Are you looking to reduce shipping costs for your retail business? If so, read on to discover the top five ways you can reduce shipping costs.
You’ve extended your market to other cities, counties, states, maybe even other countries. But you’ve realized getting your product into distant hands is expensive.
How expensive?
Just consider that companies last year alone spent nearly $1.5 trillion dollars on shipping costs. Cutting back some of the costs might be a lot easier than you think, and we’ll show you how.
Continue reading to learn how you can reduce shipping costs without compromising any quality!
Reduce Shipping Costs with These 5 Tips
1. Offer Discounts to Nab Big Sales
While not immediately reducing the cost of shipping, this can increase basket values to offset shipping costs. Discounts for bundling items or seasonal coupons can encourage customers to purchase more products at once.
Try offering free shipping on large items or on items totaling higher than a set amount.
2. Negotiate Your Price
If you’re signed up with a large company like FedEx or UPS, you can negotiate ways to maximize your pricing model. Consider your contract and how you can adjust it to meet your business’ current needs.
Often, a company will sign up for one delivery service but not remember to adjust it into another as the business grows.
3. Don’t Settle for the Big Names
Because the market is so heavily saturated with the big names like FedEx and UPS, many companies don’t think to look for other options. Actually, there are tons of alternative or hybrid options that only use big names in small portions.
One of the caveats of choosing a smaller service provider is you may lose a guaranteed delivery date customers expect. You’ll have to weigh your available local options and consider if cutting shipping costs is worth the new service.
4. Be on the Lookout for Invoice Errors
Looking out for a potential recovery, while not hugely rewarding, will help you keep track of the pounds and pence. It’s what separates a lot of expert establishments from the novices.
Checking over every invoice with a fine-tooth comb would exhaust all your time and resources. Instead, Look for an automated solution to reconcile your carrier invoices & keep a lookout for credit-recapture opportunities.
5. Keep Track of Data
To improve your business and optimize the cost of shipping, you have to keep an eye on all your data. You should invest in a software (or opt-in for tools through major shipping companies) to stock all your information.
This way, you can have various perspectives to work with including the big and little pictures.
Shipping Management for the Modern Age
To ultimately reduce shipping costs & keep your customers happy with multiple delivery choices and on-time delivery, you need to have a grasp on all the various shipping functions and numbers. This is difficult for someone to pull off in a single role without comprehensive software.
And if you’re on the lookout for the best shipping management software around, you’re just in luck!
SmartConsign gives detailed insight into a business’ shipments and handles the large sets of data seamlessly. With our software, you can review depots, tracking, invoices, support tickets, and more.
Check out our website and browse our blog for more details!