Shipping 101

3 ways to simplify your eCommerce shipping solutions

eCommerce shipping solutions

Learning how to simplify your eCommerce shipping is crucial for improving your customer experience.

From managing inventory, to quality control to choosing the right carrier, shipping and order fulfilment have a lot of steps that you need to consider. And the sooner you learn to simplify each one, the sooner you’ll be scaling your eCommerce store with ease.

Keep reading for all our best tips on simplifying your eCommerce shipping solutions!

What is shipping and fulfilment in eCommerce?

eCommerce shipping and fulfilment gets customer orders into their hands. A good shipping process is the difference between happy customers and customers who never purchase from you again. In fact, 53% of customers won’t even place an order if your shipping details are unclear.

From end to end, shipping and fulfilment systems actually include a lot of steps, and each one needs to be optimised. These steps include:

  • Receiving and storing inventory in a way that makes sense
  • Checking for stock quality before it is put away to save time when someone orders
  • Calculating the correct shipping amount at the checkout
  • Choosing the right carrier based on the customers location and order
  • Picking and packing orders quickly
  • Shipping orders to the customer

Arranging any returns and refunds without damaging the customer relationship

All of this takes time and energy, and all need to be as simple as possible so that you can process orders quickly.

How to choose the right shipping vendor

To make your eCommerce shipping as simple as possible, it is best to use a shipping integration that works alongside your ecommerce platform.

Let’s look at a few factors to look at when choosing the best shipping vendor for your business.

Packaging 📦

Some shipping vendors have set packaging rates. When choosing the right carrier, you’ll need to consider if it is more cost effective to use your own packaging or theirs. It is also a good idea to integrate courier pricing directly with your eCommerce shop so that customers can choose their price tier.

Shipping software 🧑‍💻

If you are self-fulfilling orders, the simplest option to scale your orders is to use a shipping software. Factors you should consider are things like:

  • Does it work seamlessly with your eCommerce platform?
  • Can you get orders out faster?
  • Could someone else use it easily if you had to take a day off?
  • Does it reduce errors?
  • Can you fulfill orders from a single dashboard?

All of these factors will make it worth it (compared with manually fulfilling orders).

Cost 💰

Of course cost is one of the most important factors in choosing a shipping vendor! No matter how you choose to simplify your eCommerce shipping, you need to balance the cost of:

  • Doing it yourself
  • Hiring someone versus third party logistics
  • Your order volume
  • How much customers are paying (blanket fee vs weight/distance)

Once your order number starts to get overwhelming, your sanity usually outweighs the cost of shipping integration.

53% of customers won't purchase if the delivery details are unclear

Shipping schedule 🗓️

Being able to predict shipping schedules is increasingly important to online shoppers. 53% of customers won’t purchase if the delivery details are unclear. Your shipping integration should make it easy for you to predict when a parcel will arrive. This means considering vendors that do same-day pickups and have a reputation for being reliable (even if it costs slightly more).

Shipping volume 🚚

Lastly you will need to consider the volume of orders you are shipping. This covers both the number of orders and how much each one weighs. You might want to consider using third party shipping vendors if the volume gets too much for you to handle by yourself.

3 Ways to simplify eCommerce shipping

eCommerce shipping plays a big part in your overall customer experience. Consumers are demanding fast and efficient shipping! We’ve got a few ways you can start to simplify the process in your own eCommerce store.

Integrate your business with Starshipit to deliver world-class shipping automation

Evaluate your shipping needs

You might think it’s easier to stick with the same courier you started your eCommerce business with. But your business model might have changed! It’s important to evaluate your shipping needs over time.

Do you have more overseas orders coming in? Do your orders all weigh the same or do they vary and need a variable delivery price so you don’t lose money on every order? You should be evaluating these kinds of factors at least every year.

Consider your target audience and what they will be looking for in their delivery experience too

Communicate with your carrier

If you have a lot of orders going out, you can sometimes negotiate better shipping rates with your couriers. Anything you can do to simplify their job will put you in their good books!

Shipping can be even simpler if you use a Shopify shipping integration. This works alongside your existing platform and:

  • Calculates accurate shipping at the checkout
  • Automatically chooses the right courier from your supplier list (e.g. local or international)
  • Creates shipping labels and accurate order forms
  • Gives customers real-time updates from your carrier

Communicating with your carriers is the first step to using a shipping integration platform correctly.

Man packing parcel in a small warehouse

Simplify your shipping solutions

Simplifying your eCommerce shipping solutions benefits both you and your customers.

A real life example of this is luxury plume brand The Feather. They were sometimes getting over 100 orders a day but were still manually typing out addresses from their ecommerce site. Many couriers will charge penalties for incorrect addresses which means money for you and time wasted for your customers!

Using Starshipit simplified their shipping fulfilment process. This meant 80% less time on each order and less errors on simple things like addresses and labels.

With shipping integration it can actually be this simple!

Use Starshipit to simplify your shipping solutions

eCommerce shipping doesn’t have to be confusing or expensive. With Starshipit, you can get more orders out in less time with less errors. Stop wasting time fulfilling orders manually and start delivering world-class customer service with Starshipit!

If you’re interested in taking your shipping operations to the next level, the best place you can start is with a powerful shipping and fulfilment platform. Get in touch with the team at Starshipit today if you’ve got any questions or sign up for a 30-day free trial to see how it works for your business.