It would be nice to snag more sales off of the web traffic we already get. Of 3000 visitors a day we get 5 sales. Of course our most popular pages are just informative and don't sell anything, but it would be nice to get 50 sales out of 3000 visitors. Where can I find help on pricing and shipping costs, etc. to harvest more customers from the flow?
What are you charging for shipping now? I know I won't purchase anything from an online retailer if the shipping is out of line with what I know UPS charges.
Definitely try different price gaps! There are many different types of consumers. High Priced with FREE Shipping High priced item with a penny shipping Low priced item with high shipping Middle ground with exact shipping You are guaranteed to catch different users and sell more. I've tested this many of times with great success. Get a nice split tester in place and you will be able to see what is doing best. Good Luck! KG
wisardofx maybe there is more to it than that... it might be that your current sales copy doesnt convert traffic well or it could be your site attributes like your call to action... i would look at those things first but making sure your shipping is reasonable is always good as i have found that customers are more price conscious. on my site i offer a flat shipping rate of $6.00 for all orders within the continental us and I ship by ups... where as a lot of my competitors offer free shipping on all order over $150.... i figured out the average order size and weight and then shipped it ground to the other side of the US, which determined the $6 fee... good luck.. if you need more help let me know.. i am sure i can think of some more ideas... also if you show us your site we might be able to figure out quick fixes...
FREE SHIPPING!! Money Back Guarantee!! Although the success of these incentives will depend on what it is exactly that you are selling, and how you are selling it
I take shipping costs into consideration when ever I buy something online, in fact it's the first thing I look for. The cost's vary so much that you often end up paying much more than you would from a local business, or more than it's worth. The item can be at a great price but factor in shipping costs and it can push it right over the top. It's not just the shipping either, add in insurance and packaging...the trip to the post office if applicable etc. Either keep those costs high and hope the prospective customer doesn't notice or go the other way and build them into the cost of the item. Some of those power sellers on ebay make there money on the shipping alone. People buy at an auction on impulse and never give the shipping cost a second thought.
Personally when I’m buying online I like two things in terms of shipping costs. One I like to be informed about the shipping cost up front. Some times you don’t know the shipping cost until the shopping chart calculates it in at the end. I associate this with excessive shipping fees. Two I like reasonable shipping and handling fees. If the product is a necessity I’ll be forced to pay, but I’ll shop around first. It’s safe to assume general web shoppers are similar.
From experience with my two sites, people like actual shipping costs and will not mind paying a couple dollars extra for handling and materials (which are not cheap). Ron R is right, let them now before they purchase. I geared my pricing based on that model and it's worked great. If you can, incorporate the apis from UPS, FedEx, or USPS into your site. They all work well. My prices are close to the lowest, if not the lowest on the web for my goods and quality and if you price shipping too high, most will realize this and not come back. Even with my low prices, I still offer free shipping over $100 (averages $10-$12 savings for my average box weight going across the country) and this in itself goes over very very very well as you will find that your average ticket price goes up accordingly -- not a bad thing. People do love free shipping, no matter if they are only a few miles away and shipping ended up being only $6, they will spen more to get it.
edited: After reading the initial post, I realized that the site is probably not an e-commerce site. If you want to get into e-commerce: and that is your conversion, the shipping prices may be the least of your worries. I'm hoping that those 3000 are NOT unique and are robots as well because that may be a call for a complete overhaul or at the very least find someone who can retool some pages for e-commerce.
from selling on ebay, people seem to have 3 attitudes: ANY shipping is unreasonable (especially when they only pay a few bucks for an item); As long as its reasonable, they dont have an issue; Those who dont know what reasonable is, and complain. I once had a policy where I would take actual shipping costs (ups fee, box cost, etc) and round the fee up to the next $5 increment. I was shipping medium sized items, cash registers, etc. Shipping might have been $18 and I rounded it to $20 and still got complaints.
Because, It was a simple method and still incurr time and costs for running around to get ot packaged and shipped and what not. My point was, some people will complain no matter what.
Right, if you level with them, they won't feel as though you are trying to rip them off. I would still charge the $20 though.
We use Urchin traffic analysis, which excludes robots from the reported sessions. Many of our visitors are looking for engineering information, of the 14000 page views per day, we get 418 that access the shoping cart CGI. Of these 418 that access the shopping cart CGI, only 5 submit an order. Is this good, bad, or typical? Best regards mark
How "up front" is "up front?" My customers have to click on "add to cart" where they see the shipping costs, way before they check out. Is this sufficient?
As was implied before, shipping costs, picking, packing, boxes and peanuts are not free for us, so the customer ultimately has to pay for them. So far we have been charging the exact UPS charges plus $2-4 for "handling" but not breaking it out that way. When people call on the phone they rarely object to $10 shipping and handling, would they be more bold about rejecting it on line? So is it better to add the "handling" cost to the price, or add it to the shipping, or call it out separately.
If you do charge shipping make it clear what it is on each product page and likewise if its free make it clear as well, what is more off putting than a highish shipping cost is having to go through the checkout to find out the cost or having to find the right information on a separate delivery information page, its easier for customers to just go elsewhere such as a site advertising free shipping, also try to keep shipping at nice round numbers, so no £3.37, it makes it easier for customers to work out the full cost especially if the product isn't a round number though ideally they should as well. Nice round numbers work best for comparison sites as well and try and set up your feeds to give delivery costs (including if free) as well so people can see what they will be paying if you are showing a total cost of £15 including shipping and someone else is showing £13 but the shipping cost isn't shown you may get the sale because someone can't be bothered to go through the other website to check the shipping rate.
Another quick point depending on where you are and what kind of distance selling regulations you have to follow it may be that by charging shipping if someone returns an item you won't have to refund the shipping cost, if you give free P&P you will have to refund everything and as of course there is a cost to you you will miss out. Maybe people who understand distance selling regulations consider this when buying with free P&P especially if they know theres a high chance they will return an item, Free P& P can actually encourage returns therefore.