It’s amazing to think that Holiday Season is just around the corner! From Black Friday to the Christmas Rush – rest assured that UPS shipping has your back.
We at Stamps.com are happy to share that UPS saves the Holidays! With incredible low rates and no Peak Surcharges, let UPS be Santa’s (not so little) helper that will save you lots on your shipping to your customers. Compare UPS to other carriers and you will be surprised on how much UPS can save you this holiday season.
As a commitment to small business owners, UPS will not apply Peak Surcharge to merchants that opened their account on Stamps.com.
Online retailers can take advantage of these great UPS rate discounts:
Up to 78% off on UPS® Ground shipments
Up to 73% for UPS 2nd Day Air® service
Up to 73% for UPS Next Day Air® service
Up to 82% off on International services
Rates that include Fuel Surcharge and Residential Surcharge for all services and Delivery Area Surcharge for Domestic Services.*
Stamps.com and UPS wish you a happy holiday season! No rate increase? No Peak Surcharge? No Brainer! Trust UPS for your Peak shipping!
How to Add UPS Shipping to Your Stamps.com Account Adding UPS Shipping to your Stamps.com account couldn’t be easier. Go to “Settings” in your Stamps.com account, select “Add a Carrier” and select “UPS.” Once you activate your account, you’ll be ready to ship and take advantage of all the benefits of UPS through Stamps.com.
*Discounts off UPS® Daily Rates. Rates are limited to shipping from the U.S. only. Rates and any applicable discounts are subject to change at any time without notice.
It’s that time of the year! Your sales are hot and the customers crave what you offer. From Black Friday to Christmas Day, Stamps.com and UPS are here to make sure your packages get delivered safely and efficiently, all while helping your bottom line! What can you do to ensure your packages are delivered without any surprise surcharges?
Erase prior history! Make sure your shipments don’t get lost in the mix of former packaging. A) Don’t re-cycle older packages unable to withstand another shipment. Remove any and all former labels, including former tracking, hazardous materials, or any other labels.
B) If your boxes seem weak or overly-used, please recycle. Stable, corrugated cardboard is the way to go!
Use appropriate packaging – Bulk up to break out! A) Whether you’re shipping coffee mugs or data boards, it’s important you make sure the package and padding match your product. Wrap items individually and surround them with bubble sheeting and recyclable or foam loose-fill materials. Content should not directly touch the inside of the shipping box.
B) Use pressure-sensitive plastic or nylon reinforced tape that’s at least 2 in./5.08 cm wide.
Measure your package accurately – Santa’s in the details! A) From regular shipments to one-offs, be diligent in making sure your entered package dimensions accurately reflect the actual package and not just the item(s) being shipped. Always be sure to measure and accurately enter the length, width, and height of the packages you ship.
B) To avoid Incorrect Weight shipping charge corrections, use any standard scale and round up any fraction of a pound to the next full pound when entering the package weight in your shipping system.
C) If your package is oddly shaped, please consider taking a photo of the measurements for extra security.
There are additional considerations to keep in mind when shipping your package:
Dimensional Weight – Occasionally the actual weight of your package may not be the billable weight. Dimensional weight reflects package density, which is the amount of space a package occupies in relation to its actual weight. The greater of the two is the billable weight and should be used to calculate the rate. Dimensional weight may apply to all UPS domestic and international package services.
UPS Dimensional Weight = (L x W x H) ÷ 166
Note: For Stamps.com users, if a UPS® Ground and/or UPS 3Day Select® package is under 1 cubic foot, the dimensional weight will not apply. The actual weight of the package will be considered as the billable weight.
Additional Handling – Non-standard packages require extra care when moving through UPS Operations and are subject to additional surcharges. Such examples include, but are not limited to:
Any article that is not fully encased in a corrugated cardboard shipping container
Any package with an outer shipping container covered in shrink wrap or stretch wrap
Cylindrical tubes/packages
Packages bound by metal/plastic/cloth
Packages < 1 inches in a single dimension
Packages with longest side exceeding 48 inches or its second-longest side exceeding 30 inches
Large Package – Large packages require special care and are subject to additional surcharges, when the package meets the below. An Additional Handling Charge will not be assessed when a Large Package Surcharge is applied.
