Prestashop free shipping manager Archives - Knowband Blog

Free Shipping Strategies: Why to Offer? How to Offer? When to Offer?

Free Shipping is a sales strategy used by eCommerce businesses to encourage online shoppers to purchase without having to worry about the shipping cost.

Does it actually help in improving sales?

Well, “Yes. It does”

One may argue that free shipping is not the ideal solution to ensure growth in sales as it can affect the profit margin. However, if the right tactics are applied, it can surely bring fruitful results.

In this article, I have discussed how to offer free shipping and why it is an important part of your sales strategy. It will also brief you on when you should offer free shipping.

So, let’s start.

Why should you offer Free Shipping?

It is obvious that free shipping delights customers but it also provides ample benefits to eCommerce businesses. Free shipping-

1. Increases Sales

The primary benefit of offering free shipping is that it increases sales.

The tag of “Free Shipping” induces customers to purchase as they would not have to pay additional costs while purchasing a product. A study by Invesp confirms the same, which says that 9 out of 10 consumers find free shipping to be the primary reason to shop online.

2. Increases Average Order Value

Adding to the benefits of free shipping is it boosts your average order value.

Retailers often set a minimum threshold for customers to get free shipping on their purchases. Only if the customer makes a purchase over the threshold, he or she would be eligible for free shipping.

Shoppers add additional items to the cart to cross the threshold value, which eventually results in an increase in the average order value.

The stats collected by Invesp confirm that 93% of the online shoppers show the tendency to purchase more products if the free shipping option is available.

3. Reduces Cart Abandonment

High shipping cost is the foremost reason behind shopping cart abandonment. And it makes sense. When shoppers look for a product, they do not take the shipping charge into account.

And when the price on the payment page goes much higher than what it was on the product page or what they expected, they reluctantly abandon their cart.

Imagine how satisfying it would be for a customer if the product price remains the same throughout.

4. Improves Brand Loyalty

Free shipping helps you earn customer loyalty and improves brand loyalty simultaneously. Customers become loyal to your brand and they keep coming back to your store at regular intervals, avoiding your competitors who are charging a high shipping cost.

How to offer Free Shipping?

Free shipping simply cannot be provided on every product. There are certain ways to offer it. For example-

1. Over a Certain Product Value

You can specify the minimum product amount for which the customer needs to shop to get free shipping. This does not include other charges.

To put it simply, the “product amount” should be equivalent to the threshold, not the “total order value.”

Somewhere, it also encourages cross-selling and upselling.

2. Over a Certain Cart Value

You can define a cart value that a customer must match if he or she does not want to pay the shipping charge.

For example, free shipping if the total order value exceeds $100.

3. Limited-Time Free Shipping

Create urgency to purchase by offering limited-time free shipping. The purpose is to convert prospective buyers into potential customers.

Start sending out emails or post it on social media to make your customers aware of this limited-time offer. Do whatever it takes to reach your audience.

4. On Taking a Membership

You can charge an annual subscription fee for a membership program, under which customers can enjoy the free of cost shipping.

One of the popular examples is Amazon Prime that offers free and quick shipping under their membership program.

5. On Shopping for a Certain Quantity or a Package

This can include offers like Buy 2 or buy a combo and get free shipping.

However, you need to make sure that the package that you are offering or the products falling under “Buy 2 or buy a combo” offer can adjust your shipping cost, else it will be a loss if it is applied on low-priced products too.

When should you offer Free Shipping?

1. On Special Occasions

Free shipping can provide a huge boost to your sales during the holiday season, simply because the shopping fever is high at that time. Occasions like Black Friday, Halloween, Christmas, New Year provide a perfect opportunity to grab more sales by offering free shipping.

2. If Your Competitors are Offering It

It’s good to track your competitors’ activities. It provides you with the areas of improvement.

Check whether your competitors are offering free shipping or not. If they are doing it, you should offer it too, to be in the race among brands. If they aren’t, you can use this to your advantage and get a competitive edge over your competitors.

3. Free Shipping on Returns

If your customers are not satisfied with the product and on top of that if you are asking them to pay the shipping charge for placing a return, it can annoy customers and might affect customer loyalty.

To improve customer satisfaction and maintain customer loyalty, you can devoid your customers from the shipping charge when they place a return request.

Related:

5 Ways to Manage eCommerce Returns

8 Simple Tips to Reduce Product Returns in eCommerce

PrestaShop Free Shipping Manager by KnowBand

Set shipping rules, adjust the shipping price and do much more with PrestaShop Free Shipping Manager addon.

Key Features:

1. Set the minimum cart value for a customer to receive free shipping.

2. Set the minimum and maximum weight of the products to get the free shipping facility.

3. Allow free shipping to users of a particular zone. (Africa, Asia, Europe, etc)

4. Make free shipping available for visitors, guest and customers.

5. Help customers understand the shipping criteria right when they are on the checkout page.

The Bottom line

Free shipping can be a great marketing tactic to boost your eCommerce sales and reduce cart abandonment. But not everyone can afford to provide it. E-commerce giant Amazon started offering free shipping way back but is quite difficult for small scale businesses.

