Tips to reduce your shipping cost

Shipping costs form one of the most substantial expenses for businesses, especially the SMEs. If you’re selling physical products, shipping costs are unavoidable. They have the power to impact your customer satisfaction levels explicitly along with deciding the profit margins for your business.

A recent study states that nearly 28% of the shoppers abandon carts because of unexpected shipping costs. Undoubtedly, this number turns out to be a significant loss for companies concerning conversions and revenue, which is why they keep customers engaged with enticing shipping offers such as free shipping. As benevolent as it sounds for the customers, it is equally an exigent task for the businesses, which is why their shipping expenses are often increased. Undoubtedly, this number turns out to be a significant loss for companies concerning conversions and revenue,

For this reason, more and more entrepreneurs are concocting their strategies with ways to reduce their shipping costs by adopting smart practices and solutions.

An effective way to reduce your shipping costs would be to initiate negotiation with the fulfillment center. Some companies prefer sticking to the same vendor for all their delivery requirements. While this is a good option, it is also wise to compare other options and make decisions based on them.

Tip: The best idea is to consider the overall cost of shipping for your business that also includes a worst case scenario so that you plan accordingly and make decisions to optimize your costs, maximize profits and reduces shipping duration.

Negotiating with the fulfillment center Negotiate with your fulfillment center closely on the number of orders that you ship and the exact requirements for your business. Here’s what you can do:

Try speaking to a sales rep of your existing fulfillment center to know about any discounts and offers for your business. These discounts can be based on your shipping volume.

The next thing would come down to optimizing your packaging to reduce your shipping costs. We’ll talk about it in the next section.Ask for membership discounts

Your fulfillment center will be willing to do everything to keep you as your customer and offer you a better experience. But for this, you may also need to have a track record with them. For example, if you’re shipping with FedEx for a year, you can look for opportunities based on the orders you’ve had with them.