The Value of Free Shipping

By Adam  |  2 Aug 2015 12:00:00

A study has recently been carried out in order to determine the behaviours and attitudes of customers on eCommerce websites. Interestingly it showed that a majority of online shoppers are much more likely to buy something from an eCommerce website if it is offered with free shipping. It makes a lot of sense, really, since people wouldn't have additional shipping fees in a physical shop and so that make them feel like they are being ripped off, especially if the postage cost was quite high!

So I think that it could be a good idea for you to offer free shipping on your eCommerce website. I know this might make you think that you're going to make less money doing that, with nothing to gain but a slight increase in customer satisfaction, but there are two important things to consider: firstly, how many people may have been unsure about buying something from you, but ultimately decided against it because of the shipping fee? It could have been quite a few! So when you consider that you might see an increase in sales, will you actually be losing anything? Can it hurt to at least experiment? Secondly, there's something else you can do if you're still not sure about this: offer free shipping on all of your products, but very sneakily, secretly bring up the cost of all of your products to include the cost of shipping. That does risk somebody noticing what you did, but for a lot of people it will just appear as if you had offered free shipping.

Interestingly, while everybody loves free shipping, the study also showed that a lot of people are keen on paying a little extra for next day deliveries. Of course, ordering something online and having it arrive just the next day is the peak of convenience, so if you have the time and resources to implement next day deliveries, by all means do it. A good customer experience is the key (or at least one of the keys) to a successful eCommerce website and these are just two of the many things you can do to try and keep your customers as happy as possible.