So, make sure to check whether it would be the right idea for your business or not.

If you are already offering it, do let me know how useful it has been to your business so far. If you are planning to offer it, check out the above mentioned free shipping strategies and set yours accordingly.

Have some more points to add? Let me know by dropping a comment below.

Liked this? You will like this too:

How to Simplify the Online Shopping Experience of Customers?

Holiday Sales Countdown: Things that your Customers would Expect

The commencement of the holiday season demands the eCommerce store to stay one step ahead and plan for the occasion. The beginning of holiday sales provides the web store with better opportunities to connect with the visitors, treat them well, and in return gain better sales from them. This is the main reason that every store owner wants to be prepared for the holiday sales and plan it a long ago.

In order to be sure that the sales made are better than last time, shopping sites not only need to equip themselves with quality products but take into consideration the expectation of the buyer as well. While the greetings and best wishes play an important role in establishing a better customer-seller relationship, the buyer expects a bit more which could make their holiday season a feast for their pockets.

There are various ways in which a web store can make sure that the customers are happy with the service provided and make sure they return to the store even after the holiday sales to make future purchases. Some of the things a customer expects from the web store during holiday sales are discussed below.

Occasional discounts

Discounts are a part of online shopping. Even during the non-holiday sales, a regular customer would expect the store to provide them some discounts or incentives on their purchase, but this expectation gets high especially during this season.

Thus, in order to make your store standout amongst the crowd of many stores, you need to provide the customers with deals that they can’t turn their eyes off to. It will help you to make better sales and at the same time the customers are highly motivated to make a purchase using the discounts provided by the web store. It just sets the bar high for your sales.

Personalized Experience

Every customer desires to get a unique experience while visiting their favorite store. To make this happen, the store owner can provide custom personalization with products and services as per their requirements. Customer experience personalization involves designing or producing services and products to meet the individual requirements of the customer.

Surveys say that a growth of 5 to 15% can be observed if a store starts providing custom solutions to every individual customer. To collect information, the store owner can run surveys with popup forms; add extra fields on the product page and checkout page. The customer experience can be improved with better greetings while a customer visits the store and after he makes the purchase.

This is a fast and simple way to implement a personalized customer journey that will inevitably lead to happy future customers.

Notifications

The holiday season is the busiest time of the year. Every customer cannot turn towards the store to check for the availability of products. Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of the eCommerce stores to provide them with that information. The holiday preparation of the eCommerce stores should include the marketing tactics to keep the customers informed.

He customers are highly delighted when they see a product or an offer on a product which they would like to make a purchase on. These types of initiatives by the web stores are highly appreciated by the buyers and they are more likely to visit the store. The shopping sit can provide these kinds of updates to the user in many forms such as through calls, emails, or push notifications.

The web store should not restrict them to customer-oriented marketing, they can use the social media platforms to make the general customers aware of the store sales and the better opportunities they might be missing if they don’t take a look at the web store.

Free shipping

One of the biggest concern for the buyers during the holiday sales is the receiving of the products. As it is peak time and all the customers are highly encouraged to involve themselves in other activities. The eCommerce sites could come front and provide them with the free delivery option.

It will enlighten the mood of the customers and will help in increasing their trust in your store. The online stores need to manage their free shipping efficiently. The Prestashop free shipping module is one such module that can help the Prestashop store.

The module makes sure that the customers are made available to fee shipping by taking their product value in mind. The sellers can set free shipping priorities by zones, price, and weight. These types of commitment made by the stores are highly expected by the buyers and they love to get these types of treatments.

Win back campaigns

There must always be some time of encouragement for the customers to keep making a purchase. Every customer wants to enroll themselves into a bigger part of something. This can be made available by the web store by keeping the win-back campaigns.

The buyers can make a purchase from the site and in return, each of them has an equal chance of winning a grand prize or something like that. Here are various ways the websites can provide those opportunities to the customers either through a luck draw a number system. This keeps the buyer occupied and boosts them to make sales to improve their chances of winning the bigger prize.

Help and support

The sales can be confusing even for the customers. Therefore, they can require help anytime. In order to be sure that the visitors are provided with every possible help, the stores must encourage the 24/7 services with the live chat feature where the customers can clear their doubts regarding every product related provable.

These types of services prove to be an effective means of encouraging customers to make a purchase and boost their motivation level. The chat feature is becoming more common but the holiday sales demand a better assistance system. Redirecting the conversation from negative to positive places focus on the proposed solution.

When the outcome takes center stage, it reduces the odds that customers will be upset. A better help and support team to improve the sales made during the holiday sales.

Over to You

The web store must consider the fact that a customer will only make a purchase when he thinks the store is providing them with available services. If this is not the case then the chances of making sales are lowered during these sales. Therefore, the web-store must be prepared with all available elements to improve the conversions during holiday sales.

