Vendors and shoppers alike struggle with shipping costs. Many ecommerce companies take a bath with shipping, while customers choke when they see what it costs to get an item delivered to their door. Meanwhile, Amazon provides free 2-day shipping to its prime members. As a result, many consumers have become accustomed to, and even expect, the same level of service from all online stores. That is hard to compete with.

In fact, the number one reason for shopping cart abandonment is the cost of shipping. A trend in recent years has been to allow in-store pick up. This is a good alternative for local companies or those who have multiple locations across the country. But, for the small entrepreneur selling online, shipping remains a struggle.

WebStores ltd. has always advocated that you build the cost of shipping into your products and simply offer free shipping. If you produce your own goods, then customers are not able to do a direct cost comparison anyways. The price for your brand is the price for your brand. But if you are selling a commodity and price comparisons are inevitable, then free shipping is also not practical. The struggle to keep shipping costs down is very real. Is there anything you can do about it?

Fortunately, there is. The solution is to utilize a shipping consolidator – a company that groups lots of sellers under one umbrella in order to get reduced rates. This type of arrangement to get group rates is commonly seen in the insurance industry and coop buying groups. But it can also be done with your shipping and save you a ton of money. WebStores Ltd has teamed up with Cloud9 to offer the most competitive shipping rates in the industry. Best of all, there is no cost and no obligation. Just sign up and start saving up to 50% on your shipping! Click here to see how it works.

Did you catch all of that? No sign up fees. No monthly costs. No contracts. Discounts of 50% off shipping rates. Supports:

• United Parcel Service (UPS)
• Federal Express (FedEx)
• United States Postal Service (USPS)
• DHL International Shipping services

Print your own shipping labels from any device. Rate shop all 3 major carriers in one place. You do NOT need your own account with these providers. Fully integrated with WooCommerce. Interested? Call Us at 877-924-1414 or 303-688-6560 and we’ll have Cloud9 set you up within a week.

More About Abandoned Carts

If you are unable to provide free shipping, discounted shipping rates will certainly help to reduce the number of people who put something in their shopping cart but then leave your site without checking out. But it doesn’t solve everything – there are many reasons why people abandon their carts. Sometimes they just get busy and are called away. Other times they are really just shopping and aren’t quite ready. Maybe they changed their mind. Whatever the reason, wouldn’t it be great if you had a way of reaching back out to them and reminding them to finish checking out?

You can actually do this with Abandonded Cart for WooCommerce. I love this plugin as it sends out an automated reminder via email, Facebook, or text messaging when someone doesn’t complete their order. You can incentivize customers by sending them a coupon code.

Wishlists

You can greatly reduce the number of abandoned carts if you provide a way for a customer to save their information for later. Wishlists are a good way to do this. There are many situations when customers can’t buy a product at this time or simply don’t want it just yet. A wishlist provides the possibility to save products for later and encourages users to return to your site and later make a purchase. Adding products to a wishlist is easy and convenient so it may also force your customers to buy even more products than they planned. Users can share their wishlist, for example, to help their friends choose a gift for upcoming holiday and so on. By sharing their wishlists, they are bringing you, new potential customers, resulting in new potential sales.

If You’ve Read This Far…

I’m beta testing a service that checks for reviews you didn’t know you had. Looking to find a business that will let me experiment with this. I won’t charge you anything to run it and I’ll share the results with you. Send me a message and I’ll get you set up!

Did you find this article useful or learn anything? If so, I’d love some feedback about what you thought.

GregJameson

Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/