Limited Time Free Shipping Trial

Any success with the program

[lgn1]

Im concerned that 50% of my customers, have abandoned their cart at the shipping screen, which is after they entered name and address info.

We have always charged in the past on weight and destination. Which has two problems?

The customer does not know the shipping charge until checkout, and also the checkout process is longer due to this fact.

I was looking a two stage scenerio:

Offer free shipping on orders over $50 for a limited time (2 weeks, but I wont specify the time to the customers), to see the actual abandonment rate due to shipping charge, to get my baseline.

Modify the shipping to a flat charge, and charge a small order fee for those annoying small orders (I don't care if I lose those)

This way, the customer will know their shipping charges up front, and the checkout process can be simplified.

Im sure many of you have gone through this exercise. Did it have a measureable impact?

[RedWolf]

I went with free shipping early in the summer as a special and decided to keep it since my customers really liked it and said so. For me it isn't that big of deal since almost everything ships Priority Mail for $3.85 anyway and items are higher priced with a good retail profit margin built in. YMMV