By staying proactive and continuously optimizing shipping costs, businesses can maintain competitive pricing and improve their bottom line.

A shipping platform is a valuable tool for businesses aiming to reduce shipping costs. These platforms enable businesses to aggregate their shipping volumes and negotiate better rates with carriers, ultimately leading to significant cost savings.

One of the primary advantages of utilizing shipping platforms is their ability to help businesses reduce shipping costs through discounted rates. These platforms consolidate multiple carrier rates, allowing businesses to easily compare and select the most cost-effective option.

By leveraging the negotiated discounts offered by shipping platforms, businesses can achieve considerable savings on their shipping expenses. In addition to cost savings through rate comparisons, shipping platforms contribute to reducing shipping costs by streamlining the shipping process.

These platforms integrate with e-commerce platforms, simplifying the shipping workflow and eliminating manual data entry.

By automating tasks like creating shipping labels, shipping platforms minimize errors and associated costs, ensuring a more efficient and cost-effective shipping process. Moreover, shipping platforms often offer supplementary features that assist businesses in reducing shipping costs.

For instance, package tracking and delivery confirmation functionalities help mitigate the risk of lost or damaged packages, averting the need for costly claims and replacements. Furthermore, employing a shipping platform enables businesses to consolidate their shipping data, leading to improved visibility into their shipping costs.

This enhanced visibility allows businesses to identify areas where they can reduce shipping expenses. For example, they can identify opportunities for consolidating shipments or negotiate better rates with carriers based on their shipping data analysis.

In conclusion, utilizing a shipping platform is an effective strategy for businesses aiming to reduce shipping costs. By leveraging discounted rates, streamlining the shipping process, and gaining better visibility into shipping expenses, businesses can optimize their shipping operations and achieve substantial cost savings.

Exploring different shipping platforms and selecting one that aligns with the specific needs of the business is crucial in attaining these cost-reduction benefits. Optimizing packaging is a crucial strategy for businesses aiming to reduce shipping costs.

By focusing on reducing the size and weight of packages, businesses can effectively minimize their shipping expenses. This can be achieved by using appropriate packaging materials, choosing the smallest possible box, and considering custom packaging solutions.

One effective way to reduce shipping costs is by utilizing lightweight and durable packaging materials. By selecting materials that are both strong and lightweight, businesses can ensure the protection of their items during transit while minimizing the overall weight of the package.

For instance, opting for envelopes or lightweight poly bags for smaller items can significantly reduce the weight and dimensions of the package, ultimately leading to cost savings. Additionally, using packing materials like bubble wrap or packing peanuts can provide adequate protection without adding excessive weight.

Another essential aspect of packaging optimization is using the smallest possible box. By choosing appropriately sized boxes that closely match the dimensions of the items being shipped, businesses can avoid unnecessary empty space and reduce shipping costs.

For instance, shipping a small item in a large box not only incurs higher shipping fees but also increases the risk of damage during transit. By selecting the smallest box that accommodates the item securely, businesses can minimize shipping costs while ensuring the safety of the package.

Furthermore, considering custom packaging options can further reduce shipping costs. Custom packaging allows businesses to design packaging solutions that precisely fit the dimensions of their products. This tailored approach eliminates the need for excess packaging material and ensures a snug and secure fit, reducing both weight and dimensions.

As a result, businesses can experience significant cost savings by optimizing their packaging to meet the specific requirements of their products. In conclusion, businesses can effectively reduce shipping costs by optimizing their packaging strategies. By utilizing appropriate packaging materials, selecting the smallest possible box, and exploring custom packaging options, businesses can minimize the weight and dimensions of their packages, ultimately leading to substantial savings in shipping expenses.

By offering free shipping for orders surpassing a specific amount, businesses can incentivize customers to increase their order sizes, thereby offsetting shipping costs. However, it is crucial for businesses to diligently calculate the threshold to ensure it remains profitable.

Real-time carrier rates can help businesses save money on shipping by automatically selecting the cheapest shipping option for each order.

It lets them select a day of the week to receive all their orders. Similarly, Amazon offers discounted rates to eligible sellers for LTL and FTL shipments. Etsy is another useful eCommerce shipping option for small businesses that want to keep costs low.

It lets you create and print shipping labels online and even offers order tracking to your customers. Shipping carriers like UPS and FedEx announce a change in shipping charges on a yearly basis known as the General Rate Increase GRI.

This pricing change is the adjustment of shipping rates depending on the requirements of demand and supply chain in the shipping industry and increased prices of fuel and labor. In addition to the base shipping rates, carriers also change their surcharges e. fuel surcharges. However, you can still negotiate discounted rates, especially if you have a high shipping volume with your carrier.

The implication of an annual rate increase for shippers and eCommerce store owners is that they might need to adjust the prices of their products to protect their bottom line. Carrier price changes along with different shipping options and shipping zones make shipping parcels more complex.

The weight and size of your package greatly impacts the total shipping cost. One of the most effective ways to target lower rates is to use alternative packing materials like poly mailers instead of cardboard boxes. Cardboard packaging is heavy, and using lightweight poly mailer bags to ship packages helps you cut down on package weight.