Packages can be up to 90 pounds
Packages can be up to 130 inches in length and girth [(2 x width) + (2 x height)] combined
Packages can be up to 96 inches in length
Over Maximum Size – Over Max shipments are packages that are not compatible with the UPS system and should be shipped via another shipping method. Make sure that your packages follow the guidelines below to avoid having a shipment returned as well as an additional surcharge applied:
Packages can be up to 150 pounds
Packages can be up to 165 inches in length and girth [(2 x width) + (2 x height)] combined
Packages can be up to 108 inches in length
Don’t forget that only UPS offers deeply discounted rates AND no Peak Surcharges! On top of deeply discounted rates of up to 76%, UPS will not apply Peak Surcharges, as a commitment to sellers on Stamps.com. Switch and Save today!
Take advantage of discounts of up to 78% off on UPS® Ground shipments, up to 73% for UPS 2nd Day Air® service, up to 65% for UPS Next Day Air® service and up to 82% off on International services, with rates that include Fuel Surcharge and Residential Surcharge for all services and Delivery Area Surcharge for Domestic Services.*
How to Add UPS Shipping to Your Stamps.com Account Adding UPS Shipping to your Stamps.com account couldn’t be easier. Go to “Settings” in your Stamps.com account, select “Add a Carrier” and select “UPS.” Once you activate your account, you’ll be ready to ship and take advantage of all the benefits of UPS through Stamps.com.
*Discounts off UPS® Daily Rates. Rates are limited to shipping from the U.S. only. Rates and any applicable discounts are subject to change at any time without notice.
Online sales are skyrocketing. In the first quarter of 2021, ecommerce sales increased by 39.1% from the same period in 2020. If you run an ecommerce business, there is a vast market where you can get significant revenue.
However, while your small business website has high traffic and your customers fill their carts with products, your sales might still be lower than expected. The reason? High cart and checkout abandonment rates.
This guide will explain how you can optimize your ecommerce checkout flow to guide customers from filling their cart to completing a purchase. You will learn what a typical checkout flow looks like, the difference between cart and checkout abandonment, and discover seven ways to improve your website’s checkout flow.
What is a typical checkout flow?
The ecommerce checkout flow consists of the steps your customers take to browse for products and make a purchase. The checkout flow transforms website visitors into buyers. It typically has seven steps:
The ecommerce business checkout flow serves two main purposes:
Allow customers to pay for products
Gather information about the customer, such as their name and email address.
You’ll need customer information for future promotions. Gathering customer data also allows you to make future purchases more convenient for the customer.
Checkout abandonment vs. cart abandonment: what’s the difference?
We’ve outlined the typical checkout flow, but where do customers abandon their cart or abandon the checkout in this process? And what is the difference between checkout abandonment and cart abandonment?
The difference between checkout abandonment and cart abandonment lies in when the user abandons the purchase.
Image Created By Writer
Cart abandonment occurs when a customer adds products to their cart and leaves the site without proceeding to payment. According to Statista, customers abandoned an average of 88.05% of online carts in 2020. The typical reasons for cart abandonment include a lack of genuine interest in products or unstable websites.
In contrast, checkout abandonment occurs after the customer enters their payment details and before making the payment. Customers abandon the checkout process because of high shipping costs or additional fees, complicated processes, or forced account creation.
Luckily, whether you’re already running an online shop or plan on starting an online business, there are many ways you can optimize your checkout flow to reduce rates of cart and checkout abandonment and boost your sales.
7 ways to make your checkout flow more efficient
The first part of this guide sets the context. Now we get to the meaty part of the guide. What follows are seven strategies you can implement to make your checkout flow more efficient.
#1 Be upfront about extra costs
Extra costs at checkout, such as shipping, tax, and fees, is the top reason for checkout abandonment. There is nothing worse than being shocked by extra costs when they try to check out a purchase for customers.
Removing additional fees at the time of checkout doesn’t mean you need to shoulder the costs of shipping and taxes. However, you need to be transparent about costs before the checkout process begins. When customers view their cart, your site should display all the added fees, so there are no surprises at the end of the process.
Providing a way for customers to control these costs will help keep cart abandonment rates low. You could offer multiple shipping options such as USPS Priority Mail, increase your listed product prices upfront to account for shipping and handling, or waive shipping costs for orders over a certain amount.
#2 Optimize loading speed
If you want to buy a product, but the website keeps crashing or won’t load, there’s a good chance you won’t go ahead with the purchase. In addition, poor website performance can also damage your visitors’ trust in your business.
