This is a question I have for eCommerce profis, who deal with several suppliers they dropship the items for you. How do you handle the shipping calculation if you offer items from different sources and the items are dropshipped? Working with one supplier and calculating the shipping is easy. But what if a customer buys 2 or 3 products and each products ships from a different location? I can see inflating the price would be one solution but that only would work on higher priced items. Another option is to "eat" the shipping costs which again will reduce your profit and this can add up to quite a bit too, especially if the item requires a high shipping charge. Items in a range from let's say up to $30 you can't inflate 5 or 6 bucks or you will kick yourself out of business by over pricing the items. If I would try to charge the customer the real shipping cost I will most likely lose on the sale because who wants to pay $15 or even $20 for shipping on e.g. 3 items with a cart value of maybe $50 or $60? Any input and advice is very appreciated. Thank you in advance and Happy Thanksgiving verdecove
Shipping cost is a serious issue for any corporation while shipment on different locations. So, producer should offer products in packages such as offer products in bundles of 3 or 4 then shipping cost 'll divide over products prices. And if there is any warranty claim then client 'll have to bear shipping cost. I think this is least and easy way to reduce or avoid shipping cost issues.
Good question. My experience comes from being a direct shipper. I sell off my own ecommerce (formerly) and via Amazon (still currently). Your best technique would be to calculate the maximum shipping costs and go with that for all. Can break the shipping costs up into tiers? If so, have tiers based upon the weight of the products. I did a flat fee for the really big stuff and tried to recoup the costs by the product itself. Also, I would throw additional, smaller products in, but increase the overall cost off all. It allowed me to offer more, but actually make a little more profit. Are you using drop shipping on all or just some of your products? If you are drop shipping all products, then I would suggest getting out of that business. Go with an Amazon storefront as an affiliate. Seriously. It's much less fuss. Here's a comparison of Amazon scripts that I wrote up. If you are only drop shipping the heavy, cumbersome products, then I would minimize the shipping just to cover your costs. I've always viewed drop shipping as a way to supplement your stocked products, as a service to your customers and to expand the selection of products.
Thanks for your response and your suggestions. we once debated if we should go with Amazon but the very little commission Amazon pays is not worth the efforts to me. I have no complaints about a dropship business and all our customers have been happy so far. So far we have worked with one supplier which made the calculation easy. We are offering a flat rate shipping for $7.95 and every order over 75 bucks ships free. We pretty much knew how much we got charged for shipping as the supplier charges per order value. But now we are planning to expand our business and to work with several suppliers, which makes the calculation difficult, especially since some of the items require higher shipping cost and the new supplier does not provide any pre-calculated shipping cost. I guess we will have to calculate the markups different and try to add in some of the shipping into the prices. Cheers verdecove
Get the dimensions of package and weight of the item from your new suppliers then you would be able to enter this information into your shopping cart's shipping calculator, if you have it set up this way, so customer would be able to enter their information in at checkout to determine the shipping cost of items their order to their country or region zip code (customer's mailing address).
We eat the postage costs for combined purchases on dropshipped products. Since we pretty much have no upfront costs (i.e. stock) with dropshipped products i am happy to eat a portion of postage costs. If i was to inflate my prices or charge higher postage i most likely would not have made the sales in the firstplace.
That's a solution if you deal with only one supplier. But like I wrote as an example, would you pay 20 bucks for shipping if you buy maybe 3 items and unfortunately each item ships from a different location (what the customer of course doesn't know)? I wouldn't! LOL With nowadays competition and a lot of stores offering free shipping, shipping cost calculation has become really a subject. Anyway, thanks for your response verdecove
I think this is what we will end up doing also. We partly already have done that with our current supplier by offering a flat shipping for purchases of up to $75 and everything over a free shipping. we really have seen an increase in orders and sales with a higher cart value. Inflating the prices to make up for the shipping is only a limited option and has to be handled very careful. Like you said, if you inflate too much you might not make the sale firsthand. For a long time we used to charge the shipping rate percentage wise accordingly to the cart value, which made a lot of customers drop out because shipping got simple to expensive. Sometimes a little less profit even turns in more profit. LOL Also thanks to you for your response verdecove
Yes I understand the items are coming from different dropship suppliers, but these figures should be entered into your shipping calculator whether you have one supplier or 20 suppliers. The customer should pay the shipping unless you can handle paying the shipping cost of the items yourself. Because marking the price up to include the shipping rate will drive customers to look else where to find the product at cheaper price with the competition if they can afford their shipping rates. I understand heavier weighted items are going to cost significantly more to ship to the customer compared to smaller weight items.
I have the same problem. I too pay lot more for shipping charges. I am Also Looking For the cheapest shipping charges offering companies
I think if you buy more goods at the time, then you can save shipping charges. of course, if you don't need buy so many then you can call your friends together. of course, you should find some good site which have different kinds fo products for you choose.