Top Ways to Offer Free Shipping for Your E-commerce Business
Many online stores are offering free shipping these days because it can dramatically increase sales and reduce abandoned cart rates. But before you offer the free shipping option, it is important to understand whether or not it is right for your business and the ways you can offer this option. Part of making this decision lies in understanding your products, customers, and competition. Here are some ways that your online store can offer free shipping.
1. Free Shipping on Certain Items
It can make sense to offer free shipping on some items but not others. For example, offering free shipping on a light-weight expensive product, like expensive jewelry, works well. However, if you offer free shipping on a heavy, low-cost product, you can lose money.
2. Free Shipping When a Minimum Order Amount is Reached
A common way to offer free shipping is to make shipping free for orders above a certain amount, such as orders above $50. This can get customers to purchase more of your products in order to reach your requirement. It also helps to prevent you from losing money on small orders.
3. Free Economy Shipping
You might consider offering free shipping on less expensive shipping options from shipping carriers, like UPS Ground or USPS Parcel Post. These types of shipping methods may take longer with delivery but they can save both you and your customers money. Another approach is to charge a low shipping rate for these types of shipping options. For example, you might charge $2.99 for UPS Ground, which looks like a low shipping rate from the customer’s perspective.
4. Promotions and Free Shipping
To help turn browsers into customers, you can run a promotional event for a couple of days and advertise it via social media, in your newsletter, or by using ads. If you are already offering free shipping for orders above a certain amount (like orders above $50), then you might lower this amount or remove it during the promotion period.
It is a good idea to include a shipping calculator in your e-commerce store so that people are aware of the shipping cost before checkout. Also, display the total price in the sidebar. This can help eliminate sticker shock and abandoned carts when people check out.
If you are using WordPress and WooCommerce for your online store, there are a variety of shipping and discount plugins you can get that you can use for both retail and wholesale orders. You can even use different shipping options at checkout for retail and wholesale customers and use different discounts for each type of customer.