Episode 004: Choosing Shipping Carriers for Your Website

 

Episode Summary: 

The eCommerce customer experience doesn’t end when a package leaves our facility. Who we use for shipping carriers can matter greatly from both a customer experience perspective and for our bottom line. In this episode, Julie discusses the factors you should consider when choosing which shipping carriers to use for your website.

 

Episode Links:

https://www.usps.com/
https://www.ups.com/
https://www.fedex.com/
http://www.dhl.com/
https://www.shopify.com/
https://www.shipstation.com/

 

Episode Transcript:

Announcer:

Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.

 

Julie Feickert:

Hello and welcome to Episode 4 of The Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your business online. I’m Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills, so you can provide a better life for your family.

Before we start today, a quick reminder that you can find links to resources I talk about here in the show in the show notes, along with the complete transcript of the show. I realize that sometimes you're going to need to go back and find a piece of information and a transcript can be really helpful for that.

So let’s talk about our topic for today, which is choosing shipping carriers for your website. If you are selling physical products, you're going to need to use someone to get those products to your customers, right? And who you choose ends up mattering for several reasons.

First, your shipping carrier plays a real role in your customers experience. Yes, we want our customers to have a great experience on our website, we want them to find the products, be able to figure out what works best for them, buy the products smoothly, and then have the products start the shipping journey to them quickly, right? That's our job as website owners.

But when we choose a shipping company to work with, we are then passing that responsibility for the customer to have a good experience to the shipping carrier. And luckily, most of the carriers do a pretty good job of this, right? But things happen. If you've ever ordered something online and had it get lost in transit, or just significantly delayed, or maybe you've had something arrive broken or even destroyed in transit. I mean, I've seen some crazy destroyed packages in my time. Let me tell you, it's amazing what can happen to a package. These are all factors that influence how the customer views they're shopping experience with you.

The second reason why this matters is that shipping is one of the largest costs that we as a website owner have to take on. Getting our products to our customers is really expensive, and so we don't want to be taking any more costs than necessary, and we want to be getting to best experience for our customers and for ourselves for our money.

And the third reason is that in the end, problems cost us time, money, and customer goodwill. If you've ever dealt with a package that's gone missing, or been destroyed in transit, you know how frustrating it is to have a customer who's upset who is getting a hold of you. That costs you time and money. You're trying to keep them happy and you typically going to end up having to reship that package, right? So that's costing you money. And meanwhile you're off trying to deal with the shipping carrier and file an insurance claim, that's costing you time. I mean this just starts to really eat away. It eats away at your productivity, it eats away at your budget, and it eats away at your customer goodwill.

So let's walk through the factors that you need to be considering when you're choosing a shipping carrier to work with, or more than one shipping carrier to work with.

Now, quick disclaimer here: I am not just going to tell you which shipping carriers are best. As we talked about in Episode Two, when we discussed optimizing your payment options on your website, I feel like I do all of you the service if I just say "Oh, you should do this, this, and this." Because you are going to have a unique circumstance. You are going to have changing circumstances. The providers that are available are probably going to change. The shipping market has been stable for a long time, but there's some signs that companies like Amazon might me coming in and offering some additional competition so some things are changing, right? Better to have all the information so that long-term you can make the best possible decision for your business.

Also, today I am going to focus on shipping providers in the United States. This is my area of expertise; is shipping within the United States and that's the group I am most comfortable talking about. This included the United States Postal Service, UPS, FedEx, and to a lesser extent, DHL. They are a much smaller player in the United States these days.

But if you are outside the United States, these same general factors that we're going to talk about really apply everywhere right? So stick around, you'll probably still get the information that you need, even if we don't talk about your specific country's options.

Okay, so the first factor you need to consider when choosing a shipping carrier is which shipping carriers will integrate easily into the eCommerce platform that you're using, so in this case you're looking at the software that you are using to run your site. So this could be something like Shopify, or Volusion, or DemandWare, or Magento, but whatever it is you're using likely already has preferred providers, or carriers, so maybe like the Post Office and FedEx, or the Post Office and UPS, something like that where they're already integrated into the platform and this is going to make your life so much easier.

That's not to say you can't consider a different provider but there may be more work involved and would just suggest that you put that into your calculations, right? Like, if you are going to need custom development work on your site in order to ship with, say, DHL, then that is something you need to give serious thought to.

