It would genuinely be difficult to overstate just how important shipping is within online shopping. For both consumers and business owners, shipping can either be a deal-maker or a conversion stopper.
Obviously, if you own or operate your own online business, you need to avoid the latter. But how? How can you minimize the number of people who abandon their carts due to the company’s shipping costs or policies? To answer that question, you need to first understand why shipping can be a potential conversion stopper.
How to Avoid Abandoned Carts from Ecommerce Shipping Costs
Unexpected shipping costs are the primary cause of abandoned carts.
Surveys have consistently confirmed that unexpected shipping costs are a top contributor to car abandonment. Statista reports 56% of abandoned carts are caused by unexpected shipping costs. When evaluating all causes of abandoned carts, shipping costs is by far the top driver of potential buyers walking away.
Given those stats, it’s clear to see that any online business owner who doesn’t focus intently on customers’ shipping concerns will miss out on a lot of sales opportunities. So what should you do about it?
1. Embrace clarity
Make your shipping costs transparent from the start to eliminate surprised and angry shoppers.
The key recommendation offered by Patel was the need to ensure that shipping costs are clear from the get-go. As he explained, most customers understand that shipping costs are unavoidable, so it is not necessary to aim for free shipping in every case. However, consumers react very negatively when they are surprised by a company’s shipping costs and policies late in the game. He asserted he’d rather lose a few potential customers early on by informing them of necessary shipping fees from the start, rather than let them go through the whole sales funnel and then abandon their carts at the very end.
2. Lower costs
If at all possible, attempt to lower your shipping costs and use lower costs to offer cheaper shipping for customers.
Of course, it’s also important to offer customers the lowest reasonable shipping possible if you want to maximize your sales figures. To that end, it can be extremely valuable to develop a relationship with a shipping firm, be it FedEx, UPS or anyone else. Many of these firms will negotiate with you for lower rates, and you can pass the savings on to your customers. However, for that to be the case, you need to ensure your online store is capable of supporting these negotiated rates, which isn’t always the case. Only a more advanced Ecommerce platform will provide this level of integration and adaptability.
3. Look for flexibility
Offer your customers a variety of shipping options so they feel like they have some control over the costs they pay.
Additionally, you should strive to offer flexible shipping options for your customers. The better you can accommodate varying preferences, the less likely consumers will be to abandon their carts. Such flexibility should include a variety of shipping partners and varying costs for different speeds and locations. Once again, though, you will only be able to support this level of customization if you have a sufficiently advanced Ecommerce platform.
Offer Better Shipping to Customers
Zoey offers some of the most flexible and customizable shipping tools of any Ecommerce platform, with a particular focus on B2B Ecommerce requirements. You can ensure your Ecommerce shipping costs are kept in line, both for you and the buyers who tend to absorb those costs as part of their purchase price.
Learn how Zoey can help your business by requesting a demo from our team:
