Business Commerce Tips For Businesses That Depend On Shipping

Having a business that depends on shipping means that the owner must constantly assess which methods do all of the following in the most effective way:

1. Keep Shipping Costs Low. In this era of free shipping, businesses must keep their costs low in order to compete with larger companies. This means that businesses must take care to use the following methods that may lower the cost of getting a product to their customers.Make sure a carrier’s fees and services, such as mode of transportation and timing match up with what you can utilize with your product. All major shipping services have small business specialists that can help you save up to 40 percent by aligning your needs with their service.
2. Establish Cost Charge-backs. Come up with written, consistent policies that determine when you will pay for shipping and when your customer will. Most businesses pay for standard-level services, while charging customers part of premium services. Once these are decided, make sure all your employees who deal with customers directly are aware of them.
3. Consolidate Shipments to Save Money.
   1. LTL shipments weighing from 150 to 20,000 pounds, called “less than truckload or LTL, shipments are able to be combined with other shipments from other businesses to come up with lower costs. A freight consolidation service can combine them to make up a full truckload.
   2. Postal consolidators with lighter weights for post office, FedEx, etc. shipments to lower costs.
   3. Shopping cart integrationfor low-volume e-commerce merchants.

4. Ship Items Safely.Some items can be shipped by using traditional U.S. Post Office services. Others, because your item contains possibly dangerous components, must be shipped by rail. Before choosing a shipping method based on price alone, you must identify which methods are open to shipping your product.
5. Ship Products Quickly. Make use of the fastest method of shipment to customers that make financial sense. Customers of all kinds place a high value on quick delivery.
6. Ship your Product’s Size and Weight Properly. Each shipping method and service has limitations on a product’s size and weight. Each have minimum and maximum sizes, so businesses must be certain that their products’ weights and measurements are accurate. An in house shipping scale will be invaluable to a business’s shipment planning methods. You can find industrial size shipping scales at North Texas Scales, or smaller scales at an office supply department store. By monitoring shipment weights, companies control costs by comparing packaging and how it affects shipping costs.
7. Ask for Customer Feedback. Analysis and feed back is a part of every efficient system. So for your shipping system, design a way for your customers to talk back to you about their experience shipping with you. Identify some key dimensions you want to know about the customer like are they new or returning, and what is the geographical location of this customer. This information will empower a business with a clear direction for future growth and development.
8. Get Optimized as a Quick Shipper As a business, you want to show up in search engines when potential customers turn to Google. To rank highly, have your customers use their social media to express their positive experiences using their company. Offer deals to those who link to your business, or mention your business specifically as a business that ships very quickly. These reviews and talk about your business will be noticed by the search algorithms of big search engines and you will show up when someone “Googles” for your product and fast shipping.