Shipping is often the “make or break” point of a consumer’s online purchase. If it’s too costly, not offered via their preferred carrier, or perhaps even inconvenient in some way, a potential customer is more than happy to abandon their shopping cart so they can find what they want elsewhere.
There are plenty of ways to avoid losing your shoppers over a mere shipping setting, though. Plenty of add-ons and extensions are available that can help you expand your store’s shipping options, and they go far beyond simply adding another carrier or switching to flat fees. With the right extensions, you can charge more accurately, split up orders, and even skip the shipping process entirely.
1- Add-on shipping solutions:
- Shipping providers — Plugins from local providers including real-time rate calculation based on estimated weight and customer location.
- Process automation — Extensions that automatically handle processes like label printing, drop shipment notifications, email notifications, and so on.
- Third party sync — Sync with external providers who manage shipments, returns, or customer communication.
Invest in additional shipping solutions if you:
- Want to add non-standard or local shipping options to your store.
- Are looking for a shipping suite that will manage functionality like generating and printing labels, sending notifications, or product inventory.
- Need to be able to automatically calculate and present real-time shipping rates vs. flat fees.
2- Location, order size, or weight-based fee calculation:
Invest in table rate shipping if you:
- Have a large or growing store that ships to multiple locations.
- Want to offer vastly different rates to different areas.
- Need the flexibility of defining different rates and methods by ZIP or postal code, state, region, or country.
3-Add or remove shipping options at checkout:
- Conditional shipping: restrict products based on a customer’s location.
- Ship to multiple addresses: allow orders to be split up at checkout.
- Conditional shipping: restrict products based on a customer’s location.
Invest in conditional shipping if you:
- Want to limit the shipment of specific products to specific locations.
- Need an automated, inexpensive way to respect licensing or sales agreements.
- Are looking for ways to restrict payment gateway access by a customer’s country of origin.
- Want to prevent customers from placing orders that would be too costly to ship (for either you or them)
4- Local pickup: skip the shipment entirely:
Invest in the local pickup if you:
- Have one or more physical locations where customers can pick up their orders
- Are already selling locally and want to expand to an online store
- Want to offer discounts to those who pick up their item locally
- Want to split orders between shipments and local pickups
5- Print and include invoices or packing slips:
Packing slips and printed invoices still have their place in the business world, despite a growing reliance on digital solutions. Companies rely on them to show they’ve received orders, or send them to their accounts payable departments to receive reimbursement for a purchase.
Creating packing slips by hand can be time-consuming. It makes more sense to find a solution that can do this for you automatically. And that’s exactly what the Print Invoices and Packing Lists extension does.
Invest in printed invoices or packing slips if you:
- Have a few customers who specifically request or prefer these printouts
- Are already creating your own invoices or packing lists and want to save time
- Want to include printed return instructions or other pertinent information within your orders
6- Change your shipping options until your customers are satisfied:
Are you using (or considering) any of these extensions? What shipping options do you consider crucial for growing E-Commerce websites? If you’ve got the time, chime in below in the comments section and let us know your thoughts on all things shipping.
7- Per product shipping: charge fees only for specific items:
Invest in per-product shipping if you:
- Have a few items that require additional shipping and/or handling fees
- Need to be able to override your existing shipping rates, promotions, etc. on specific items
- Have product variations that are larger or heavier and require special shipments