Shipping cost is a concern for both store owners and customers in an eCommerce business. Customers expect the best shipping experience at the lowest rate, and stop owners are obliged to offer the best services. However, store owners would want the shipping service to not eat into their profit margins. In this article, we will discuss how you can optimize shipping cost on checkout with the help of some of our top WooCommerce shipping plugins.
Offer services to suit the needs of your customers
Depending on the products you sell, you will be able to offer varied shipping services to your customers. You can use your analytics insights to understand the actual preference of your customers. If your customer base generally prefers faster delivery even if they are priced a bit higher, accordingly you can choose the available options. Most popular shipping carriers offer a range of services with different terms.
Use pre-defined boxes
Most popular shipping carriers like UPS, FedEx and USPS offers pre-defined packages of various sizes. These packages will have certain weight restrictions as well. Considering the weight and dimensions of your products, you can choose some of the pre-defined boxes for your shipment needs. This will help you optimize the shipping costs that you display on your store.
Make price adjustments to carrier rates
While displaying live rates of popular shipping carriers, you can consider making price adjustments to them. All ELEX shipping plugins offers an option to make price adjustments to available shipping services. You can add markups or discount to each of your services according to the requirement.
Choose parcel packing method carefully
The choice of parcel packing method also plays an important role in your shipping costs. With ELEX shipping plugins, you can choose from three options.
- Pack items individually
- Pack into boxes with weight and dimensions
- Weight-based packing
Each of these packing methods can have its own advantages. Depending on the products you sell, each parcel packing option can help you optimize shipping costs. On a general scenario, the recommended option is packing based on weight and dimensions of the product. Here you will be able to create pre-defined boxes considering the general pattern of orders on your store as well. When using a third party shipping carrier, this might be an economical option if multiple items are included in most orders on your store.
Top ELEX WooCommerce plugins to optimize shipping costs
We will take a look at some of the top WooCommerce plugins on ELEX that will help you optimize your shipping costs.
ELEX WooCommerce USPS Shipping Plugin with Print Label
If you are an e-VS customer of USPS, this plugin will help you completely automate USPS shipping services on your WooCommerce store. e-VS is a plan by USPS for high volume shippers. The plugin helps you optimize WooCommerce shipping costs in several ways.
- Offers a range of domestic and international shipping services – You will be able to display live shipping rates of various USPS shipping services using this plugin.
- Make price adjustments to USPS services – On the plugin settings page, you will be able to make price adjustments to each service. A positive value provides a markup and a negative value creates a discount for that particular service.
- Use USPS Flat Rate Boxes – For packages that weigh less than 70 lbs, you can use flat rate boxes of USPS. USPS offers flat rate boxes of different sizes, which you can choose based on the weight and dimensions of your products.
- Parcel packing options – The plugin offers different parcel packing options as well, which you can choose based on your specific store requirements.
- Print shipping labels – You will be able to print shipping labels right from your WooCommerce admin if you are an e-VS customer of USPS.
- Provide shipment tracking – The plugin helps you automatically send tracking information with your order completion emails. This might be really helpful to improve overall customer satisfaction on your store.
ELEX Stamps.com Shipping Plugin with USPS Postage for WooCommerce
If you are not an e-VS customer, and still want all the benefits of the above plugin, you can use this one. It uses Stamps.com API to integrate USPS services on your WooCommerce store. This plugin too helps with completely automating USPS shipping services on your WooCommerce store. It helps to:
- Display domestic and international USPS services
- Make price adjustments to each service
- Option to choose multiple box packing methods
- USPS Flat rate boxes
- Print Shipping labels
- Provide tracking information
ELEX EasyPost (FedEx, UPS & USPS) Shipping & Label Printing Plugin for WooCommerce
If you want to integrate multiple shipping carriers to your WooCommerce store, this is the plugin you can try. It helps you integrate FedEx and UPS services along with USPS. You need to have an account with EasyPost and each of these shipping services to be able to integrate them on your WooCommerce store. It helps in:
- Displaying FedEx, UPS and USPS services on cart and checkout pages.
- Make price adjustments to all available services
- Automatically assign pre-defined boxes to pack your shipments
- Print FedEx, UPS and USPS shipping labels from your WooCommerce store admin
- Provide tracking information with order completion email
- Use USPS Flat Rate boxes
ELEX WooCommerce DHL Express / eCommerce / Paket Shipping Plugin with Print Label
This is another great solution to optimize shipping cost on your WooCommerce store. With the help of this plugin, you will be able to:
- Display live shipping rates of DHL Express DHL Paket and DHL eCommerce services.
- Make price adjustments to shipping services as per your store requirements.
- Box packing options.
- Print domestic and international shipping labels by integrating with the DHL API.
- Print return labels, archive air waybills and commercial invoices.
ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking
This plugin helps you automate Australia Post shipping on your WooCommerce store. The plugin helps you with the following.
- Display live rates of domestic and international Australia Post services.
- Access Australia Post StarTrack Services and Print shipping labels.
- Print eParcel Shipping Label for Contracted Rates (for Australia Post eParcel accounts).
- Generate Order Summary / Shipping Manifest for the desired orders effortlessly.
- Live Shipment Tracking
- Three parcel packaging options.
Checkout the respective plugin documentation for more details on configuration.
Contact our support team for any queries.
