find, and it’s on product landing pages. You can also provide perhaps an even more specific estimated delivery date when someone is about to check out. 

You can think about offering a faster shipping option if available with its date of delivery, even if it’s more expensive. Some customers will choose the more expensive option. 

5. Choose Packaging Carefully

When you’re shipping to customers, you have to be mindful of your packaging. 

First, try to be eco-friendly. Increasingly, consumers are opting to buy from businesses that put the environment and sustainability first. A good way to showcase a commitment to sustainability is with eco-friendly packaging. 

You also need your make sure your packaging is as simple and lightweight as possible, primarily because calculating shipping costs depends on product weight and size. 

When you’re mindful of your packaging, you can make sure that these costs aren’t eroding your profitability. 

6. On-Demand Rates

Businesses in North America can usually get access to pre-negotiated rates on shipping with the top carriers, which include USPS, UPS, DHL Express, and Canada Post. You would typically have to get an account with each carrier and then, based on previous shipping volume, negotiate your discounts. 

Now, however, you have options thanks to technology solutions. You can find platforms that calculate the rates for all these major carriers automatically, and you can compare which is going to work best. You can then show exact shipping costs at checkout and help your customers save money. 

These platforms also have built-in label printing features so you can print out the shipping label you need. 

Using shipping software is in and of itself one of the most important things you can do, even as a new or very small business. You can purchase shipping at a discount, and there are robust features like better tracking and integration with marketplaces.