How Do I Offer Free Shipping?

Now more than ever, all on-line stores should be looking at the marketing value of offering the right shipping choices, including free shipping, to maximize sales, market size and return on investment.  The days are over when you can just pass on the costs to the customer and expect to close the sale.  Try that with today’s savvy Internet shopper and you will lose them to your competitors!

A recent study by Forrester Research, Inc says low prices and low delivery costs are the top two reasons visitors revisit an e-tailing site, according to an article titled “Free shipping, more than fast shipping, draws consumers back” at InternetRetailer.com.   For this reason, you cannot afford to not consider using free shipping, or at the very minimum, flat rate shipping for your company.  Click here to see the Internet Retailer article.

So, the first questions should really be…

Should I offer free shipping?  Will my sales increase by offering free shipping?  How do I evaluate if free shipping is right for my company?

That is more than we can get into for this post, but a great article is titled “How to Offer Free Shipping without Going Broke”, found at WebMarketingToday.com, explores these questions with a very good discussion about deciding if free shipping is right for your company.  Click here to see the Web Marketing Today article.

We have published our own whitepaper discussing free shipping titled “Offer Free Shipping and Increase Sales” that you should download.  This whitepaper discusses many additional topics that help you decide if free shipping will help you increase sales.  Click here to download this free whitepaper on free shipping.

Knowing free shipping is not for everyone the next questions should be…

Should I offer flat rate shipping?  Will flat rate shipping increase my sales and my market size when I cannot make free shipping work?

To explore questions covering how flat rate shipping can change everything from increasing your sales to increasing the market size you service, we have also published a whitepaper on this subject, titled “Internet Retailer’s Guide to Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment”.  Even though the title does not say it can help you with this, this is one of our most popular downloaded whitepapers and has received many comments about how a business can change just by changing how shipping costs are handled!  Click here to download this free whitepaper on flat rate shipping.

If you decide that flat rate shipping is right for your company, Shopify has a handy article titled “Shipping Rate Strategies for Your Online Store”, explaining how to effectively offer flat rate shipping at your web site to maximize its sales closing appeal.  Click here to read this article on shipping rate strategies.

Once you have made the right choice concerning what is right for your company, it is time to look at the tools you will need to get the job done efficiently.  Tools like those found in all our Powered by CPS products are a great place to start.  Click here for some ideas of features you should be looking for to lower your shipping costs so you can offer the right type of shipping for your company.

So, if you think free shipping or flat rate shipping is not right for your company, there is a very good chance this is negatively affecting your sales!  We highly recommend that our readers take a careful look at all the articles and whitepapers listed above.  You will be very pleasantly surprised!