Free Shipping?

Hi everyone, My store is strictly dropship. Products have a very wide range in their weight. I've always thought about offering free shipping as a tool to bring in shoppers. Doe's anybody out there have experience in setting up their store with free shipping? Or do you folks know how something like that could be set up to work properly? Is there a formula or a way to make free shipping work, even with the different weights and zip codes? I'd love to hear from any of you that have experiencve with this, or just have ideas that could help. Maybe someone has had a real bad time trying free shipping? I can't see that it can be easy to set up, but I'd love to see how it could work. Thanks big time with any help on this. BobNfish

 

I offer free shipping on all my products, some products I hiked up the price in order to offer free shipping.

 

Just remember that if you offer free shipping customers will order separate items over a few days instead of just ordering them all at once. That means your shipping costs will not be the same for the same amount of revenue. They will be 3 or 4 times more. This was experienced with Amazon as they in the past tried it. I'm sure there are a few articles explaining their experience with it.

Most etailers will offer free shipping for orders over a certain amount. This is good in several ways.

1. It shows that if someone buys more from your store they are rewarded.
2. It decreases the amount of deliveries dispatched.
3. It also increases your average spend on your site.

Eg: My site is free domestic delivery within Australia for orders over $50 and free for international for orders over $80. This gives me a an average spend of $75. which is $20 higher than it was previously.

It is much easier to setup and in the long run will give you a higher profit margin.

Hope that gives you some help.

 

Thanks already folks. Very interesting posts. Blonde Jon, how did you know that I love our LORD? Good call. You've got a very interesting site. And timiepn, thanks also, that is really useful information. People on here amaze me, there is so much to learn about this business. It truly is amazing, and i appreciate you, any of you, for taking time from your day to help and teach! Thank you, and keep the info coming, its all new to me, so its all extremely helpful. Thanks again. BobNfish

 

In order to make shipping free, you have to increase your price for that product. And if they customer sees that the price is more than other places, they will go to other website.

 

I wouldn't have the free delivary perminant either. Just have it for a month or two. Or even better, if the users have to log in to view the site, you could give them a month of free shipping, etc.

 

In my case, the products I had to hike up the prices to allow for free shipping, I really don't care if they go to another site to buy it. It is too much of a pain to process the order and only get $5 profit from the order. I deal with a lot of big ticket items. With all my products the manufacturer only allows you to advertise MAP pricing so the only thing I could do to be more enticing to my customers was to offer free shipping. I think every person who is selling on the net have a unique situation that you have to take into account. For some, offering free shipping would ruin their business. For others, like myself, that is all they can do to help entice customers.

 

My point was people don't care about paying shipping, they usually first look at the item price then the shipping price. When they see the like the item and the price is right, then they look at the shipping price. But by the time they have reached that far they will buy it, there not going to say oh they shipping is expensive let me cancel it. Most people who buy online already consider that they have to pay shipping.

 

There are also problems with this, as people will then wait to purchase thinking that a free shipping period will again come around. The trend you will find is that your normal times will decrease in sales and in free shipping time increase. This may only be by the amount of sales that were not conducted during the normal time of trade.

You will find much evidence of this with stores that offered interest free periods on goods purchased. People would only buy in these sale periods. Then stored were forced to offer interest free purchases all year round so that customers would not just wait till the time of the year that interest free was available.

It is a pain but true.