We recently did a blog all about how to improve your shipping by making it more brandable. This article focuses on the common mistakes we’ve seen that can sap the profit from your department. Staying away from these common mistakes can help your department keep more profit and drive up sales!
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Staying Loyal To A Shipping Carrier
It is easy to become complacent about negotiating a better discount with your carrier or becoming overly dependent on just one carrier and forgetting to shop rates. We recommend dealers reach out to both UPS and FedEx at least once a year to renegotiate their discounted rate. Keep in mind, the deeper discount you can offer your customers, will result in more orders being placed on the web store.
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Integrate Your Carrier Rate
RevolutionParts actually has the ability to integrate your account to your web store in order to quote customers based on your unique rate. You can still add padding to that amount shown to customers to cover packaging and handling, but this will reduce the overall rate and thereby encourage more customers to order from your web store over other more expensive options.
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Make Sure Padding Is Comparable
Many dealers make the mistake of not adding padding to their quotes or adding too much padding and therefore driving customers away due to over priced shipping options. Common pad amount for Ground shipments is 10%, 2Day is 15% and Overnight is 20%. If your adding more padding to your quotes, then you either better have an exceptionally low negotiated rate with your carrier or you should consider scaling back in order to become more competitive in the marketplace.
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In-House Shipping Label Mistakes
When you get an order on your web store, the first thing you want to do is make sure the weights and dimensions of the products were correct in the system and the customer got properly quoted. If the part ordered was missing the weights and dimensions you need to input that information and recalculate based on those figures. This will allow your team the opportunity to let the customer know the shipping was off and they have the option of canceling their order or paying the difference.
Once the weights and dimensions have been confirmed, you will want to make sure when you are printing the label in-house that you ROUND UP. For example, if a part is 12.4 inches you will want to input 13 inches when setting up your label. This will avoid overage fees accruing on your account throughout the month since FedEx and UPS both round up. The web store is automatically setup to do that, so if you are using a shipping manager then you will not need to be concerned with this step since it is done for you.
Now you are aware of some of the most common shipping pitfalls. Be on the lookout for our next post about shipping tips coming in July. If you haven’t already, check out the May post about how to improve your shipping by making it more brandable here.
