Companies should only invest in providing free delivery to their customers if they know this will ultimately prove to be a deal breaker.
That’s the view of ecommerce expert Darren Hill, who doesn’t believe that all sellers should be looking to provide free postage and packaging as standard. For him, delivery options should be based on what services the company can afford to offer and the attitudes customers have towards paying for the shipment of products.
Writing at multichanelmerchant.com, he said retailers will truly know what delivery options their customers want by polling them – asking which shipping options make them the happiest.
Mr Hill also urged the use of shopping cart analytics to find out what makes a customer leave and whether they’re looking to abandon their order after seeing that free shipping is not on offer.
“Have the conversations with your customers, see how they react, crunch some numbers and roll out slowly so you aren’t over-promising and under-delivering,” he commented, cited by silobreaker.com.
Mr Hill says ecommerce is not “one-size-fits-all” as each business is different. Thus, while some companies may need to provide free delivery or risk losing out on thousands of pounds worth of business, others may be able to charge for delivery without this harming their sales.
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