Shopping cart abandonment is that awful thing that happens when a visitor to your eCommerce website adds items to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. One of the biggest reasons this happens is because of the shipping costs – this could be the visitor didn’t expect to have to pay shipping or because the amount is higher than expected.
The good thing is that you can help reduce shopping cart abandonment by offering cheap international delivery services to your customers, either by offering flat rate shipping, minimum order shipping or – perhaps the best way – using a courier broker.
Offer Flat Rate Shipping
The first thing you can do is offer flat rate shipping. This means you offer the same shipping price regardless of how big or small the order is. You also want to make sure you let all your customers know that the shipping rate won’t change. This will encourage them to buy the items in their carts and maybe even shop with you more often, and it might also increase the chances of people buying a lot of items, because they don’t have to worry about a huge shipping charge.
Doing things this way is more appealing because many customers don’t like when businesses base the shipping rate on how big or small the order is.
Use a Courier Broker
Next, you could (and probably should) use a courier broker. This means you don’t have to worry about the fees for other shipping companies like FedEx or UPS – once your package is ready to ship, you just get into contact with the courier broker and they would match you to delivery companies or individuals that could ship and deliver your product for the shipping rate you specify.
Since this is a broker, you’ll find a good amount of companies that have affordable prices because they’re trying to get more business than the other companies. You might actually find a company that will give you a great deal and you’ll be able to work with them exclusively.
Set a Minimum Order Amount
Finally, you can set a minimum order amount. The way this would work is by offering free or reduced shipping once the customers reaches a certain amount. For example, you could do something like $7.99 for orders $45 and under, $5.99 for orders over $60, $3.99 for orders over $85, and free shipping for any amount over $85. This is just an idea, obviously, and you don’t have to make the amounts as high; just do what works best for your business and needs.
This method is appealing because customers know exactly what shipping rate they’ll get and they’ll be able to buy more items if they want a lower amount.
As you can see, these methods are pretty simple and easy to implement. Hopefully, by employing them, there will be fewer visitors just leaving their carts. Hopefully, they’ll purchase the items in their cart and keep coming back!