7 Strategies to Improve Ecommerce Shipping Experience For Increased Sales

Intro

You don’t want your customers to make a one-time purchase, but retain them for as long as they keep growing sales for your brand. One of the essential factors that make customers stay with an ecommerce store is the shipping experience they get from the store. Research shows that brands are prioritizing customer experience to drive more sales.

Source: SupperOffice

Having great shipping experiences and offers builds your customer's trust and gives them options that they can use to get goods delivered in the right way they need them. The article gives strategies you can use to improve your shipping experience, serve your customers better, and deliver the goods they want on time and in the best condition to retain them and generate more sales.

Why You Need to Improve The Shipping Process

• Increase the customer lifetime value. When customers start making purchases from an ecommerce brand and receive the goods they purchase on time and in the right condition, they will stay with the business for a long. If you have great products customers love but they don’t get them on time once they order them or in the condition they want they will not stay with your ecommerce store for long.
• Boost revenue with a high average order value. A great shipping experience will encourage customers to buy more goods and products and encourage shopping with a high average order value that boosts your business sales and revenue and grows your e-commerce store. Research by Statista shows that the e-commerce total retail sales as a percentage of total retail sales have grown from 7.4% to 23% over the years. This is contributed by a great shipping and customer experience.

Source: Statista

• Serve your customers better. You don’t want one-time customers but ones that will keep using your business products for a long time. Having a great shipping experience your customer's love will encourage them to keep using your ecommerce products for a long time.

Strategies to Improve Ecommerce Shipping Experience

1. Have Different Shipping Options

The customer can choose the method they prefer. This includes express shipping, free shipping, and standard shipping. It is essential to use different payment options so the customer can use the method they feel comfortable with to make the purchase of the goods or products from your ecommerce business.

Having different shipping options gives the customer the advantage of choosing the option that they love and serves them best within their budget as they use your products. You can offer your customers free shipping when they make some purchases above a certain threshold to motivate and encourage them to keep making sales.

Also, have flexible schedules for your order delivery to the customers. You can include evening delivery or weekend delivery. You can also make arrangements for late deliveries if the customer makes an order and needs it as an emergency.

2. Have a Reliable Partner For Shipping Orders

Customers will need the products delivered to their destinations once they order them. As an ecommerce store, it is essential to have a trustworthy shipping partner for the goods your customers purchase. You can also offer free or discounted shipping opportunities.

The partner should also have a good return policy for goods or products your customers purchase and also have insurance for delicate items. It will ensure your customers get the goods in safe condition.

Working with a good and reliable shipping partner ensures your customers get their orders on time and in the right conditions and keep trusting the brand as they increase their lifetime value. Great tracking order gives customers peace of mind as they can track and know the status of their orders through the delivery process.

3. Maintain Communication Through The Shipping Process

Customers need to know how the processing of their orders is going on once they make the purchase. Give them detailed information about their products, the packaging, and when they can expect to receive the goods or products. Ensure continuous communication and handle all the customer questions during the purchase and shipping process of their goods.

Use different communication methods with the customers. Prioritize the communication channel as per the customer's preferences. You can use tools like SMS, email, and notification updates to keep the customer engaged during the shipping process. The shipping notifications can be for updates on things like:

• Packaging confirmations for the products
• Shipping confirmations once the products are shipped
• Delivery communications once customers receive the products

Personalize the communication for each customer. It strengthens the bond they have with your brand as they can see you care for their needs and want to give them the best solutions to those pains. If the client has been using the business for some time, use their purchase history and behavior to personalize their shipping experience and deliver products the way they want.

4. Offer a Reliable Tracking Process For Ordered Goods

In addition to maintaining communication, give the customers order tracking information and let them track how the shipping of the products or goods they buy proceeds.

Personalize the shipping process and get the best experience the customers need once they purchase from your store. With the right tracking, the customer can know the phases of their delivery of goods as they can track it through the delivery process. The customers can be at peace once they make an order from your store as they know when to expect the delivery.

5. Ask Customer Feedback

You can’t fully solve the customer needs if you don’t know them in the first place. Let customers share their experiences with the brand and how they want them improved. Handle customers' challenges timely and give them the right information they need for the challenges they face related to the products you see and the shipping experience. You can use the right survey tools to generate questions that you can ask your customers, know more about them, and give them the best shipping experience from your store.

To build more trust with target customers, include customer reviews from happy customers on your website. Something like this motivates even prospects more to use the business.

Source: Ranktracker

Let prospects know how professional you are to deliver the goods they order from your store on time and in the right condition. That will keep boosting the trust of target customers and make them buy from your ecommerce store.

Include a live chatbot on the website where customers can get instant help from the business with the challenges that they face in the ordering and purchasing stages.

6. Ensure The Availability of Goods

It is essential to always check in with warehouse storage for the availability of products. You don’t want to lose trust with your customers just because they made an order and you discovered you don’t have the goods or products that they ordered from your store.

Use modern technology to store and keep goods safe and ensure their availability for the customers when they order them. Also use local warehousing to store your goods so that you reduce the time you process, package, and ship goods to your customers.

Also, you need to optimize your order fulfillment process to ensure the accuracy and safekeeping of the goods and their availability. From time to time evaluate your inventory management and always have products ready and available when customers need them.

7. Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

Your customers have to visit your website to make the orders in the first place. It is essential to have a faster-loading website. Your website design should also be mobile-friendly as many customers use mobile devices to access services and information.

Make it easy for target customers to navigate the website and find what they need from your business. Have high-quality images of the products you offer for customers to entice customers and draw them to your website. If they can’t find the products they want or seems hard to navigate the website, they will try out your competitors and you lose the chance to get sales from them.

In addition, make the checkout process of your ecommerce simple and easy to use. You can also include a guest account on the checkout process so the customers don’t have to create an account in their process of purchasing goods. If customers find it hard to make purchases and payments on your website, you can lose them to your competitors. Make sure your website is secure and customers can trust you with their credit card information. Some security seals you can have include these.

Prospects trust brands that are secure and feel comfortable giving their payment details in the checkout process when they know the website is secure.

Want to Increase Your Ecommerce Sales?

The shipping process is an integral part of the ecommerce sales process. Even if you have great products customers enjoy you need to have a great shipping experience and strategy. The customer will get tired if it takes days even months to get their purchase orders delivered to them once they make the orders and try other faster ecommerce stores.

Remember you’re not the only business in the market. Use the above tips to make your ecommerce shipping experience awesome, get more customers to shop from your business, and generate more sales and revenue.