Okay, let's talk about cost. Cost is so near and dear to all of our hearts, right? Shipping is very expensive and the more we can get the cost down, the better. Without question, the average weight of your packages is going to be the biggest factor in determining how much they cost to send. Now, the shipping carriers are all constantly jockeying for position here and especially for low weight packages, packages under 2 pounds, there's this constant competition and switching around of services available, but if you are shipping things that are very lightweight, I just want to put a shout-out out there that you really should look at the Post Office. FedEx, and UPS, and DHL to a certain extent are all trying to compete for that business but the reality is that the Post Office, at least at this point, is still a less costly option for those smaller packages.

One of the companies I used to have, our average package was, I think, like 6 ounces. We were shipping things that were very small and light. And so, the US Postal Service's First Class Mail actually was a great option for us. It was only a couple of dollars, it included tracking, First Class Mail in the United States, last time I checked, is being flown on FedEx airplanes so it's getting places pretty quickly, there's a lot of good things about First Class Mail. So, if you’re in a position where you have things that are lightweight, don't forget about the Post Office.

Another factor you should really be looking at when you're choosing your shipping carriers, and this kind of goes back to the platform integration we were talking about, is you want to be able to shop rates. And this means when you weigh the package in your system, and you put in the address, you really want to be able to see multiple shipping options. Sure, you could memorize the map and have a really good idea just looking at, you know, a two pound package is going 4 zones away, is it going to be a better price with this service or this service. You may have the ability to do that, most of us probably are not going to memorize a shipping table.

So, I would just encourage you to be thoughtful when your choosing your systems and doing these integrations to make sure you don't lose the ability to price check. I really can't think of a situation where you would have the best shipping deal with only one carrier all the time, unless you are shipping one uniform package all the time.

Another way you can potentially save money on shipping charges is to use a preferred provider through your eCommerce platform. So let me give you an example: My eCommerce site that I currently have is setup through Shopify. Shopify actually has negotiated rates with The Post Office and UPS. So if we ship through one of those two options, we get a fairly substantial discount, one I'm actually fairly happy with. So that's something to keep in mind too, sometimes using a preferred provider through your platform can save you money.

The other way to get discounts on shipping costs is to be shipping a lot of stuff. Once you're shipping in volume companies like FedEx and UPS negotiate your rates with you. I'm not going to claim that that is any fun, I have done it many, many times, and I could happily go the rest of my life without having one of those conversations again, but just note, that as you grow, if you are shipping on your own account and not through, like, a platform like Shopify, you might eventually qualify for some discounts.

Okay, so the next factor I really would encourage you to look at is how easily you are going to be able to work with the carrier's customer service department if something goes wrong. If you are shipping things that are perishable, or if your clients have very specific expectations when it comes to timeframe for delivery, then you really need to take that into consideration, and which shipping carriers are willing to make you those guarantees. And, if your package doesn't arrive in time, or if it arrives damaged, or if it gets lost, what does filing a claim look like? Does the shipping carrier offer as much insurance at an affordable cost as you're going to need to cover your product? What's the process for filing that claim? Is it very time consuming? Are claims generally paid out promptly? Is there an argument that's going to ensue? These are just the sorts of questions you want to be asking. Now, this might not matter at all if you're shipping very low value items, then this might not be the place to spend your time and money worrying. But if you're shipping costly items, particularly costly to you, then this something you need to give some serious thought to.

So hopefully from today’s discussion there are a few things that jump out at you that are most important for your business that you need to consider when you're choosing shipping carriers. I would encourage you when you're doing your research to reach out to local entrepreneurs and ask them who they use, and what their experience has been, because a part of your experience is going to be determined by the group that is picking up and handling your packages wherever you are.

Also you can reach out to the companies themselves, especially if you are shipping a decent amount of product, you may be able to ask for a rep to be assigned to your account so you can ask these questions directly to a single person, have that single point of contact. So you've got some options here.

Thanks for joining me today and geeking out over shipping options. I hope you had fun, and I hope that there are a few things now that you can think about and go apply to your own business.

I'll be back in your feed in a few days with a new episode. If you haven't yet be sure to subscribe at that little button in iTunes and Stitcher and that way you'll be notified when the next episode is available.

If you'd like to learn more about me, or The Savvy Business Method or you'd like to reach out and ask a question, or give me an idea for a future episode; I'd love to hear from you. You can find me a savvybusinessmethod.com as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Bye for now!

 

Announcer:

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed todays episode please leave a review and subscribe, and for more great content and to stay up to date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com, and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.

 

Episode 004: Choosing Shipping Carriers for Your Website