One of the most important parts of getting your Shopify store online is to get the shipping rates correct. This is a core part of the success or failure of your online operation. How are the goods getting to the customer, what options do they have for shipping and is it easy to choose.
If you don’t get this right you might not sell anything at all because it can’t get to the customer. In this video, part of our Shopify Tips and Tricks Library, Rupert explains how to set up your shipping options in the back end of Shopify.
What are Shipping Rates
Shipping rates are the fees charged by shipping carriers to transport goods from one location to another. In the context of Shopify and e-commerce, shipping rates refer to the fees charged by carriers to deliver products purchased through an online store.
Shopify offers a built-in shipping feature that allows merchants to manage their shipping rates and print shipping labels directly from their Shopify account. With Shopify Shipping, merchants can access discounted rates from leading carriers such as DHL, UPS, and USPS.
Shopify Shipping is free for all Shopify plans, but it is limited to e-commerce stores whose fulfilment locations are within the US, Canada, or Australia. Merchants can also offer competitive shipping rates to customers at checkout with tips on how to cut their shipping costs.
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Where can I edit Shipping Rates in Shopify
You can find the Shipping settings in the dashboard of Shopify by clicking the settings button on the bottom left of your screen. The settings panel will appear and you can select Shipping and Delivery which is 9th down on the left hand side.
Here you can create a multitude of shipping options for your customers including:
- International rates
- Discounted Shipping Rates
- Drop Shipping Rates
- Local Pick up options
- FREE Shipping
You can also control who does your shipping and how you want orders to be processed by third parties.
How to offer free shipping
FEEE Shipping is quite often something that customers expect these days and unfortunately we don’t have much of a choice but to offer it. Thanks in large part to those people over at Amazon.
You do not want to offer it all the time however. It can be an expensive business. what you need to do is work out either how to up your prices so the shipping is covered within the retail price or when you can afford to send it for free.
On our Dogs website we choose to offer it when a customer has spent over £75. You can set this up quickly and easily in Shopify, you can also set up lots of other rules to encourage them to raise the average basket value, which should be your end goal. Just remember to keep an eye on the competition as well and see when they are offering free shipping.
