Customers don’t want to pay for shipping anymore. It has become popular in the online shopping industry for some reason.
Shipping used to cost money, too, but now the item is almost free. It was a plan where the seller lowered the price of the item but charged the same amount for shipping as the item cost. Today, this strategy doesn’t work very often because people already know it’s a scam.
Free shipping is a much more credible offer, and if you do it right, you can take advantage of it.
If you sell things online, this might be hard to offer.
First, you have to set the prices of your products so that they can compete with those of other people who sell the same things as you. If you raise the price of your products so you can offer free shipping, customers may go elsewhere.
Then what do you do?
Why give it away for free?
The word “FREE” is very strong. No one in the world will turn down something for free, even if they don’t need it.
People will take anything for free: ice cream, a quote, a phone case, etc. Information is free today. Even the instructions are free.
So why shouldn’t you expect free shipping?
Online shoppers will try to avoid paying for shipping if they can, especially if the products you sell can be found in a regular store.
A lot of big sites, like AliExpress and Amazon, also ship for free. If you don’t do the same, your customers might go to Amazon instead of your store to buy a similar product.
Here are some numbers from INVESP that will give you an idea of how free shipping works.
- 90% of customers say that free shipping is one of the most important things that affects their buying decisions.
- Orders that don’t have to pay for shipping are worth 30% more than those that do.
- Free shipping makes 93% of customers more likely to make a purchase.
- 61% of customers are likely to leave their cart if there is no free shipping.
- 93% of customers take action to get free shipping, like adding items to their carts or signing up for an email list.
As you can see, offering free shipping helps boost sales. If people don’t have to pay extra for shipping, they are likely to buy more products. Most likely, this is because they feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick if they have to pay for it.
First, they have to wait for the item to arrive. Second, they haven’t even seen the product or touched it. Third, they don’t think it’s their job to pay for a product to be shipped. After all, they’ve already paid for the product itself, so they think that the seller should pay for shipping.
Here, we’ll look at how you can increase your sales by offering free shipping. And that way, we’ll make sure you don’t lose money.
But keep in mind that some ways can lower your profits. But you should remember that even if you make less money per product, you are making more money overall because you are selling more of them.
How Free Shipping Works
There are only two ways to get free shipping, no matter what site you go to. The first one depends on something, and the second one does not.
Conditional shipping is when a customer gets free shipping but has to meet certain requirements. Here are some examples:
- The area of delivery must be nearby.
- At least $100 must be spent.
- Needs a coupon.
- must sign up for an email newsletter.
- needs to sign up for an account
There are a lot of ways to get shipping for free. You are in charge of making these conditions, but make sure they are easy. Also, if you’re going to set conditions, you should only use ones that help you.
Getting a customer’s email address is one example of a good thing to do. You can send these customers your marketing emails, and then you can get them to buy more things.
The second kind is always true. When you offer free shipping, you don’t ask your customers to do anything. It is free for everything, no matter how much or how little.
When you sell expensive items, you usually offer free shipping no matter what. Most of the time, sellers offer free shipping without any conditions by adding the cost of shipping to the price of the product.
This only works if you are selling something that no one else has. And by “unique,” we mean that people can’t find your products anywhere else.
So, you can control both the supply and the price.
Why it’s a good idea to offer free shipping
Free shipping is gold in the eyes of a customer. He will not only get something he wants, but he will also not have to pay for delivery.
If the item gets broken in shipping, he won’t have to pay twice as much for shipping. When a customer returns a bad product, they usually have to pay for shipping.
They pay for the product to be shipped to their home.
They cover the cost of sending the broken item back to the seller.
If you don’t charge for the first shipping, people are more likely to risk getting a bad product. This doesn’t mean that you’ll ship something of low quality. It’s just that you take away the customer’s fear of having to pay for shipping twice.
Here are some reasons why you should offer free shipping if you are a seller.
- Free shipping is a great way to get people to buy from you. Your sales will go up if you put a simple banner on your online store that says you offer free shipping.
- Even though some of your profits will go toward paying for shipping, you can still make more money than if you charged for shipping. This works based on how much there is. Even with all the costs, a $5 profit from 100 sales a month is still $500. Compare this to making only $100 in profit from ten sales where you make $10 per sale.
- Repeat customers If you offer free shipping, your customers are more likely to come back to your store and buy more. They may also share your store on social media.
- Keep competing You can now go up against big names like Alibaba, AliExpress, and even Amazon. All of these businesses ship for free. And since you offer the same thing, your customers have no reason not to choose you.
How to give away free shipping
It doesn’t really matter if you offer free shipping with conditions or not. The important thing is that it’s free.
Here are some ways you can set up your store to offer free shipping options.
Don’t Limit Yourself
Shipping companies usually charge the same price per box, no matter what’s inside or how heavy it is. Some shipping companies also use pouches, which are plastic bags, as a way to package items. The shipping cost is the same whether the items fit in the box or pouch or not.
The standard size of a package is 6 inches by 3 inches by 3 inches. You can put a few small items of clothing in here. Let’s say that the shipping cost is $5.
What can you do to ship things for free?
