Do you know, 62% of shoppers expect their free shipping orders to arrive within 3 business days? Thus, if you are looking for ways to reduce shipping costs and maintain quick delivery simultaneously, you are at the right place. Through this post, we will be guiding you on how to perform the task seamlessly.

So, let’s dive in and check the content in this article.

• Top Practices To Reduce Shipping Cost And Maintain Quick Delivery
• Best Shopify Shipping Rate Apps

Top Practices To Reduce Shipping Cost And Maintain Quick Delivery

Here are the 6 best practices that you can use to reduce cost and deliver products quickly.

Use Zone Skipping Method

If you have cross-country clients then you would know how costly it is to deliver a product to them. Thus, you can implement a zone skipping strategy that allows you to build inventory warehouses in the zone where your products have high demand. 

• For example, you are continuously getting orders from New York but your store is in Huston. Thus you can open a separate warehouse in New York and directly ship the product to the customers. This will help you reduce shipping costs and will allow delivering the product faster.

Offer Discounts On Bulk Shipping

A method that would increase your average store value help you reduce the cost of shipping. You can use different apps like Shipstation, Shippo, etc. that will assist you in gaining discounts on bulk order shipping.

• Running an offer on the store that says “order products at a value above $1000 and gain free deliver” or similar will help you implement this strategy in your store.

Work On Reducing Dimensional Weight

Product weight is not the only criterion that courier companies consider when deciding on the price of shipping. Nowadays, they have started comparison between dimensional weight and product weight, whichever weight is the highest they consider that and charge you accordingly.

Thus, it doesn’t matter if your product is feather weighted, if its dimensions are huge then you would have to pay more for it. You should work on reducing the dimensional weight by removing unnecessary infills, using boxes that perfectly fit your inventory, or more such methods to reduce your shipping charges.

Create Fast Shipping Zones

This method will help you decide how fast an order can be delivered to a particular area. You can create parameters like order delivery area according to your warehouse, urban areas where it’s easier for you to deliver, and so on.

• Creating parameters will help you reduce confusion and will allow you to determine the shipping cost which you can either showcase or add to the product cost beforehand.

Choose The Best Courier Option

There are several courier service-providing companies that you can try. You can run A/B testing on different companies and choose the one that delivers the fastest and charges less from you.

Sometimes using a fancy delivery option like drone delivery can definitely reduce your delivery time but will cost you way more, thus sticking up to the orthodox way of delivery is the key.

Implement Different Last-Mile Delivery Features

Sometimes, majorly the delay in delivery is at the last stage when your delivery agents have to go out to deliver the products. You can use Uber Eats quick delivery option to deliver parcels to different areas which reduce the delivery time and allow you to deliver more orders in a day.    

Claim Refund

There are several shipping companies that provide refunds if they have delivered the product late. They provide a full refund even if the delivery is delayed by a minute. Thus you can keep a track of your deliveries and cash on delayed product delivery.

• As per research, more than 6% of FedEx and UPS parcels were late.

Use Third-Party Insurance

Shipping companies charges a lot by providing third-party insurance. Companies like FedEx and UPS approximately charges 80 cents for every $100 delivery. You can use third-party insurance companies like Parcel Insurance Plan ( PIP ) to save on shipping costs. 

Increase The Price Of Your Product

As per a study by the Wharton School Of Business, free shipping that saves customers’ $6.99 is more appealing instead of a discount that reduces the purchase price by $10. Thus, you can smartly include the shipping amount in the product and then offer free shipping. 

Use Multi-Carrier Strategy

Merchants usually use a single-carrier strategy which allows them to make quick shipping decisions. Although, using a multi-carrier strategy is a bit time-consuming but it comes with these benefits;

• Carrier that matches your delivery- Different delivery partners charges differently for the delivery. Thus, you can check the price and the speed for different deliveries like international, domestic, oversized shipments, and so on.

• Reduces risk of delivery– If you face an issue with one delivery carrier then you can quickly switch to the other carriers and ensure that no product is delivered late.

Best Shopify Shipping Rate Apps

Here are the 4 best Shopify shipping apps that you can integrate into your store.

Shipping Rates- Shipeasy ( 5/5⭐, 285 Reviews )

This app allows you to calculate accurate shipping rates according to different rules like postal code, zip code, product dimensions, and more. It can integrate with different courier partners like USPS, FedEx, Sendle, etc.

Features

• Comes with a rate blending feature that helps you configure how rates from different rule sets should be combined. 
• They provide free setup assistance through a phone call, making it easier for you to configure it.

Pricing

• Free- 30 Days
• Starter- $9.99/Month
• Smart- $14.99/Month
• Advanced- $19.99/Month

Ship, Rate And Track ( 4.9/5⭐, 261 Reviews )