Defining your shipping strategy

You can switch on one or several options. The only question to settle is what kind of business you run.

This is the most common one. Your customers order, you ship by post or by carrier. You choose the countries and regions you serve, and you attach to each one a price matching your shipping costs. In your settings it goes by the name Shipping by carrier.

It's the option that opens the widest audience, since GoodBarber lets you sell anywhere in the world.

It's aimed at neighborhood businesses, physical shops putting their catalog online, and food service.

It's an extension, as is the Click & Collect that follows: you add it from the store, where its listing shows the price that applies to your app.

The principle is that of postal shipping, but delivery is almost instant: you define a geographic zone and you deliver quickly to the customers inside it. That zone is drawn in two ways, by postcodes or by radius around your shop. The radius is quick, postcodes let you rule out a town or a neighborhood you don't serve. A Paris florist delivers bouquets the same day, a New York sushi shop delivers to the office. You can add time slots to smooth out your orders.

Fast delivery is still rarely offered outside food service, while consumers put up with waiting less and less. So it's ground where you get ahead easily.

Same principle as local delivery, except that the customer comes to pick their order up from you. Your delivery costs drop to zero.

If you have a physical shop, this option has nothing but advantages, and they go beyond the postage saved.

Your customers save time and money. They prepare their order in the app and drop by to collect it. They choose their products at leisure online, and visit your shop when they pick up.

You multiply impulse purchases. That's the real hidden benefit of Click & Collect: it brings people back into your shop. Once they're there, your customers look at what you have, and often add to their order what they'd forgotten.

You cut your shipping costs. Labor and packaging add up fast. In-store pickup removes them.

You limit returns. Handling a return is expensive: transport back, repackaging, lost revenue. A customer collecting their order in person inspects the product immediately and exchanges it if necessary, which avoids the return.

You build loyalty. The Click & Collect extension offers a simple, frictionless journey: order online, walk away with the product straight away. Improving that journey is a loyalty strategy in its own right.

Whether you've gone for local or postal delivery, you define the charges that apply to orders. Two bases of calculation are possible, and the right choice depends on what you sell.

You set your charges according to the amount. For example 7 euros on any order, then free above 150 euros. It's the most widespread mode in e-commerce.

The principle is the same, but it rests on total weight, so on what shipping actually costs you. The logic is reversed: free or cheap delivery up to a certain weight, then more expensive beyond. A furniture shop will give delivery free under 10 kg and charge 30 euros above, with the order value playing no part.

In other words: pricing by value serves to grow the basket, pricing by weight serves to protect your margin. Choose according to which of the two threatens you most.

Shipping costs weigh on your margins, and slower delivery modes cut them considerably. Many merchants dismiss this route, afraid of damaging the purchase experience.

That's a reflex worth questioning: a significant share of consumers accept waiting longer in exchange for reduced postage. Nothing forces you to choose, in any case, since you can offer several options in the same zone, with different times and prices.

Keep this principle in mind: the rarer or bulkier your product, the more your customers accept waiting.

Your shipping strategy can raise your average basket. Delivery becomes free above a certain amount, which encourages people to add an item.

If your items average 80 euros, you can set delivery at 5 euros and give it free from 120 euros of purchases.

Watch the balance: disproportionate charges or a threshold that's too high compared with your average basket lose you credibility instead of gaining you margin.

Delivery is announced as free, but it's already built into the selling price.

It's the riskiest of the strategies, since it raises your displayed price and can place you in a higher bracket than your competitors.

It stands up on two types of product: those whose price is already high, where postage weighs little against the value, and exclusive products, hard to compare because there's little competition.

Blanket free delivery isn't the most profitable solution. Receiving an order with no charge is felt as a privilege: you might as well use it as one.

Two ways of attaching conditions:

• One-off free delivery, tied to a communication operation: a season, the sales, your shop's anniversary. The benefit is temporary, so it triggers action.
• Free delivery for your loyal customers, as a reward for those who have already ordered from you.

This is no longer about making free delivery pay, it's about getting your customers to choose a fast, and therefore paid, option.

How much your customers accept paying to be delivered faster depends heavily on the product: what people accept for a garment worn tomorrow bears no relation to what they accept for a piece of furniture. Test on your own catalog rather than transposing a price seen elsewhere.

GoodBarber lets you sell anywhere, and your transport costs vary with the customer's location. So you define the geographic zones you serve, and the charges attached to each.

Within the same zone, you can create several rates. At checkout, your customer chooses the one that suits them. Rates are calculated at that moment, from the rules you defined.

For example, two rates coexist:

• standard delivery at a flat 7 euros
• express delivery at a flat 15 euros

To which you add a free-delivery rule above 100 euros of purchases.

For Click & Collect as for local delivery, the date and the time slot are essential. The Delivery Slots extension lets you define them, which stops too many orders arriving at once.

Three benefits:

• your customers choose when to receive their order, so their satisfaction goes up
• you control your preparation time by limiting the number of orders per day and per slot
• you build loyalty and increase repeat orders by keeping your delivery promises

It's all set in Settings › Opening and delivery times, in three tabs: Opening hours, where you set your days and time ranges, Delivery slots, where the five criteria below live, and Exceptional closings, for the days you don't open.

Five criteria govern the system:

• Order frequency: how often you open a delivery or collection slot.
• The maximum number of orders per slot: how many you can handle, and therefore how many you make available.
• The delay between the order and the first available slot: your irreducible preparation time.
• The display restriction: pre-orders for the days ahead, or same day only.
• What the customer sees: a choice of slots, or only the next one available.

Two concrete setups show how these criteria combine according to the trade.

A restaurant. Collection slots of 15 minutes, a maximum of 5 orders per slot, a 30-minute delay between the order and the first available slot, and same-day slots only. The aim is to absorb the flow without disrupting service.

A grocery store. Slots of 15 minutes too, but a maximum of 2 orders per slot, and a mandatory delay of 120 minutes, because putting a shop together takes time. Customers can, on the other hand, book a slot the same day or within the following 6 days.

The same add-on, two opposite setups: the constraint isn't the volume of orders, it's the preparation time per order. Start from there to set yours.