Using shipping to customer's advantage

Oct. 13, 2011 - PRLog -- Shipping is undoubtedly an important aspect of ecommerce. It is one of those services that many online shoppers grudge paying for, but is unavoidable. Who would like to bear the cost of shipping something like say, a T-shirt? More often than not, shoppers think twice about having some small item shipped. Because of the arrangements that shipping companies have with ecommerce businesses, they sometimes wait for a certain level of orders from a particular geographical territory to ship all at once and save money, leading to delays in delivery. Many ecommerce businesses end up losing customers because of this.
Simple solutions
The ecommerce business can create an opportunity out of this problem. It can devise simple, yet highly effective strategies by which it can share the burden of shipping partly. It can come out with a variety of options by which it can offer incentives in shipping, which will end up making the customer, feel good. In effect, this is an inducement by which the ecommerce business can make the customer stretch her resources a little and buy a little extra. It is something like a small pack that comes free with a big pack, except that this is a supplementary offer.
Split the cost of shipping
A smart ecommerce business would like to keep its customer loyalty intact by offering bits and pieces of novel offers. Shipping is a great way of doing that. The ecommerce business can bundle a few products and make their value exceed a certain amount, the prize of which will be free shipping. For instance, it can club products like school bags with water bottles and lunch boxes, and for a set quantity of say three pieces each, offer free shipping. This is a means by which it pushes the customer into making a small extra effort at buying items that may be needed some time later. Good marketing should make the customer think that lunch boxes and water bottles are always needed from time to time, since children have a tendency for losing or breaking them. So, why not buy three of them right now and avail free shipping, rather than rush to the nearby store to buy these items at short notice, when children cannot go to school without them the next day?
Many other options
An ecommerce business can make shipping a kind of bargaining chip. It can use it to give the customer the reason to shop for a little extra to cover major costs that she would have to incur if she were to buy the product singly. There are lots of options that ecommerce businesses can think of. They can have shipping offers on set quantities; they can offer them during some seasons, or they can offer them for members. They can also offer free shipping on returned goods, or offer incentives by introducing flat shipping rates for certain locations. This way, ecommerce businesses can gain a lot by making innovative use of an important element of their business.

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