As an ecommerce business leader, you know that shipping affects your bottom line because the ecommerce industry has transformed the global marketplace and consumer expectations. Customer demands have increased; especially when it comes to the shipping and delivery part of online shopping. Now, your business needs to offer multiple shipping options, free shipping, free returns, or on-time product delivery just to compete with other brands or big corporations such as Amazon.
Unfortunately, the shipping process comes with a unique set of challenges that can negatively impact your business. It’s essential for you to be able to identify and solve your own unique parcel shipping challenges to ensure customer satisfaction. After all, you want loyal customers that return to shop from your online store time and time again. Although your delivery challenges may differ from other ecommerce businesses, these are some of the more common shipping difficulties you might face:
Unreliable Shipping Carriers
The delivery partner you choose will determine whether you face shipping challenges or not. So if you’ve been dealing with difficulties when it comes to shipping, it may be time to identify whether your shipping carrier is the problem. Chances are, you can solve all your shipping issues simply by selecting a more suitable delivery partner.
Working with only one shipping carrier can cause problems such as longer delivery times due to transit delays. You need a backup shipping carrier or better yet, a network of different delivery companies. However, building your own network of reliable shipping carriers can be tough. You need a partner who can do all the heavy lifting for you.
X Delivery™ is a shipping partner you can trust that focuses on optimizing the delivery process. By partnering with X Delivery, you can rest assured that your business is fully supported. X Delivery will automatically select the best first, middle, and final mile routing options from our extensive list of high-performance delivery partners based on your individual needs.
High Shipping Costs
Another challenge you’re likely to face in terms of delivery is high shipping costs. Unfortunately, if you can’t find a way to keep these costs down, they get passed on to your customers, which will affect sales. The problem is that traditional logistics companies usually make use of zone pricing. Zone pricing means that the delivery rate is based on how many geographic regions (or zones) the parcel passes through from the starting point (warehouse) to the end destination (customer). The more zones it crosses, the higher the rate.
This way of determining shipping costs is inefficient as it will either negatively affect your customer experience by taking away free shipping options or it will cause expense uncertainties for you. With this pricing model, there will be different shipping rates for each of your customers depending on where they are located in relation to your supplier warehouse. Alternatively, it will cause logistics-related expense uncertainties for you as the business owner if you choose to offer standard shipping rates or even free shipping options. Either way, it has an effect on delivery costs and will impact your sales or overall profits.
X Delivery helps you to solve this challenge by offering zoneless pricing. By partnering with X Delivery, you will pay a flat rate based purely on weight regardless of where the package is being shipped. Flat rate shipping helps you to better predict your logistics expenses but it also makes it easier for you to offer your customers more options when it comes to delivery. Zoneless pricing makes it much easier for you to offer convenient shipping options for your customers, which will ensure that they follow through on their purchases.
Transit Delays
We live in an era of “instant gratification” which means that your customers are accustomed to fast delivery times. As an ecommerce store, you’re expected to race around the clock to ensure customers get their orders in the shortest possible time.
If you’re partnered with only one shipping carrier, you’re likely used to your deliveries being delayed because you don’t have another partner to fall back on. These transit delays can increase the cost of shipping but it mostly impacts the customer experience. Most shipping carriers experience unexpected delays in transit from time to time. As a result, they can’t guarantee the speedy delivery times your customers are used to when shopping online.
However, by partnering with X Delivery, you have automatic access to a wide selection of shipping carriers. That’s right, a whole network of reliable shipping carriers, right at your fingertips. X Delivery will instantly select the best available shipping carrier from their network and can change shipping carriers as needed for the first, middle, and last mile of the delivery.
The X Delivery parcel shipping software uses shipping API to automate all aspects of the shipping, fulfillment, and delivery process which ensures that transit delays are avoided. Subsequently, your customers will receive their orders within 2 to 3 days.
Address Shipping Challenges with X Delivery
Since every ecommerce brand has its own shipping challenges and unique needs, it’s essential to learn how to identify them. Although there are certain common delivery challenges faced by most ecommerce businesses, your situation may be different. Delivery issues are something that everyone who sells online faces at some point or another, but it doesn’t need to sink your business.
By carefully considering who you select as a shipping carrier, you can avoid some of the most common pitfalls as well as those unique to your business. Therefore, it’s important to work with a shipping partner that understands the complexities of your business. X Delivery is a partner you can trust to reimagine delivery and address all your logistics problems. Sign up today to start shipping with X Delivery.