The checkout flow has many steps and different pages, so all the pages in the checkout process should load quickly. You can use Google Pagespeed Insights or other free services to check your website’s load speed.
If your pages consistently take too long to load, it might be time to find the reason. If widgets, ads, or large images and video files slow your website speed, you may need to remove these. Otherwise, it might be time to upgrade your hosting or ecommerce platform provider.
#3 Don’t force your customers into creating an account
Many ecommerce businesses encourage users to create an account as it can facilitate repeat purchases and lets the retailer send marketing emails to the user. However, some customers would rather abandon their cart or checkout process than provide their email address as they feel it’s an unnecessary step.
Giving your customers the option to check out as a guest will help improve conversion rates. You may also use an API to allow customers to register using their social media or Google account.
#4 Make the purchase sequence as simple as possible
A complicated and confusing checkout flow can be a killer for your conversion rates. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways you can streamline the purchase sequence to make checking out easy and fast for your customers. These include:
Offer multiple payment options: Letting your customers pay with a digital wallet such as Apple Pay, PayPal, or Klarna will make checking out more convenient.
Create a mobile app: More and more ecommerce businesses have dedicated mobile apps to allow customers to make purchases and access after-sales support.
Display cart contents in real-time: When a customer views their cart, they want to see thumbnail images, size and color selection, price and quantity clearly.
By making the purchase sequence clear and easy to follow, you make the overall experience more pleasant for the customer, which helps reduce checkout abandonment.
#5 Add trust badges to your checkout page
When checking out, ensuring that your website appears trustworthy to customers is essential to getting your customers to complete their transactions. After all, they are entering their payment details and are about to give you their hard-earned money. Online shoppers are increasingly wary of websites that could be stealing their data or scamming them.
Trust badges are a great way to show customers that you are a legitimate business. Some trust badges to add to your website include:
Money-back and returns guarantee: Adding badges to the checkout pages that remind customers you offer free returns and/or a money-back guarantee is a great way to reassure them while making their purchase.
Free shipping: A free shipping badge displayed on your website and at each stage of the checkout flow reassures customers that shipping will be free and they won’t encounter any surprises at checkout.
Accepted payments: This badge shows your customers the payment method your site accepts, such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, or American Express.
Third-party endorsements: Third-party endorsement badges show that your business is credible. The Better Business Bureau Accredited Business and Google Customer Review badges are both trustworthy badges to add to your ecommerce website.
Trust badges are a great way to reassure your customers that your ecommerce business is legitimate, trustworthy, and flexible in terms of payment methods, shipping, and returns.
#6 Send cart and checkout abandonment emails
Even if you’ve made your checkout flow simple and straightforward, a few are still bound to fall through the cracks. Cart and checkout abandonment emails can boost conversion by encouraging customers to complete their purchases.
When customers abandon their cart or checkout, they tend to forget it altogether. However, sending a checkout abandonment email can help your business save abandoned transactions. One report found that 50% of users who clicked on cart abandonment emails pushed through with the purchase, proving that abandonment does not need to be a dead end.
To create that FOMO, you can provide a discount for a limited time. You can use an email countdown timer to add that extra bit of pressure to make them complete a purchase.
#7 Add an auto-save feature to your shopping cart
Sometimes customers need time to decide whether or not to buy a product. If they leave an item in their cart, leave your site, and return to see an empty cart, they probably won’t be inclined towards repeating their browsing experience.
Adding an auto-save feature to your online shopping cart means when customers return to your site, their cart will still have all their chosen products in it. An auto-save feature makes it easy and convenient for customers to continue with their purchases.
Removing additional fees at the time of checkout doesn’t mean you need to shoulder the costs of shipping and taxes. However, you need to be transparent about costs before the checkout process begins. When customers view their cart, your site should display all the added fees, so there are no surprises at the end of the process.
Providing a way for customers to control these costs will help keep cart abandonment rates low. You could offer multiple shipping options such as USPS Priority Mail, increase your listed product prices upfront to account for shipping and handling, or waive shipping costs for orders over a certain amount.
Wrapping Up
When you run an ecommerce business, it’s easy to focus your efforts on driving website traffic and optimizing your website’s appearance and usability. However, you should not forget to build an effective checkout flow to encourage your customers to complete their purchases.
