Does free delivery increase your sales?

Does free delivery increase your sales? Yes, there are a number of reasons why customers do not buy online due to shipping costs, and although free shipping tempts some customers and will convince them to buy when they do not want to, another factor that comes into play when shopping online is how long the product takes. To arrive, do not make your customers wait long, but rather tell them through your service that you aspire to obtain their satisfaction through fast shipping.

Does free delivery increase your sales?

• Shipping has become a battleground for online retailers.
• Where once price was the weapon of choice for crushing competitors, today it is free shipping, and more precisely fast and free shipping.
• Shipping is one of the biggest sticking points in e-commerce.
• Research says that 36% of people have delayed purchasing something because they felt delivery costs were too high, making delivery costs the second most important reason shoppers abandon shopping carts.
• With this in mind, many retailers see shipping costs as where a customer decides whether or not to purchase from a retailer.
• The free shipping costs are also what encourages users to come back to the same retailers again and recommend them.

Why is free shipping important?

• Speaking of, does free delivery increase your sales? Consumers just want something for nothing, but shipping costs – and options – are often where shoppers abandon their carts, and stop incurring additional costs and/or delays.
• Adding free express delivery (next day or next two business days) addresses these concerns and makes your site more attractive.
• Free shipping can increase sales, as it not only reduces shopping cart abandonment, but also increases the number of sales.
• Free shipping keeps shoppers coming back to your store again.

How to offer free delivery

Here are some of the main ways you can offer free shipping along with some of their pros and cons:

Free shipping on everything

• Some retailers will offer free delivery on everything.
• This is usually found in expensive but small items such as jewelry.
• However, there are usually conditions such as within the country only and delivery may not be the fastest way to get the goods.
• The pros are that it makes shipping options simple for the user and makes them feel like they are getting something for nothing.
• On the downside, it's a cost that must be borne by the retailer.

Free on some items

• Tell us about: Does free delivery increase your sales? Retailers who sell a variety of goods often choose free shipping on high-margin items, as the margin can eat up shipping costs.
• Again, this mostly applies to small items and either high or low value and usually only works for “slow” deliveries.

Free shipping at certain times of the year

• One shipping strategy is to offer free shipping at certain times of the year around certain events.
• For example Black Friday Black Friday.
• However, this can be difficult because in such a competitive time, the margins are already tight.
• Most effective is to use an event, such as Valentine's Day or Mother's Day, to encourage early sales by offering free shipping if ordered before a certain date.

When should I offer free shipping?

You should offer this incentive if:

• You have calculated the cost and can afford it without negatively impacting your bottom line.
• If your competitors are doing this, you should remain competitive, and even if you're not, offering it could give you an advantage, as most shoppers (81%) are likely to research three online retailers before making a purchase.
• Your goal is to increase your order numbers.
• You have successfully included the cost of free shipping in the price of the item.

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Don't do these things

Avoid offering free shipping if:

• You are trying to increase the average order value without setting a limit.
• You use the tactic as a limited promotional tool, but you typically offer it throughout the year.
• However, you can use it to promote a loyalty benefits scheme, i.e. offering free shipping throughout the year to those who bring in repeat business.
• Your product margins are so low that offering free shipping will make them unstable.
• You have high shipping costs or deal with express shipping services which inevitably increases costs.
• You can offer free returns instead of free shipping.
• Free returns cost less because fewer shoppers are likely to return items.
• Free returns are especially attractive to those in the fashion industry.
• This is because shoppers cannot always know if the clothes they are buying fit them as intended.

Pay for free delivery

Nothing is completely free

• So the big question in all of this is how are you going to pay for it?
• As we've seen, offering free shipping at a high margin can cover costs simply by using a portion of that margin to cover the cost of delivery.
• But for most items, this doesn't work, so what are the options?
• The simplest solution is to slightly increase all of your prices and use the increased profits to cover the cost of free shipping.
• Offering free shipping by slightly increasing the price of the product is an economical way to cover the shipping cost.
• However, in such a competitive market as online retail, while price is not the main area of competition anymore, price is still the initial decision point for most shoppers.
• They may make their purchasing decision based on shipping, but you should maintain a price that is no higher than the rest of the competitors.

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Don't worry about the idea of free shipping

• Of course, the store owner must meet minimum shipping costs to cover the cost of orders and profit from more orders.
• Speaking of, does free delivery increase your sales? And while it may take some time to find free shipping on orders that fit your situation, the effort you put into getting organized offerings into your business structure will increase your sales volume, repeat orders, and your business's bottom line.
• Offering free shipping on orders is crucial to growing your online business and keeping your customers happy.
• Before reconfiguring your existing shipping offers, you can test how it will impact a customer's purchasing behavior in a low-risk way by having a Deal of the Day promotion on a few items, or a site-wide promo code good for free shipping.
• Deals, coupon codes, discount codes and other discounts are the best way to get started before instituting free shipping as standard operating procedure for online orders.

 

At the end of our article on Does free delivery increase your sales? Free shipping is an effective way to increase your sales because shoppers love it. They see it as an added bonus with which they can save money when it is time to buy. However, this should not make you lose profit.