If you are selling products online, you have to think about how to get the purchased products to your buyers in the most affordable, secured, and efficient way possible. First and foremost, we recommend a 3rd part eCommerce solution to handle your shopping cart (see this prior post) as they will take care of any future upgrades often needed for shopping carts. The days of custom built carts are over unless you are a large company and have your own web development team on staff.

Most reputable eCommerce sites will offer direct integration to the main shipping companies which are United States Postal Services (USPS), United Parcel Service (UPS), and FedEx. If you ship a lot, you may benefit from a special account with one of those providers which will offer you discounted shipping rates. In such case, you can choose to pass on the discount to your clients or keep the shipping rates as is (retail rates) and the difference is then added to your profit. Simply call the various shippers and ask for a sales representative.

In the past, our team has preferred FedEx as their integration seemed to be better than its counter partners over the years. Saying this, it is great for your clients to be offered various shipper options. Often time, a site owner will list USPS and FedEx or USPS and UPS (rarely all 3 as it may be too many options). Within each shipper, you should offer different speeds of shipment: Ground, overnight, 2 day air, etc.

There is something to be said about having too many options. If you know your business well, you understand which methods are preferred by your clients. If this is the case, only offer those as it will simplify the integration as well as the checkout process. If you are new to selling online, offer a handful of options and re-assess in 90 days to see which options are never used and eliminate those. Your webmaster should also be able to help you select the best shipping methods and shippers for your unique situation.

If you sell expensive products or items of odd sizes, you may want to offer the ability to add shipping insurance to the online order. Not all eCommerce companies offer this but this is something to consider.

You often see “Shipping & Handling”. Shipping is the rate the shipper charges you (UPS, USPS, or FedEx rate). The handling though is a  broader term. It can be the cost of packaging the products (box, bubbles, tapes, …) and/or the labor to package the items and actually send them. If it is your decision if you want add a handling fee. It can be a flat fee per order, a percentage per total amount spent, or some other number. Again there are many options to consider and the decision is primarily a marketing one. Discuss it with your designer.

If you have specific questions related to shipping the products you sell online, feel free to contact us at 707-794-9999 Pacific Standard Time.