The methods we’ve discussed in this article aim to improve your process flow by removing barriers to smooth checkout and reducing cart and checkout abandonments. While they may seem different, they all seek to make the process simple and convenient for your customers. When you accomplish this goal, you can expect an increase in orders and revenue.
Bio
Jimmy Rodriguez is the COO of Shift4Shop, a completely free, enterprise-grade ecommerce solution. He’s dedicated to helping internet retailers succeed online by developing digital marketing strategies and optimized shopping experiences that drive conversions and improve business performance
Need it there tomorrow? Enjoy peace of mind and save up to 65% off with UPS Next Day Air® Shipping.
The old saying, ‘time is money’ still holds true in the pandemic. In a time when so much is uncertain, take the guesswork out of your professional shipments. Need to get an important document delivered overnight? Does your business require time-sensitive deliveries? Rest assured with UPS Next Day Air® service that the documents that keep your professional organization running smoothly will arrive there in time.
Don’t miss a deadline with the speed and reliability available to you with UPS Next Day Air® service. Rest easy knowing that your urgent documents will make it there safely, overnight. Whether you work in law, banking, medical, or insurance – every industry experiences time crunches. Alleviate stress, and rely on UPS Next Day Air® delivery to get your items there in time.
UPS Next Day Air® service stands out when compared to competitors. The United States Postal Service does not have a comparable service. The United States Postal Service offers Priority Mail Express® service which has an overnight to 2-Day delivery time. And FedEx Priority Overnight® serves fewer businesses and zip codes than UPS Next Day Air®*. Throughout this pandemic, when everyone has been adjusting to new challenges, UPS has gone above and beyond to get your package where it needs to be, when it needs to be there.
Try UPS Next Day Air® to fulfill your professional shipping needs today!
How to Add UPS Shipping to Your Stamps.com Account Adding UPS Shipping to your Stamps.com account couldn’t be easier. Go to “Settings” in your Stamps.com account, select “Add a Carrier” and select “UPS.” Once you activate your account, you’ll be ready to ship and take advantage of all the benefits of UPS through Stamps.com.
If you want your business to scale, you need to stay with the times. Nowadays, consumers are highly aware of the market and do their research on a brand before making a purchase. Thus, it’s important to be aware of the current online retailer trends to stay on top. One such common trend in today’s e-commerce competitive marketplace is dynamic pricing. Strategically adjusting the price of your product to match the current demands is a sure way to gain customers’ attention and make them choose you for their business.
So how does it work? Dynamic pricing curates prices for products by gathering large amounts of data regarding customer demand, competitors, and market conditions. So the prices are always changing depending on the market and time. This is especially beneficial for businesses related to traveling, e-commerce, transportation, etc.
But is it beneficial for consumers? Are there any disadvantages associated with it? And how to implement it? We are going to answer this and much more ahead, so keep on reading.
Dynamic Pricing Strategies
Dynamic pricing is available in multiple forms which you can implement depending on your business and product type:
1. Time-Based Pricing
In the time-based pricing strategy, businesses can increase or lower the price of products based on their inventory available in their store or warehouse, date of release, and competitor price. Businesses can also use specific hours of a day to increase their sales, such as “happy hours” in a bar or offer same-day delivery with slightly higher prices.
2. Market-Based Pricing
Fluctuation in the market is a common thing and recent times have made us more aware of this than ever. Businesses would need to lower their prices if the demand decreases and increase the prices when demand is high.
3. Segmented Pricing
Segmented pricing refers to setting different prices for the same product. This is done by segmenting the buyer into categories, such as prices that could be higher or lower based on location, delivery time, membership, high-value customers, and much more. You can also set prices for the services provided, such as faster delivery and quality. Through segmented pricing, everyone can afford your product on their terms.
4. Penetration Pricing
Penetration pricing is perfect for new businesses who want to get noticed immediately. This strategy involves initially pricing the products and services at prices lower than those provided by the competitors. This results in increased visibility which helps startups gain the traffic they desire.
5. Peak Pricing
Peak pricing is implemented when the demand is high and the competition is low. It is mostly employed during peak hours or seasonal sales where the products are priced dynamically to result in more sales. For example, during the holiday season, travelers buying airplane tickets normally see much higher prices than in non-seasonal time.
