Shipping Options with eCommerce Development
Ecommerce development is incomplete without well planned and reliable shipping options in place.
How to start an online shop finds a simple answer in Smart Web Design Tauranga. From small online stores selling a few products to large eCommerce solutions selling tens of thousands of products, Smart Web Design Tauranga can develop any type of eCommerce website depending on your needs.
While your eCommerce development is taken care of, you need to work on your shipping options and finalize them before your new site goes live.
- There are many ways you can ship products to your customers. You can opt for "click and collect", "in-store pickup", "point delivery" or "home/doorstep delivery". Click and collect is one of the most popular shipping options right now. It is convenient for the eCommerce business or online store and for the customer. It saves customers money to have their purchased items delivered to a nearest store they can easily reach out to, or pick up the stuff from on their way back home. It may not be a store or some point of pickup as convenient for all. This can also be point delivery wherein purchased products are delivered at one of points or addresses where shipping is available.
- In-store pickup works for companies that have an online store and a brick & mortar presence. Online purchases can be made available at the store and the customers can pick them up, without standing at queues, freeing up the aisles for retail shoppers and also allowing better inventory management due to multi-platform sales.
- Home or doorstep delivery is obviously the most popular of all shipping options but it is also the most expensive. Unless you can work out the costs to offer free shipping, customers will have to be charged shipping fees. Shipping and handling costs can be easily absorbed for high end purchases but they are difficult for more reasonably, small-priced items.
You should consider all shipping options regardless of where you wish to deliver up to. Some of the scenarios we dealt with in the past:
- Free shipping on orders over a certain amount (taken into account discounts, coupons and GST)
- Shipping costs based on countries, regions, customer groups, distance from shop or even cities
- Surcharges for rural addresses, based on RD postal codes
- Shipping costs based on cart weight, dimensions or total amount of order
- Exclude certain products, categories or manufacturer from standard shipping costs
- Charges based on product options and attributes
- Individual shipping options per product
- Combined shipping with a maximum total
- Average shipping costs based on any of the above options
You could hire couriers, shipping companies, drop-ship agencies or drop-shipping firms, standard post or express parcel delivery. You can work out the financial pros and cons, find the best shipping options in chosen routes or have one covering the entire country, you can provide options to customers so they can choose the type of shipping they want and eventually allow us to set it all up on your eCommerce website.