how you can include 2-day shipping for your customers
TRANSCRIPT
O f f e r 2 - d a y s h i p p i n gTO YOUR CUSTOMERS
A S T E P - B Y - S T E P G U I D E
TWO-DAY SHIPPING WILL GIVEYOUR BUSINESS A HUGE
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.
You maintaincustomer loyalty.
People will be more inclined to buyfrom you because of fast delivery.
This can be done for your businessin 4 steps.
Step 1:Weigh your options
You can work with Amazon FBA
They’ll tell you where to send products sothey can offer 2-day shipping to their
Prime customers.
This works great if you use Amazon services.
Or you can try to replicate FBA. This is whereit gets tricky.
Step 2:Ask yourself these questions before you DIY.
What types of customers are most sensitive to2-day shipping?
Where do your customers live?Figure out your top cities.
What types of orders do you want to offer it?(e.g. orders over $35, orders going to major
cities, etc.)
What are your top order profiles? Forexample, in our analysis of our
customers...
...we found the top 5 profiles account for 70%+ ofall orders. Query your orders by SKU & quantity.
Figure out the top SKU/Quantity mixes.
What percent margin do you wantshipping to account for? Or are you
willing to lose money on some orders tooffer 2-day shipping to every customer?
Look at your volume over the courseof the year and show an estimate of
growth going forward.
Once you’ve answered thosequestions, think about how you
want to store inventory.
Step 3:Negotiate with your vendors
Tell them you what you expect to growinto and the time frame for it.
Ask your carriers about zone-skipping foryour top cities.
So you can start shipping those volumesseparately and get even better pricing.
Step 4:Expand your network to lower
costs
Talk to warehouses near yourtop 3 cities.
Have your main facility pre-pack the top 3–5order profiles.
Send them to warehouses near thosecities to label and ship to your
customers.
Most warehouses will be okay. There’slittle work and all they’re doing is label +
ship.
Make sure the boxes are clearly marked. You canget branded packaging from places like Lumi.
You know what to do now :)
If you have questions, ask uson Twitter! @ShotputInc