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How to Improve the Shipping Experience for your Customers
Last modified: December 2, 2021
Shipping is one of the hardest aspects of managing any eCommerce store. Unless you make deliveries yourself, you have to rely on the services of a courier or carrier. There are hundreds of couriers that can delivery customer orders for you locally or across the world.
The costs of these can vary but so can the experience for the customer. While you’re not in control of the actual delivery, customers will associate the delivery of the item to them with your brand. If the courier is late, the parcel is damaged or there is another problem with the delivery; your reputation is damaged.
Therefore, you won’t retain customers and build a solid, loyal following that can make profitability better for your business.
So, how can you improve the shipping experience for your customers.
1. Order Tracking
The first thing you should do is to ensure that you have order tracking on your website. One of the biggest concerns for customers is that they don’t know where their order is. This often leads to them constantly contacting your customer services team, or you, about where their order is.
However, you can save time, for you and your customers, by adding order tracking on your website. There are apps, like this one, that can interact with hundreds of couriers to track packages across the world.
Order tracking often only requires the customer’s email address, order number or another package ID to work. And the order tracking can be integrated directly into your website through an app on your store.
2. Free shipping
Some customers want to have free shipping before they will consider ordering from your store. Free shipping is still profitable on your website, you just need to find the price point that provides you with enough profit that the extra expense of free shipping is worthwhile.
You should also consider whether next-day free shipping or regular shipping is more relevant to your customers.
To help customers realize that free shipping is available and what amount they need to spend for free shipping, try installing a free shipping progress bar app on your store. These visual cues will help you drive the average order values up and increase profits. It will also make customers happier as well.
3. Shipping notifications
Another important aspect is keeping customers informed about their deliveries. Notifications let customers know where their order is, whether it’s being packed, with the courier, out for delivery or delivered.
Notifications can be sent via SMS, email or other forms of communication. Customers appreciate them because notifications keep them informed of the order journey. These messages can also be a great way to upsell or cross sell or to get positive social signals from customers.
While some couriers offer notifications as standard, it can be best to have your own notification system as well.
Final Word: How to Improve the Shipping Experience for your Customers
The experience customers get from the shipping of products from your store is just as important as the product itself. If you use the right apps and systems, you can make customers happy with the experience and this can, in turn, help promote loyalty with your customers, which leads to more profit.
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