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Last Updated on July 20, 2017 by Work In My Pajamas
The business landscape for small to medium sized companies is vastly different than what it was only several years ago. A report by eMarketer suggested that worldwide ecommerce sales will grow to $4 trillion by the year 2020. Thanks to the rapid grown of ecommerce, packaging and shipping are more important to small to medium businesses than ever before since a far larger portion of sales are transacted online. With that in mind, below are some tips you can use to improve your packaging and shipping standards to meet the needs of customers that may live all over the country or even the world.
In This Post:
Provide Shipment Tracking
Customer satisfaction in regards to the shipping of products is vital these days for staying competitive in the ecommerce marketplace. Some companies, like Acme Case Co Pty Ltd, know that one way to insure that customers don’t become frustrated with the process is to keep them informed of the status of their shipment at all times. Work with shipping partners to insure that tracking updates can be sent via e-mail or text message.
Integrate Customer Feedback
Sometimes a company may be completely oblivious to how unsatisfied customers are with the shipping process. For example, the packaging used to ship products may be hard to open for customers. Alternatively, it may end up damaging the items contained within. While some of these problems may eventually be discovered, you may also not hear back from those unsatisfied customers about the problems they encountered. Instead, use follow-up e-mails to solicit feedback on any problems they experienced. Integrate this feedback into your processes to insure these issues are averted in the future.
Offer Free Shipping
There is plenty of evidence that customers are happier when they pay nothing for the shipping of the products they purchase. While offering free shipping may seem cost prohibitive, there are ways to make the offer of free shipping into a way to drive higher profits. Only offer free shipping on orders for larger dollar amounts. If a person has to pay $50 to receive free shipping, they may end up spending more than they would otherwise to avoid paying a shipping fee.
Perform the Proper Research
You shouldn’t just assume that your packaging or shipping methods will be satisfactory before you begin using them. Before you ever attempt using them on a wider scale, you should do closely monitored test runs. That way you’ll be able to work out kinks with the packaging, ordering process, shipping partners and more before you launch it on a larger scale.
Today, a very large portion of the business of small to medium sized companies is done online. As such, the shipping process is vitally important to obtaining high customer satisfaction and retaining business for the long term. Make sure to put a lot of effort into refining your packaging and shipping processes to achieve optimal ecommerce success.
