Shipping Best Practices

Shipping Rates

When deciding how to charge customers for shipping, studies show that free or flat rate shipping outperforms variable shipping rates.

• 61% online shoppers prefer to shop with a retailer that offers free shipping than one that doesn’t. — Forrester Research (2007)
• 43% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges. — PayPal, comScore (2008)
• 60% claim free shipping is a reason they are more likely to shop online. — Harris Interactive (2008)
• 90% believe free shipping offers would entice them to spend more online. — The Conference Board (2008)

Offering Free Shipping

We recommend offering free shipping (or "Shipping Included" for the wine industry). We realize that shipping is expensive so this may not always be possible.

One way to help balance the costs is by only providing free shipping (shipping included) if the customer's purchase has reached a specific dollar amount or quantity of products (i.e. free shipping if you spend over $XX.XX).

You can do this by creating a promo and setting criteria on "Order Total From" or "Quantity From". Learn more about promos here ». 

Offering Flat Rate Shipping

If you can’t afford free shipping, the next best option is flat rate shipping. It's important to not hide your flat rate shipping if you have it.

Promote your flat rate clearly in your store sections, homepage, footer menu, etc. so your visitors can see it on many pages. By doing this you have already psychologically prepared your visitors that shipping isn’t free, plus you have removed friction in the buying process.

Now your consumers don’t need to worry about the shipping cost. They know whatever they buy will only cost a set amount. You could create flat rate shipping for different intervals (i.e. 1-6 Bottles=$XX.XX; 7-12=$XX.XX; etc.) and you can break up the flat rate into different zones if you’d like (i.e. The Western USA is one flat rate while the Eastern USA is another flat rate)