Similarly, cardboard box sizes are fixed, meaning its package dimensions decide the shipping costs even if there is empty space inside.

In contrast, poly mailer bags are compact, making them more cost-effective than cardboard boxes for shipping non-fragile items like sweaters and pillows.

Another great way to lower shipping costs is to use packing supplies provided by your shipping carrier. Major carriers like FedEx, USPS, and DHL offer discounted packing materials to small retail stores and eCommerce businesses.

Experienced shippers know that buying packing materials like boxes, poly mailers, and dunnage in bulk achieves cost savings in the long run. Each unit cost reduces for each parcel when you buy packaging in bulk quantity.

When you self-fulfilling orders, you usually spend a lot of time receiving and processing orders. As a result, you have less clarity about the effects of shipment cost trends on your business. A logistics intelligence tool gives you access to data analytics and automation tools that help you identify opportunities for cost savings.

It lets you compare and analyze different shipment scenarios to understand true fulfillment costs. Outsourcing your order fulfillment to a 3PL, offering flat rate shipping, and investing in a logistics solution are just a few simple ways you can reduce shipping costs and better manage the impact of carrier rate changes on your business.

Sifted Logistics Intelligence offers tools for shippers to better optimize and understand their shipping costs and where they can be reduced. Ready to protect your business from shipping fee changes?

Get a demo with Sifted today! Categories: All. Tags: All. Decision Support See how supply chain adjustments pay off before you pay out.

Carrier Management Streamline how you manage your carrier operations and contracts. For Amazon FBA Sellers: Marketplace Intelligence. Not sure if you have an account? Email [email protected].

Decision Support. Carrier Management. Business Automation. All Solutions. Get parcel industry news, market outlook predictions, and tips delivered to your inbox every month. Apple Podcast. Google Podcast. by Sifted Team. Jun 17, View All Articles. Peak Season Shipping Checklist.

If you sell small, non-fragile products like clothing, shipping orders in a mailer envelope or poly bag can be far more cost-effective than boxes. The dimensions are smaller, taking up less room on a delivery truck, and using them also requires less packing supplies like tape and bubble wrap to save even more money.

If your orders contain different combinations of products, consider different sized poly mailers. Hybrid shipping services like UPS SurePost and FedEx SmartPost pick up your orders and then work with other carriers like USPS to transport your packages to a sorting facility or post office location, where it is then shipped to a residential area for last-mile delivery.

However, the tradeoff is often a slower delivery. Every year, the major shipping carriers increase their shipping rates as part of the annual general rate increase GRI.

Additionally, carriers may implement surcharges at various peak times such as the holidays and Q4 or what we saw happen during the early days of the COVID pandemic , when there is a surge in packages being shipped.

They also implement other surcharges annually, ranging from large package surcharges to signature required surcharges. During peak season or any high volume events or periods for your ecommerce business e. The carriers have their own set of cutoffs for each service during the holidays to help prevent gifts from arriving late.

For customers who want to reduce shipping costs, this will involve placing orders at the earliest cutoffs to avoid paying more for expedited shipping. On top of running out of time as dates approach, there may be additional considerations that impact cutoffs, such as labor shortages, weather events that prevent carriers from shipping, shutdowns from COVID outbreaks, federal holidays that close down operations, and other factors.

If you work with a 3PL, be sure to pay attention to not only their specific carrier cutoffs, but their inventory receiving cutoffs, holiday turnaround times, any SLA extensions, and general holiday schedule. Any logistics company needs to make many strides over the months leading up to the holidays to prepare for peak season, and any brand needs to pay close attention to relay this information to their customers.

Not all of the tips above are going to be applicable to your business or improve your bottom line. Thinking about your current ecommerce shipping process, answer the following questions to get an even better sense of what you can do to cut or recover shipping costs.

The psychology of online shopping and consumer preferences is fascinating. You can present shoppers with two scenarios where they would pay the same total price, yet they would abandon their cart for the one that has a higher shipping cost. Consider the following ideas to implement to make up your shipping costs:.

Use the following sites to dig deeper into your specific shipping costs:. Many small businesses make common packing mistakes that increase their costs, like using too big package dimensions or extra package weight.

Others use boxes when they could use a poly mailer or padded envelope to decrease the weight and dimensions. If you use custom branded boxes, inserts, and other fancy packing supplies like shredded paper filler or custom tissue paper, and you are struggling to keep shipping costs down, you could probably save money by ditching those.

Understanding patterns in shipping destinations can help to identify where you should be shipping from.

Working with a third-party logistics 3PL company, you can utilize their ecommerce warehouses to store your inventory and ship from locations that are closer to your customers.

This can significantly reduce your average shipping cost when you multiply out those cost savings across all orders. Now, we can comfortably assign a shipping cost to each order by pinpointing the product weight and destination zip code. In comparison to shipping products to the US from Canada, which can be extremely variable in cost, fulfillment by ShipBob is much easier to estimate.

Companies like ShipStation and Stamps.

Prepay shipping to save money on shipping labels Factor in all fees Work with providers

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