Free Shipping?

[dogmom327]

I'm seriously considering offering free shipping for orders over a certain amount. Can you ladies help me think through this?

If you've done this with your own website:

--How did you make the decision?
--What limitations (if any) did you put on it?
--How has it worked out for you?

[CawMama]

That's a hard one. What are your competitors doing?

[dogmom327]

They all charge for shipping but we are in a bit of an odd position because we are one stop shopping for what you would normally need to get from a number of different websites so we although we have competitors for each category, no one really does what we do.

[kokonutmama]

Just remember that offering free shipping is like offering a discount of the shipping amount. (sorry if that's too obvious) For small businesses like ours, it's a big chunk because we don't get the shipping discounts companies like, say, Amazon or Walmart do, and, of course, you still have to pay shipping. For me, offering free shipping on bamboofabricstore.com amounts to about 15% off my average order, which is a huge chunk of my profit margin. That business wouldn't survive free shipping for anything other than once-oft specials. On the other hand, if your margin allows it, it might work for you, particularly since most of your orders are probably fairly light weight. On the other hand (how many hands are we up to now?) paying for shipping does encourage some people to buy more at a time. Maybe a low flat rate shipping would work for you?

[dogmom327]

Originally Posted by kokonutmama

Just remember that offering free shipping is like offering a discount of the shipping amount. (sorry if that's too obvious) For small businesses like ours, it's a big chunk because we don't get the shipping discounts companies like, say, Amazon or Walmart do, and, of course, you still have to pay shipping. For me, offering free shipping on bamboofabricstore.com amounts to about 15% off my average order, which is a huge chunk of my profit margin. That business wouldn't survive free shipping for anything other than once-oft specials. On the other hand, if your margin allows it, it might work for you, particularly since most of your orders are probably fairly light weight. On the other hand (how many hands are we up to now?) paying for shipping does encourage some people to buy more at a time. Maybe a low flat rate shipping would work for you?

Excellent points! I like the flat rate shipping idea...

[CawMama]

Well stated Kokonut....I was thinking about the big chunk concept, but couldn't get the words out. For me, the more they spend, the heavier the box....and heavy boxes equal pretty high shipping costs.

[nursingmom]

Shipping is where I can make profit or lose money. I realized, on couple of the products, after paying shipping coming to me (20%), and going to my customers(20%), that I was actually losing money. So, I am always careful, whenever I order products, how much shipping I will be paying coming to me, and sending it to customers. I offer free shipping over $100. That's similar to giving about 15% discount. Once, I offered free shipping over $50 to draw more sales... but it really didn't happen. Just because the free shipping was lowered to $50, people didn't really buy more to get free shipping. And many of the orders, some people would order $95 or $99 worth of products and pay shipping. They just don't bother ordering extra few dollars to take advantage of free shipping.

[AlwaysByMySide]

I offer free shipping for orders over a very high dollar amount. It's less expensive for me to offer free shipping to those orders than it would be to offer a % off. I don't advertise it, mostly because people that DO order that much are ordering things for businesses of their own, and do it on a regular basis.

It's cheaper for me to offer a percentage off for promotions. As a consumer, it looks like a better deal - to me - to be getting a discount than it is to offer free shipping.