Shipping Policy - Customer Preferences

What kind of shipping policy should I offer?

What shipping options you give to your customers can greatly impact how you run your business. Contrary to popular belief, giving your customers every shipping option in the world across all carriers isn’t always the smartest route to go. Giving real-time shipping rates to customers can give them sticker shock when they see that shipping a heavy order overnight to their house across the country is $70, or they won’t know the difference between something like Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express.

So what’s the best option to give your customers? The answer is: It depends. A simple, functional shipping policy can do wonders for your store’s checkout funnel if your product mix is fairly straightforward and doesn’t contain a large variance in product size/weight. Customers appreciate a straightforward shipping policy, and you can even incentivize visitors to make a bigger order if you offer them free or discounted shipping if they hit a certain purchase threshold.

Even with this, there are many capabilities you can offer to customers in terms of how they want their order shipped, and it doesn’t stop after they click purchase.

The shipping needs of customers today

Customers increasingly look for the ability to have orders split between addresses, to have items with different fulfillment times consolidated into a single delivery, to ship to locations other than their home address, and to change delivery dates or have packages rerouted once shipped.

65% prefer delivery to home/residence

35% prefer delivery to an alternative location

Source: UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper™ 2016; Tech-savvy shoppers transforming retail

Potential shipping offerings and their impact across your environments:

Selling Environment – Allow customer to:

Ship certain items to certain addresses
Ship to an address other than their home address
Specify signature as not required
Consolidate orders and items into as few packages as possible to reduce shipping costs
Specify alternate delivery location if not home
Change delivery dates with carrier after package is in transit
Have package delivered to a different location after order is in transit

Shipping Environment – Be able to:

Download customer shipping and delivery data/notes; update changes in real time, including:
- Shipping address(es)
- Shipping paid
- Shipping requested service
- Delivery preferences
- Order notes
Leverage and apply shipping and delivery data to:
- Determine and apply preconfigured shipping rules
- Select the optimal carrier for the actual packages that need to be shipped
- Generate related pick list and packing slip(s)

Physical Environment – Allows you to:

Route package to the best carrier

A strong shipping policy and knowing the implications of your offerings can make your business seem very professional and drastically improve the customer experience, especially the checkout funnel and receiving their orders in person.

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