Cost Control - Manage your shipping costs
Jonas Raaschou
“Well shipping is expensive and always a cost”
Yes and no. In Denmark freight is expensive compared to other European countries. But you have the possibility to negotiate your shipping prices; You’ll just have to be in control of the basis of the costs and your argumentation. Are you losing money on your shipments, or maybe you don’t have complete control of your shipping rates?
Step one!
Manage your shipping price sheets and furthermore your shipping rates displayed in checkout.
Your rates will often vary depending on the type of delivery, same-day delivery, drop point, or environmentally friendly transport. It can also depend on where your parcel is sent from and delivered to and the weight volume in the country.
If possible, set up dynamic shipping rates for your customers, so that shipping rates are optimized for their specific order information and delivery address. This way you make sure you have the right freight prices for you and your customers.
Webshipper offers Cost Based Shipping Rates and Advanced Shipping Rules.
With Cost Based Shipping Rates you can set up automated shipping rates based on your price sheets from each carrier – A dynamic solution based on your customer’s orders and delivery address as mentioned before.
Advanced Shipping Rules is your way to set up criteria for the shipping rates displayed at checkout. For example; Shipping rates displayed at checkout based on the postal code and product weighing over 2kg – it could be different from products weighing less than 2kg.
An ideal set up could be a specific shipping rate before 4:00pm for same day delivery, so that customers shopping after 4:00pm do not expect delivery next day and therefore can not choose that shipping method.
It’s all about the overview
Besides the Cost Control functions, we also offer Cost Management, where you have the possibility to upload and edit price sheets. A solution that keeps you updated with your newest agreements and prices, and also gives you the opportunities to get an overview of your shipments by carriers and services.
You’ll get the total overview to make it easy and simple when negotiating better prices with i.e. GLS, if you are able to show GLS that 80% of your shipments are sent to a GLS drop point. This way you know exactly which service you want at cheaper price, and where the price should lie to be beneficial for you.
Conversely, you can also look at it as a way to assess which shipping rates you earn or lose on the most, and whether you want to raise the profit on those rates at checkout.
To get the best overview, Webshipper offers you the tools to optimize your shipping costs and not least the structure to be competitive and negotiable with your partners.
If you want to focus on optimizing your e-commerce checkout, you can read more here about dynamic checkout – both dynamic prices and not least the possibility to show drop shipping to your customers.