When you're starting a small business, you need to make a lot of decisions right away. When it comes to ecommerce, all of the choices you make surrounding shipping are vital to your business's success.
To help you make the right shipping choices for your business, let's walk through all of the shipping considerations you need to review for your small business.
Getting Started with Shipping for your Business
There are a lot of considerations to take into account when looking into shipping for your small business. No matter the size of your business, understanding these aspects of shipping can be beneficial and save your business time and money.
We will breakdown the following shipping considerations:
- Package size
- Weight of package
- Delivery destination
- Speed of delivery
- Different shipping methods
- Carrier options
- Free shipping
Stay tuned to learn more about each of these different shipping considerations to make the best shipping decisions for your business, customers, and products.
Sizing Up Your Package
When it comes to calculating shipping costs, your packaged products' weight and size play a considerable role in determining the right shipping option.
Smaller sized and lightweight items are less expensive to ship. If your products tend to be more substantial, resulting in a denser and bigger shipping package, you could save using flat rate shipping boxes. Flat rate shipping can cost you more if your products are smaller.
You can learn more about the meaning of a flat rate shipping to see if this option fits well with the types of products you will be shipping. Remember that your products' weight does not contribute to shipping weight alone - you will need to consider adding in the weight of your final parcel, including packaging materials such as gift wrap, filler, and the poly mailer itself.
Delivery Destinations
Consider where your customers are ordering from when factoring in delivery costs. Destinations that are closer to your shipping address will be less expensive, but that doesn’t mean that you have to break the bank to satisfy your national clientele.
If you are looking to add an international shipping option to your small business, consider consolidating your international shipments into parcels. This consolidation will keep international shipping costs lower and increase delivery speed to your international customers.
Check out more tips on shipping internationally.
Order Speed to Customer
As the presence of ecommerce small businesses rises, so do customer expectations. With massive conglomerates like Amazon offering prime with two-day shipping, speed to the customer is more important than ever.
A lack of delivery speed for a customer’s potential order could deter them from finalizing their order or placing future orders.
Faster doesn’t always mean more expensive - there are many different options available that we will dive more into when discussing shipping methods.
Available Shipping Methods
When running a small business, you already have a lot to juggle, so let us help you decide which shipping method is the most effective. When it comes to shipping methods, there are a lot of options available to you:
- Priority mail flat rate
- Ground delivery
- First Class Mail
Priority mail shipping is excellent for quick turnarounds. With flat rate envelope and box options, priority mail flat rate shipping is a great low-cost shipping option. The downfall of using flat rate boxes is you cannot use your preferred packaging options, like poly mailers.
One of the slowest shipping methods uses the ground delivery option, although it is the most cost-effective for heavier packages. If speed to delivery to your customers is less of a concern, consider this shipping option as standard turnaround tends to be around five days of arrival.
For small items and very lightweight products, consider using first class mail as a shipping method. Using standard-sized small and large envelopes, you can send small packages in 1-3 business days using USPS.
Counting on a Carrier
The three leading carriers we consider when it comes to shipping are USPS, FedEx, and UPS. These carriers offer different rates and shipping options to decide what is best for your business.
You can calculate different options to see which is the best for you and see how these delivery carriers stack up against each other.
Free Shipping
Companies can attract more customers by marketing free shipping incentives for their ecommerce.
With so many benefits to the customer, free shipping can help you increase and retain customers. Wholesale shipping products, such as poly mailers, can free up room in your business budget to consider lowering your shipping costs or offering free shipping costs.
Poly Mailers for Shipping
Some shipping methods may limit you on what type of packaging you can use. If you do not want to budge using your preferred packaging, you may want to weed out these options up front.
For small businesses or large operations, everything comes down to the bottom dollar. Our wholesale poly mailers and other shipping products offer all small business owners cost savings by lowering the per-unit cost of shipping items. By purchasing wholesale shipping supplies, you are lowering the per-unit cost.
We have plenty of options for poly mailers: white, colors, and fun designs. Our poly mailers are durable, lightweight, and secure, making them a must-have for any ecommerce small business.
Our poly mailers' robust but flexible plastic material works to protect your items from any tears, rips, or other damage that might occur during the delivery process. There are so many features that our poly mailers offer - check out how you can pick the right mailer for your small business.
The Shipping Experts
Running a business comes with so many expenses and unknowns. We want to help you by providing your essential shipping goods at a low, wholesale cost.
The trusted shipping experts at Shop4Mailers offer high-quality, affordable supplies for your ecommerce business needs and the knowledge to help you make the right shipping decisions for your business.
From poly mailers to priority method, we offer up our expertise to help make your life easier. With so many aspects of the shipping process, we hope this breakdown of shipping considerations helps in your business decision-making.
Want to learn more about all things shipping? Visit us at Shop4Mailers.
