Shipping Strategies That Boost Online Sales

Everybod Hates Paying For Shipping

Do you wonder why you have so many abandoned carts in your ecommerce website? More often than not it is because of "shipping shock". Its that moment that the shopper finds out how much it will cost to get the product shipped.

There are some proven strategies that will help reduce abandoned carts and the following statistics explain why.

90% of consumers would shop online more often if given the option of free shipping.
24% of consumers would spend more to qualify for free shipping.
73% of people are more likely to decide to buy an item if it includes free shipping.
Companies with free shipping have a 20% higher conversion rate than those without this option.
71% of products sold on eBay include free shipping.
78% of Amazon Prime members say they’ve signed up because of free shipping.

So you could just offer free shipping on all products. This will certainly increase sales, even if you have increased the price to cover shipping, but is not necessarily the best business strategy. Especially if you are selling a low cost product that is expensive to ship.

The better strategy is to offer free shipping for sales over a set value and to set that value based on the figure that will most likely result in an extra product being added to the cart. For example, if your most popular product sells for $30 you wouldn't offer free shipping for orders over $25. You want to encourage them to buy more and at the same time feel like they got a better deal. You could do this by:

Offer free shipping on orders over $34.99. This means they need to add an additional item costing at least $5 to get free shipping. Of course if the $5 item cost you $2 and the shipping cost you $10, you just cost yourself $7 ($2 + $10 - $5). This strategy only works if the profit on your cheapest item is greater than the cost of shipping.
Offer free shipping for two or more of the same item. ie. Buy one for $30 plus $15 shipping or two for $60 with free shipping.

The other critical part of your strategy is to let people know how much shipping is up front, to avoid the shock later. This message should also be accompanied by your offer on how to get free shipping.