You can sell items in large quantities. This is great if you sell kitchenware, tools, rags, frames, and other things that people can use in large quantities. If you sell canned goods, dried fruits, nuts, and other similar things, you can give free shipping to people who buy in bulk.
The other thing you can do is figure out how much shipping the box will cost. In this case, it’s $5. Now, some customers don’t want to buy in large quantities because they don’t need that much.
If it costs $5 to ship, you should be able to charge your customer that amount. If the profit on a pack of organic nuts is $10, charge $15 per pack and ship them for free. But you should also offer a lower price, like $45 for five packs with free shipping.
You have to play around with your prices and set up fake options. In this case, if you bought all five packs separately, it would cost $75.
But if the customer buys in bulk, he only has to pay $45, which saves him $30.
Set the minimum amount for an order.
You should also know how many can fit in a box to be able to do this. Most of the time, your item won’t fit in just one type or size of package.
Use two different kinds of boxes.
- 6 x 3 x 3 inches, and it costs $5 to ship.
- 10 x 6 x 6 inches, and it costs $10 to ship.
To be able to offer this kind of free shipping, you have to rely on the second box just to make sure you can fit all of the customers’ orders in one shipment.
First, figure out how much money you are making from each product as a percentage. Because of this, you should always raise your prices by a certain percentage and never by a set amount.
40% of the capital is a good markup.
Here are some things that have a 40% markup:
- Product A has a $40 investment and must be sold for $56.
- Product B has a $20 investment and must be sold for $28.
- Product C has a $30 investment and must be sold for $42.
You know that your markup is 40% no matter what the customer buys. For you to be able to offer free shipping that costs you $10, a customer must buy enough items to cover the cost.
If your minimum order is $100, then $40 is 40% of that. That is what you make. Your starting money is $60. You can take $10 off of $40 for shipping, leaving you with a profit of $30.
You can’t use the percentage as a markup method for small items like hairpins, small stress balls, and similar things. If you put in $0.50 for one hairpin, you only make $0.20.
This profit can’t be used to pay for $10 worth of shipping, of course. In this situation, you should offer free shipping if you sell a lot.
Plus, they ship for free.
If a customer did something nice for you, you could give them free shipping as a bonus or incentive. For example, you can only give customers free shipping if they sign up for your email list.
There is no other way to do this than to charge the shipping rate for each item. Think about how great it would be if all of your customers signed up for your email list. If shipping costs are not included in the total retail price, you will lose money quickly.
But this only works once. Next time, people won’t be able to choose free shipping. You can offer this to people who are buying from you for the first time, and then send them an email with a code.
To do this, you need an auto-responder tool that will automatically send an email with a free shipping code to new customers.
You can’t do this and give free shipping no matter what at the same time. Customers won’t sign up for your email list if there’s a big banner on your site saying that all items ship for free. It makes no sense, so choose either free shipping no matter what or free shipping as a bonus.
Only some items are free.
If you want to sell some things quickly, you can offer free shipping on them. This will help you get rid of or sell them quickly.
You might still have a dozen packages of nuts that will go bad in three months. You can give these items away for free and make less money, but you won’t lose money if they go bad before their expiration date.
You can also offer free shipping on some items, like smartphones and laptops, that are pricey but will make you more money.
You can do this with a number of plugins. You can set your own shipping strategy with these shipping plugins, such as giving free shipping on some items.
To be able to do this, you need to go to the app store for your device and look for a shipping app that can help you do this.
Pick Free or Quick.
This is a good plan if you want to make money off of both fast shipping and free shipping. This is also choosing power.
If you give your customers choices, they are more likely to buy something from you and finish the sale. When you get free shipping, you will probably choose economy shipping, which can take up to a few weeks.
In fast shipping, which is also called expedited shipping, the customer now has to pay that price, and you can even charge more than the actual shipping cost.
If it costs $15 to ship quickly, you can charge $20. This is not a way to cheat. You are asking your customers to pay more because you are putting their order ahead of others. This means that you will also have to pay for gas to get the package to the post office or courier.
How to get your store to ship for free
No one will know about the offer, no matter how good it is, if you don’t tell them. You should get the most out of this offer in every way possible.
Most online stores have sliders. Make sure one of the sliders says “FREE SHIPPING” in big letters. Add a link that a customer can click on to find out more.
Put the FREE SHIPPING banner in all your ads and on your social media like Facebook, Instagram, and others. You should also put the rules for FREE SHIPPING on every product page.
The more a person sees “FREE SHIPPING,” the more likely he is to remember it. And the more you show this, the more likely it is that someone will see its value. And then he won’t want to miss out on the chance to get products shipped to him for free.
Summary
Free shipping will continue to be popular. Almost everything is free in our world today. You need to be better than your competitors, and you can do that by giving your customers free shipping.
Remember that there are two kinds of free shipping: those that have conditions and those that don’t. You can’t use both as a seller. You can only pick one.
Between the two, there is no right or wrong choice. All of it depends on what you’re selling and where you’re selling it. For example, you can’t offer free shipping on everything for items like candies or canned goods that cost less than the shipping cost.
Also, make sure that you do the math right so that you don’t lose money. As the saying goes, “measure twice, ship once.”
