When you have an online retail business, one of the most important ways to ensure customer satisfaction is to have a reliable shipping service. If shipping is expensive, orders are late or you’re constantly running out of products, customers will get irritated, demand refunds and stop purchasing from you. Even worse, they could spread negative remarks about your brand and leave negative reviews online to keep others from purchasing your products.
Why Reliable Shipping is Important?
To keep customers happy with your brand and returning to order more, shipping should be low-cost, efficient and done in a timely manner. These elements aren’t only important for the one person who’s ordering, but for your brand’s reputation as a whole. People talk and leave reviews of your brand online, so if a customer isn’t happy, it could influence others to shop elsewhere as well. One of the main complaints in low review scores is that the products arrived late or that the shipping was too expensive.
Since its inception, online fashion retailer, JJ’s House, has been offering excellent shipping services to its customers. They have a clear return policy in place and offer plenty of shipping options, leaving it up to the customer whether they want to spend more to get their clothing quickly or save as much money as they can. People spread the word about this good service and today JJ’s House is one of the leading global online fashion retailers.
How to Improve a Delivery Service?
There are a few things that any brand can do to improve their delivery service. Firstly, offer options. There will always be some customers who need their items quickly and will look elsewhere if you don’t offer expedited shipping. However, it’s just as important to make sure that your shipping options are reasonably affordable.
Three delivery options are ideal: Overnight, express and standard. Overnight would obviously be the most expensive, while standard would be least expensive but take the longest. This method provides suitable delivery options for everyone.
Another essential way to improve a delivery service is to use a reliable courier to ensure that there are minimal delays. There are obvious times in which delays would be expected, such as during holidays or bad weather. However, if your products are consistently arriving late to customers, there’s going to be a problem.
Best way to ship products for an online Store?
Talking about the best way of shipping products purchased online, its usually the courier service.
However,it depends on which courier service you choose. Usually I suggest to choose different courier services to service different regions.
For example, you can have a local courier service or national post service (again depending on the costing) to serve your local areas or areas within your state.
For interstate deliveries, you can go for much reliable courier service partners which might be expensive but will assure you of the delivery.
Again, having more than one courier service partners will give you an edge to negotiate with couriers on the costing part.
Couriers will do daily pickup however it will again depend on the volume of pickup you have to offer. Also, just to give an edge to your business, try delivering yourself at times to the local area orders and you can also promote your products in that way. I am not sure if the ‘Runners’ concept is there in your area where you can have a team of delivery boys who can fulfill your local area orders and you don’t have to use courier services for your local orders.
How does free shipping impact margins?
Now, free shipping will affect margins. The key here is that it doesn’t make it ‘0’. No one would be in business if it is the case. Companies find ways to make money in other ways.
Or I could charge for shipping and trust my product and service and hope the customer comes back again.
If the product and service is not right customers are not going to come back. There are some creative ways companies are solving this issue.
Research Worldwide Couriers
Offering worldwide shipping is a convenient accommodation, but you should make sure that you can offer it at a reasonable cost. There are many worldwide couriers that you can choose to work with, so do your research. Choose a worldwide courier that can handle the types of products you sell and can deliver to the parts of the world that you want to be able to sell to. The courier should offer various pricing options as well so that you can offer affordable options to your customers.
Never underestimate the importance of good shipping services for your brand. Follow the tips above to improve your shipping services and keep your customers happy.
