Is shipping a mystery on your online shopping website? Lack of clarity around shipping is one of the biggest conversion killers in eCommerce. Fortunately there are some simple conversion techniques that you can use to stem the flow of lost orders caused by shipping mystery.
Let’s start with the basics:
- Detail your shipping policy
- Link to your shipping policy
- Display shipping costs up front
- Keep shipping simple
- Use shipping offers
Detail your shipping policy
The first shipping conversion technique is having a clearly stated shipping policy. Some of the details that you need to cover in your shipping policy include:
- Where do you ship to?
- What options are there?
- What carriers do you use?
- How long does it take to get there?
- How do you calculate the shipping price?
- What happens when problems arise?
Link to your shipping policy
Once you have a good, well detailed shipping policy, you need to make sure that it can be found. Include a link to the shipping policy near the shopping cart, in the menus and on product pages.
Display shipping costs up front
One of the real keys to succeeding with shipping is being up front about it. Unfortunately, many shopping cart systems are configured to kill conversions by default. That’s because they force you to register and enter your personal details before they show you the price of shipping.
Make sure your shopping cart shows your customers the full price of the sale before they’re asked for their personal details.
But what if you need to know the customer’s location to calculate the shipping price? Ask them for their postcode, state or suburb, but… keep it simple.
Keep shipping simple
If your shipping calculations are complicated, do they really need to be? You might have more success with a simpler shipping price structure. Even if it is more expensive, making shipping easier to understand for your customers could have a positive effect on conversions.
Of course, this may depend on other factors such as competition, but it’s worth a test!
Use shipping offers
Shipping can be a conversion killer, but it can also present a profit opportunity for your eCommerce business. Try using quantity based shipping incentives to increase your average order value. For example, you might offer free shipping on orders one $100.
You can also use free shipping or discounted shipping offers to create an artificial deadline to push some of those conversions over the threshold.
Carefully calculate the costs of any offers that you make on shipping and make sure that the cost will be less than the return.
Once you have the basics covered, you can then start to look at some of the technical tricks that can improve your customer’s shipping experience even further.
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