Shipping for eBay
If you’re running an eBay business, you are aware of just how important shipping is in the buy cycle. When building a reputation, one of your customer’s most significant responses to your business will be in your shipping. The three main aspects of shipping for eBay are the following:
- Speed
Both how quick you are to ship, and how quick it takes the order to arrive at your customer’s door are significantly important when shipping for eBay transactions. - Price
Shipping price can be a major deal breaker when a customer is on eBay. Once the customer has chosen which item to buy, they then look for the best deal. - Communication
Make sure you have a clearly written shipping policy, Additionally, it is a huge plus to provide tracking information to your customer as soon as it is generated.
Ship Quickly
Once a confirmed order is in, it benefits you greatly to try to get the order out the door as soon as possible. This not only lowers returns rates, but keeps your customers happy, and more likely to write you a positive feedback and spread the word about your business.
If you are shipping for eBay orders from home, or from an in-house warehouse, it can be tough to ship quickly every time, particularly if you are not doing this as your full time job, or do not have full time staff. One secret tool a lot of successful eBay and non-eBay online retailers use is outside shipping fulfillment, like Shipwire. When using a service like this, you send all your stock to them, and they ship your items, on time, for a reasonable fee. A key benefit is that they have many warehouses.
One could, for example, send half their stock to the West Coast warehouse, and half to the East Coast warehouse, and Shipwire would automatically ship from the closest warehouse to that customer, saving on cost while also shipping quicker.
This also helps if you live in a cold climate. If you have a snow day, your customer still receives their order.
Offer Subsidized or Free Shipping
Another ecommerce secret which is extremely helpful when shipping for eBay orders is to offer subsidized or free shipping. Of course, if you offer low to no reserve auctions, this could be risky, but once you’ve established the pricing of your items, you can be more confident in this method.
How do retailers offer free shipping? They simply work their costs of shipping into the item. It is a psychological marketing tool that people feel like they’re getting something free, when in fact, you are just shifting the price to the item itself.
Another method is to subsidize the cost of shipping by offering something like $5 flat rate shipping. You could also set thresholds on free or flat rate shipping. For example, “all orders of $50 or more are shipped free”. This not only gives the psychological edge on the free shipping, but tries to push your customer over $50, thereby increasing your profits.
Send Tracking Numbers
Any experienced online retailer will tell you that the most common email they receive from customers is requesting a tracking number or shipping status. By shipping quickly and having the tracking sent automatically to the customer, you have alleviated more than half of your customer service time. This means more free time!
When using UPS or other online label printing shipping services, you can enter the customer’s email address for an automatic tracking email to go out to your customer. Another benefit to a fulfillment company like Shipwire is that they integrate with many shopping carts, not only automatically issuing a carrier tracking number, but also sending a personalized email from you with their order contents, tracking numbers, a tracking link and any message you want to put in there.
Shipwire, when integrated with a shopping cart, including eBay’s, can process and ship an order automatically, without the need for you to even man the helm! When an order is placed, it immediately sends the order to your warehouse and ships that day or the next, and automatically sends tracking to your customer. This is a huge lifestyle benefit, as it allows you to be away from your business while it runs itself. You could be on a beach, and your orders still get shipped, automatically.
The information and tips above are designed to help you have a better understanding of the process of shipping for eBay transactions, and other online retail transactions. Now get out there and sell!
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Tags: ebay, ecommerce, logistics, shipping, shipping for ebay, shipwire
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