When setting up your store you need to put some thought into shipping. It is important to know how to manage shipping on Shopify in order to succeed. You need to think about how to ship products to your customers, how quickly you can do it and how you’re going to cover the cost. It is also advised to decide if you will only sell in one country or worldwide. Also, it is important to determine if you’re going to ship natively through Shopify or use some sort of Shopify integration on a third-party shipping platform.
Shopify shipping options
You must be clear with the customer and tell them in advance if they will have to pay additional shipping fees. Unexpected fees are one of the main reasons why customers abandon their carts. To avoid that, consider these shipping options:
- Exact shipping costs. In this case you will charge customers exactly the same amount as your carrier is charging you. For example, if you are using USPS to handle your deliveries and they charge $4 for a small package, then you also charge $4.
- Flat rate shipping. With this option chosen you will set fixed rates and you can base them on order value or location. For example, you mainly sell in USA and you charge $5 to ship anywhere in USA. You can also choose a region, like anywhere in Europe.
- Free shipping. This option is getting more popular every day because of changing customer habits and views. In this case you have two options.
The first one is to just have free shipping and increase the product price by as much as you would like to receive for shipping. The customer will see the final price with no added fees from the beginning and will avoid unnecessary frustration.
The second option is to combine free shipping with exact shipping cost or flat rate. For example, if you sell a product for $20 – the customer needs to pay shipping. But if a customer buys something valued above $100 then the shipping is free. As you probably already understand, here you just set a certain order total from which the shipping becomes free. Usually, it also acts as an incentive for customers to buy more. Especially, if you set up your pricing in a way that makes it fairly easy to come close to the limit. This way, the added benefit will outweigh the added cost of another item and customers will be willing to add an extra item, to forego the shipping charge.
Initial shipping setup
When you have made all the necessary decisions it is time to set up and start managing shipping on Shopify. Here are the easy steps to complete:
- Log on to your Shopify admin page.
- Go to Settings → Shipping.
There you will need to choose a shipping origin, which can be your own store or a supplier. Also, if you are shipping from a different location than your store, make sure you set that address because all the shipping costs are calculated according to your address. Afterwards, you need to pick a package size that is suitable for you. You can basically set anything, as long as your shipping carrier accepts it.
Shipping zones
When you finish adding package types and shipping origins you need to choose a shipping zone. In this part, you need to decide on the product shipping charges that the customer will need to pay. For example, if you sell from the UK, you can set zone 1 to be UK and customers from the UK will get their package for free or at a certain cost like £5.
Then you can choose zone 2 – the rest of the world and charge it extra for shipping. There is a possibility to choose large regions like Europe, Asia and Worldwide, but you can always exclude countries to which you do not want to ship.
Shipping labels
A crucial thing in shipping is shipping labels. If you get it wrong, no customer will receive the parcel and you will have a lot of complaints. To help you out, Shopify created Shopify shipping, which allows you to buy and print labels easier. However, it is only available when shipping from the United States and Canada. If your fulfillment location is outside of these areas, there is no use from Shopify shipping.
The main e-commerce problem – late shipments
As we all know, online shopping is based on feedback and comments. In other words, the shopper is not able to physically touch or try an item, so all they can trust is the experience of other buyers. This means that you, as an online seller, need to maintain as good of a public image as possible. The biggest threat, which will devastate your reputation, is shipments being late. According to customers, it is the most irritating issue, which forces them to leave negative feedback. The best way to avoid this is to automate your order fulfilment.
Shopify shipping integration
Another important thing to know is that there are Shopify shipping alternatives that can make your e-commerce business more efficient. The best way to manage all the aspects of shipping, especially if you own more than one store, is to use the Shopify integration from Multiorders shipping management software. Your stores can be either on Shopify only or on different platforms and this software will make your life a lot easier.
Shopify shipping management software
- Unlimited carrier accounts
First and foremost, unlimited carrier accounts need to mentioned. The available variety will help you improve shipping times and reduce costs. Multiorders offers plenty of carriers. If you want to integrate each one of them to Multiorders software you can easily do it. Therefore, if you ship to different regions in the world, you can use the most applicable ones.
- USPS Commercial Plus pricing
Moreover, when you use USPS with Multiorders, you automatically get USPS Commercial Plus pricing. This provides significant savings no matter how many packages you send per day. USPS Commercial Plus pricing means that you will get the lowest prices available for that moment.
- Shipping labels in a few clicks
To manage shipping on Shopify like a pro, you should also take advantage of printing shipping labels. This is more straightforward than you can imagine. Only a few clicks and it is done. You can choose your own style and design of the label. Even more, if you wish, you can request for a customised one.
- Shipping presets
In addition, to streamline your shipping process even more, you can create shipping presets. Let’s say you have a few standard boxes and most of your packages come out similar in weight. You can make a shipping preset for each box and assign a shipping carrier to it. As a result, when you need to ship this type of package, you will just use a preset. This way, you can save a lot of time and energy. With Multiorders shipping presets, you can forget about any repetitive form filling.
- Merge orders
Lastly, Multiorders – the best Shopify shipping management software – offers you the option to merge orders. In other words, when you have more than one order going to the same address, Multiorders will offer you to merge them together. In this case, you can save on the shipping price and only send one parcel instead of multiple. Order merging is convenient not only for you, but also for the customer. The main reason being that everyone prefers to receive one delivery instead of multiple.
In conclusion, use Multiorders shipping management software and save time, money and other resources that are so valuable for your Shopify and other stores.