Related Stories

10 Ways to make Online Purchase Easier for your Customers

The competitive online market has enforced eCommerce retailers to come up with various ideas in order to make the online purchase easier for online shoppers. It has become the prime duty of the merchants to retain their customers by providing them an easy shopping experience so that they do not switch to a competitive store. The customers also seek for better opportunities. If they feel like the web store is not delivering according to their expectations, they instantly look for any other store to make a purchase. This ultimately leads to a decrease in the conversion rate funnel. Therefore, trying to make the purchase easy and better for the customers is the prime aim for the web store owners today.

In this article, we discuss the 10 simple ways to make the online purchase easier for your customers.

1. Easy login

One of the major problems encountered by the customers while trying to access the web store is the lengthy sign-up process or the unavailability of the easy login options. Customers do not feel like filling up the lengthy form in order to browse the web store. Therefore, the e-retailers must come up with better alternatives so that the customers find it easy to register on your store. To make the sign-up/login process easy, you can implement the social login options on your store.

Social login module by Knowband can help the store merchants in providing an easy login facility to their customers. You can opt for Social loginizer addon for Prestashop, Social loginizer OpenCart extension, Social loginizer for Magento, and Social loginizer 12 in 1 for Magento 2.

2. Mobile app

The shift in trend is already at the all-time high. With the mobile app surpassing the popularity of the desktop sites, it has become important for the web store owners to come up with a mobile app for their e-commerce store. The mobile app is one of the major demands of customers today. People like convenient browsing and a mobile app helps to do so. With just one tap, users can have access to their favorite eCommerce platforms.

3. Video marketing

Today, consumers need a clear and better insight into a product, and product images are not just enough to strengthen their buying decision. Video Marketing is the trend. Thus, you can make use of the product video marketing concept to provide better information regarding the product. It has been seen that the products which have a video description are twice as likely to make a sale as the products which don’t. Attaching a product video can help the consumers in making an easy and better purchase decision.

4. Multiple payment options

The lack of multiple payment options is another commonly found issue among the customers when it comes to purchasing a product. Most of the eCommerce stores have a fixed form of accepting the payments which turn out to be a major disappointment for the consumers, making it one of the major reasons for cart abandonment.

Any eCommerce store that offers multiple payment options has higher chances of conversions as compared to a store restricted to one or two payment modes only. If you want to make the online purchase easier for your customers, provide them the choices of making a payment through various payment modes.

5. Gifts and discounts

In order to connect better with the customers, e-commerce stores need to come up with timely offers and discounts. The customers always like to get better deals and offers with their purchase. Thus, making sure that the consumers are offered with timely freebies will attract them more towards your store and eventually turn them into loyal and potential customers. It is one of the best ways for customer retention and improving sales.

6. Free shipping

A high number of successful conversions are restricted due to the absence of free shipping on the eCommerce platforms. The majority of the customers seek for the free shipping of their products before making a purchase but with the additional shipping costs, customers become reluctant to leave your store, affecting your conversion rate heavily. This can be overcome by offering free shipping to your consumers, hence providing them a comfortable shopping experience.

7. Follow up marketing

Not every seemingly interested lead will convert into a potential customer, however, you can put your efforts and try to make them convert. Follow up the lead constantly and keep them informed about your offers. The follow-up marketing can be done by making use of Emails, mobile app notifications or web push notifications. The conversion rate is likely to go high with the correct approach to follow-up marketing.

8. Allow users to add review

According to Invesp, 90% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. You can imagine how much importance reviews hold for eCommerce sectors. Reviews establish trust. When consumers see that their desired product has been liked by the other customers, there are certain chances that the consumer will take no time in placing the order. So, add a review system to your product pages to avoid consumers’ confusion regarding the purchase and make their online purchase easy.

9. Make it easy to contact your customer support

Customers get frustrated if they do not get an easy option to contact you. Moreover, if you take too long to resolve their queries, you are almost going to kill their interest in your store. So make sure they do not find any difficulty in reaching out for help. Keep your contact page at the place where it is easy to navigate. In addition to this, provide various contact options to your customers for any assistance. Allow them to contact you via email, phone or an instant message and try to solve their queries as early as possible.

10. Easy return policy

The easy return policy is one of the most important aspects of making the online purchase easier for your customers. The first thing any consumer look out for while making a purchase is the return policy. In online shopping, there are high possibilities of a customer being dissatisfied with the purchase. Providing them an easy return option takes out the fear of losing money and thus encourages them to go for the purchase. So, keep your return policy simple and easy.

Conclusion

The process of making the online purchase easier for your customers lies in enhancing each and every aspect of your e-commerce store. The above-listed 10 methods would be very helpful for you, as a retailer, in providing an amazing comfort to your consumers on your store.

Also read:

5 Features that Highly Influence the Customer’s Decision in Making Purchase

How can Shipping Manager Help in Ensuring a Seamless Transaction to the Online Shoppers?

Tag: Prestashop free shipping manager