Having problems while running an eCommerce business is unavoidable. You may have to deal with complaints frequently if you run an online business. However, there is no magic ingredient that will make all the shipping challenges go away, but you can do a lot to mitigate these problems and improve customer happiness. Everything hinges on good shipping management, which necessitates the use of the right tools.
Here are the top 10 ways to reduce shipping challenges with a WooCommerce Shipping Calculator
Challenge 1: Cart Abandonment
When a potential consumer begins the checkout process for an online order but abandons it before completing the transaction, this is known as shopping cart abandonment. Any item that a shopper adds to their shopping basket but never completes the transaction is labeled “abandoned.” According to some estimates, the average eCommerce store loses 75% of its sales due to shopping cart abandonment.
In other words, lowering your cart abandonment rate increases your profits.
Solutions
- Option 1. Allow customers to choose from a range of shipping options – It’s usually a good idea for eCommerce business owners to provide their customers multiple shipping options. The objective is to offer customers a variety of shipping options based on their preferences. Some clients prefer low-cost delivery, while others prefer to receive their things the next day and are willing to pay a little more for that service. Having a variety of WooCommerce shipping choices is usually beneficial to both you and your clients. Huge shipping cost is one of the main reasons behind cart abandonment. By adding a shipping calculator to your WooCommerce store, you can display the various available shipping services along with their corresponding cost. If you want to integrate a dedicated shipping calculator on your website, you can install the ELEX WooCommerce Shipping Calculator, Purchase Shipping Label & Tracking for Customers plugin. With the help of this plugin, your customers can check the exact shipping cost even before adding any product to their cart.
- Option 2. Make sure you’re clear about the delivery date – By providing transparent information on the estimated delivery date on the checkout page improves the customer’s shopping experience while also creating trust in the product and business. With estimated delivery dates, you provide your customers peace of mind about when their order will arrive, which leads to increased checkout conversions and builds trust that you are a responsive, active business.
- Option 3. No more surprise shipping costs – If you’ve ever delivered something internationally, you’ve probably come across some unexpected shipping fees. International parcel recipients and senders may be hit with unexpected and exorbitant fees. Although you’d like to not have to pay any additional fees at all, knowing that you’ll have to pay more upfront helps to soften the impact. By adding a shipping calculator to your cart and checkout pages, you can ensure that your customers know the shipping costs as soon as they add a product to their cart. Doing so eliminates surprise shipping costs that lead to cart abandonment. We would recommend the ELEX EasyPost (FedEx, UPS, Canada Post & USPS) Shipping & Label Printing Plugin for WooCommerce. By showing shipping rates on the cart/checkout page, paying postage, and printing labels from within your WooCommerce Store, you can fully automate WooCommerce UPS, WooCommerce USPS, WooCommerce FedEx, and WooCommerce Canada Post shipping.
Challenge 2: Bad post-sales services
The first and most crucial challenge is to generate sales through your website. The important pillars include having a product that appeals to buyers, appealingly presenting your products, and developing a successful marketing strategy. However, cost-effective and timely shipping contributes significantly to total customer satisfaction. As a result, providing excellent after-sales service is merely another marketing tool that can help you get repeat business.
The customer’s relationship with you does not end when the online sale is completed. Quite the opposite because it signifies the start of a relationship that will be judged on how you respond to and resolve any customer complaints and how streamlined your shipping procedure is.
Solutions
- Option 1. Include a Shipment Tracking Option – eCommerce order tracking enables you to keep track of all of your online orders and shipments, as well as communicate the order status to your customers at any time. Shipment tracking, estimated delivery dates, and frequent order status updates are all included in eCommerce order tracking. These elements work together to improve the customer experience by letting consumers know what to expect from their delivery and alerting them to any delays.
- Option 2. Provide a superior post-sales service – Finding new clients is critical for any business, but current consumers must not be overlooked. The best time to try to persuade a second purchase is immediately after a sale. Selling to a new customer is seven times more expensive than selling to a returning customer. As a result, the relationship you build with your customers is key to ensuring a positive after-sales service for your company. A smooth post-sale shipping service will ensure that your customers keep returning for more. We would recommend the ELEX Stamps.com Shipping Plugin with USPS Postage for WooCommerce.
