As I speak to our customers I see that small businesses are fighting a difficult battle against the larger online stores such as Amazon. I have also seen that one of the key advantages that Amazon offer is Free Shipping.
There have been some recent studies that show quite astonishing results:
Nearly 50% of online orders include free shipping.
61% of people are very likely to cancel their order if they do not get free shipping.
Image and stats from comscore.com
Buying online is always supposed to be cheaper than going to a store, however when I buy from a store I never pay shipping, nor do I have to wait to get the item. It is these two concepts that need to be improved in order to make an online store successful. Short delivery periods and free shipping. That is why Amazon Prime is excellent. People pay a low annual fee and get free first class delivery on almost all products.
Small online retailers need to combat this, you can’t just sit back and allow your customers to go to Amazon. At the same time couriers are not cheap, and with the rising cost of fuel this isn’t likely to change much. What can you do?
The most popular option is to offer Free Shipping on orders over a certain value, and within a specific weight or volume. Basically you have to absorb the cost of shipping, but the increase in orders should be able to outweigh that.
It is worth a try. If you are using one of our Piston Commerce systems it is an easy option to turn on, give it a month and see the difference.