There are many dynamic pricing plugins available that can set up different pricing strategies and analyze results to see which works best for your business.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing can easily go sideways if not implemented property and thus along with advantages, it has few disadvantages as well. Let’s see if the pros outweigh the cons in this matter.
Advantages
1. Increased Profit
By implementing dynamic pricing on your online store, you can benefit from increased sales and revenue. How? Because the machine collecting data to create a specific algorithm for your business makes sure your pricing is right. For example, if your competitor is selling the product for $3 and you sell them for $1. The dynamic pricing strategy will price your product at $2, which will be profitable for your business and also improve customer satisfaction as they believe they are getting a better deal from you.
2. Knowing Your Competitors
Perfectly implementing a dynamic pricing strategy requires you to know your competitors. It is important to know what your successors have been doing. What are their prices? How do they price their products? When and how do they lower or increase prices? And much more. Once you have a clear view of your competitors, you can improve and implement these strategies seamlessly in your store.
3. Customer Insight
The better you know your customers, the easier it will be to sell to them. Dynamic pricing provides you insight into your customer behavior, their shopping hours, their willingness to pay a price, their interests, and their demands. This helps you provide an optimum shopping experience to your customers and result in increased sales.
Disadvantages
1. Increase in Competition
Dynamic pricing can easily get out of hand and start a price war. Now, what’s a price war? If a single business lowers its price to gain customers, similarly another business does the same and soon all other competitors follow which leads to incredibly reduced prices which are gaining no profit for the businesses.
2. Distrust in Customers
These price wars lead to distrust in customers as well. How? If your loyal customers find out that someone else got the same product at half the price from another vendor, they will feel cheated. And no matter how loyal a customer is, a further reduced price is sure to get them converted to another business.
To avoid these errors, make sure to have a perfect dynamic strategy in place and stay true to it because overdoing dynamic pricing could result in loss.
How to Implement Dynamic Pricing on your WooCommerce Store
There are many ways you can implement and integrate dynamic pricing into your online store. Setting up dynamic pricing cannot be done overnight. It is a long and laborious process of easing into the market, getting the customers, and increasing profit keeping the demand in view. Below we have mentioned a few strategies that you can implement on your site to properly enable dynamic pricing.
1. Initial Pricing
As mentioned above, this pricing strategy is employed by new business owners, who introduce products at prices that are considerably lesser than the competitor. How? Because they take little profit at the beginning to gain customers and then once a strong client list has been established, the prices are gradually increased.
2. Introduce Bundle Pricing
Another effective way to introduce dynamic pricing is by creating bundles. This is great for businesses that deal with clothes, food, sports equipment, etc. For example, an online store that deals with computers and their accessories, can bundle up a complete computer system and sell it for a slightly discounted price. This would help in increasing sales as your customers think they are getting a good offer and also increase the average order value.
3. Offer Discounts and Coupons
We all know customers love a good deal. Coupons and discounts are great for attracting the audience’s attention, but too much use of this dynamic pricing strategy could result in less profit, the difficulty of increasing the prices later on, and also makes your product seem cheap. Thus, it is recommended to occasionally and strategically place discounts depending on the need.
Final Thoughts on Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing can be an ideal solution for the competitive e-commerce market, but it can also create customer mistrust in your brand if misused. Thus, it is important to devise a proper strategy and work accordingly. Overdoing anything will have its consequences, such as running year-long discounts will give your customers the impression that your products are cheap or they won’t purchase when you increase the price. It is a continuous ongoing process and you need to improve and implement it on the way based on the supply and demand.
Stamps.com Connects Directly to WooCommerce!
Stamps.com’s direct integration with WooCommerce allows online retailers to easily import, manage, and ship your e-commerce orders. Benefits include:
Import order data directly into Stamps.com from WooCommerce
Print USPS and UPS shipping labels in one step
Automatically post back order and tracking info to your store
Make your WooCommerce shipping easier today by connecting your store to Stamps.com!
Author’s Bio
Xaviera Khalid is the content writer at WooKeeper.com. She is an avid reader and uses her creativity to write interesting articles about WooCommerce and its related topics. She focuses on SEO-optimized content and provides factual writing.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
The content on this blog is "as is" and carries no warranties. Stamps.com does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy, reliability, completeness, usefulness, or quality of any content on the blogs, regardless of who originates that content.
