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if there's one thing that makes ecommerce well e-commerce it's shipping whether you're a small mom-and-pop e-com store or the behemoth itself amazon the shipping part of the equation is one of the most important pieces to have figured out hey everyone my name is dan i'm a co-founder of unbound merino an e-commerce business built right here on shopify when we launched back in 2016 the first major challenge we had was the complexity that surrounded the shipping of our products there are so many things to consider in order to have a sound shipping strategy from costing to pricing to product packaging to shipping carriers tracking and insurance so sit back grab your notepad because today i'm going to share some pointers and considerations that i wish i knew when we were in the early stages of launching our business and for more simple actionable tips to grow your online business make sure you subscribe to learn with shopify so you don't miss out on future releases [Music] the first thing you're going to want to consider with shipping it's quite obviously the shipping rates the customer is going to pay because the cost of shipping from a customer's perspective that can make or break the sale as with everything i always encourage entrepreneurs to get out of their own heads and into the customers think like them it's simple advice but it's important to consider their shopping experience from their perspective so imagine you're a customer on your own website and you love what you see you do some research you read the product page you bookmark the site and you keep coming back and you're finally ready to pull the trigger and make that purchase the price of shipping is the final thing the customer has to agree to before hitting that order button so what are you going to charge they're going to pass the whole price of shipping onto the customer so they pay the full amount themselves or are you going to have a flat rate like 5 or 10 when the shipping cost to you is maybe 7 10 or even thirty dollars or you can offer free shipping and eat the cost yourself or maybe you'll bake the shipping price into your product price make no mistake about it shipping rates are a strategic decision and you need to find the balance between keeping your sale profitable and the customer happy and in the world of amazon prime many customers have come to have incredibly high expectations around what they can expect as far as shipping goes and you can take bezos for that one before you really know how to make the decision about what your customer shipping rates are going to be you obviously have to figure out how much it costs you to ship and to understand this you need to know how your orders are going to be packaged how much it weighs the dimensions of the package and of course where it's going now because shopify has so many great apps to help with shipping this whole piece it's quite easy it just takes a bit of setup and you're off to the races what you're going to want to do is find a shipping app that works for you there are many and many of them are good but if you want a recommendation from us at unbound mourinho we use desktop shipper it's a good one the way desktop shipper and many of these other apps on the market work is you input the box or packaging dimensions into the back end just once and each product on your store will have its weight input into the system as well once you have all this information loaded in the back end the app you're using will calculate the shipping price automatically when you select the packaging you're using to ship it and combines it with the total weight of all the products that you put into that package simply said you don't need to weigh your package each time you're printing a shipping label it's totally automated you just select the box you're using and desktop shipper will print you a label from one of the many carriers via usps canada post fedex dhl or whatever they have great rates you can take advantage of print the label yourself using a label printer stick the label on the box you're good to go the thing to consider when it comes to shipping is in theory it seems more simple than it really is and it is simple but until you're actually shipping products it's hard to know where the bottlenecks will be and how much it's going to cost you to get a label on that box but there's only one way to start learning and that's to start shipping packages you'll find efficiency as you go but to help you get started we have compiled the list of shipping calculators with e-commerce shipping rates for some of the largest and most popular shipping couriers find those links in the description below this video so you can begin comparing pricing and options so once you're set up and able to print shipping labels it's time to revisit the shipping price question you know how much it cost to ship a package in your own city across the country and overseas but how much do you charge the customer this is a fun decision to make and an important one remember your customers will have high expectations of you when it comes to great shipping options at good prices and most of the time they don't want to pay at all hey it's part of the game and even though it can cost you a lot to ship a product your customer they likely won't empathize with you so what's your strategy going to be can you offer free shipping by baking the shipping price into the product price are your margins high or is your cost of ship cheap enough that you can just eat the shipping cost yourself or can you partially subsidize shipping so it's cheaper for the customer maybe the shipping is free if your customer spends above a certain threshold the reality is you want to offer shipping that is as fast and reliable as possible at as little a cost to your customers as possible before finalizing your pricing you should use a chart like this one to map out all the e-commerce costs associated with getting your product into your customers hands like i said before the only way to really start figuring it out is just to start shipping packages get your packing materials together set up a shipping station and just learn as you go what i wish we did when we launched is do trial runs before we started shipping our actual product if i could go back in time i'd create packages that are similar size and a similar weight to what our real packages would look like and print real labels to test the whole process i would have learned a lot about the steps and costs involved and would have been better set up to hit the ground running when it was time to ship real products we made countless mistakes by not charging enough for our product to help cover the expensive shipping costs not knowing how long packages take to ship overseas and not realizing how many great shipping apps were available on shopify shopify truly makes it easy but you gotta start to build your business's shipping practice but there's one other option that many very successful shopify stores use very effectively and that's using a third-party logistics service or a 3pl a 3pl is a place where you can store all of your inventory and when an order comes in they will handle the entire shipping process for you this sounds like a no-brainer and for many shopify merchants it is but there are pros and cons to letting another company take over the entire shipping fulfillment process for you let's start with some of the pros in some cases it could be even cheaper to use a 3pl if the package you're shipping won't have multiple items in it it likely would be cheaper to ship with the 3pl when you factor in the cost of having your own warehouse space staff to handle shipments and the resources needed to deal with the trial and error of building your own fulfillment operation but if you often ship packages with multiple items in the box like we do the pick and pack rates per order makes 3pls cost prohibitive by pick and pack rate i mean the fee the 3pl charges you for each item that they take off the shelf and put into the shipping box another pro to 3pls is depending on how it's set up you can have faster shipping many 3pls offer warehouses and many locations across the country they're located in or even across the world if you can manage splitting your inventory across different warehouses especially if you can split your inventory to warehouses across the globe you can do a lot to encourage sales in countries far away from your own and the best reason for using our 3pl in my opinion is how hands-off it is and how easy it is to scale keep your warehouses stocked and you can focus your energy on things other than fulfillment like getting more sales to many people it's hard to justify not using a 3pl but to me personally i can justify it for my business which brings me to the cons of using a 3pl which like i said the big one being in some cases it costs you more money our average order has three or more items in a box given that you need to pay for each item that's picked and packed into an order the shipping cost in our case is too high for 3pls to make any sense but on top of that we have control over the customer experience from a shipping standpoint we can and often do include notes and gifts in our packages for our more loyal customers we have more flexibility and control over the packaging experience and presenting our products in a more branded and premium way many of our customers notice and appreciate the attention we give to packaging and creating a more personalized experience for them and for those reasons we choose to do our own shipping it's also just easier to start by shipping your own products but that's my opinion we all know the shipping experience is make or break for us as customers which should make its importance as clear as data us as shopify merchants fortunately the tools available to us on shopify take a lot of the heavy lifting off the table so we can focus on our shipping strategy and customer experience you can really streamline and save with shopify shipping you can save up to 88 percent on discounted ups dhl and usps shipping rates it really simplifies your day-to-day you can fulfill orders from the same place in which you manage products customers and inventory you could even track packages from shopify no matter which carrier you're using ultimately with shopify you can create the shipping setup that works best for you if you want to try using shopify to get your orders out the door they offer a free 14-day trial simply click right here or on the link in the description below to get started i hope this was helpful for you as you start your journey into entrepreneurship one of the things we focus on most at learn with shopify is giving you the knowledge you need to succeed in business so if you want a deeper dive into any part of the tips i shared throughout this video be sure to comment your questions below and for more simple actionable tips to grow your online business make sure you subscribe to learn with shopify so you don't miss out on future releases thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you