Challenge 3: Profits and ROI
The significant movement in spending in physical stores to online purchasing is producing a massive upheaval in retailers’ physical footprint, which appears to be unabated. However, the truth is that much of e-commerce is still unprofitable—in many cases crazily so—and that many corporate and venture capital investments have no chance of generating a risk-adjusted return.
Solutions
- Option 1. Make efficient use of time and resources – Running a successful eCommerce business involves a lot of different factors like your products, sales, marketing, and branding efforts and it can easily get overwhelming. A visually appealing and adaptable website is important for growing sales, but so is how you manage your back-office operations. After all, it has a direct impact on the services you can provide to your customers. To make sure you are not spending time, energy, and resources in the wrong place, you should figure out a way to automate order fulfillment. Bulk shipping label creation and bulk package creation are great ways to ensure you are spending time on the things that actually matter.
- Option 2. Maintain profit margin by charging handling fees – Making profitable sales is one of the biggest concerns of the eCommerce industry. A handling fee is an additional charge added to a customer’s purchase subtotal and delivery costs. It pays for fulfillment-related charges such as warehouse storage, shipping, and packing. With the ELEX WooCommerce Shipping Calculator, Purchase Shipping Label & Tracking for Customers plugin you can add handling fees and also automate the order fulfillment process, print shipping labels in bulk and generate packages in bulk.
Challenge 4: Building Trust and Brand Image
According to buySAFE, while shopping on a website with which they are unfamiliar, 81 percent of online shoppers are concerned. In the long term, this could result in a loss of sales and customers, affecting your sales conversions. As a result, businesses must devise a strategy for eliminating these fears and forging long-term relationships with their customers.
Solutions
- Option 1. Customize the delivery process – With the amount of competition in the eCommerce industry, it is very important to make your business stand out from the crowd. With the ELEX WooCommerce Shipping Calculator, The created label and tracking link can be sent to the sender and receiver’s email addresses with a custom email body and subject. Doing so not only makes sure that your customers are notified of the shipment updates but the customized emails with the customers’ names create a sense of familiarity, making the customer trust your business in the long run.
- Option 2. Remain Transparent with your shipping process – Overall client satisfaction can be improved by ensuring transparency throughout the delivery process. Showing delivery charges and not having hidden extra costs at checkout, having the option to track shipments, and knowing when the delivery will be made and where it has been left are all strategies to promote transparency.
- Option 3. Build Customer trust – When customers don’t trust your business, it’s difficult to build consumer trust in eCommerce. Getting visitors to visit your site is only half the battle; gaining faith in eCommerce to make a sale is the other half. With a solid product line, the greatest product photos, appropriate product descriptions, and the best in class shipping service, you must fundamentally be the most trustworthy. Consumer trust in eCommerce is a minor element that can help in increasing conversions and sales, and so bringing in large amounts of profits. Apart from all the tips included in the previous points, a quick response rate from your business is one of the best ways of gaining trust among your customers. Bonus tool: The WSChat – ELEX WordPress Live Chat Plugin. In this age of lightning-fast technology, it’s critical to respond quickly to client inquiries and to be available to them whenever they need you. As a result, you should enhance your customer service with live chat and respond to them even if you are not available online to answer their questions. WSChat makes it simple to interact with Google’s Dialogflow, allowing you to establish and trigger automatic responses to their requests at any moment. It has more complex capabilities including the ability to record and share videos from the chat widget, attach and transfer files, send the complete chat history to an entered email address, and the ability for customers to like or dislike your support services.
To sum up:
Shipping isn’t always simple, but these solutions to the most common shipping issues should help. You’ll be ready to take on whatever the shipping process throws at you with these quick fixes and tools at your disposal.
Do you have any other questions about shipping challenges? Please let us know in the comments section below!
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