Forum Moderators: buckworks
Im losing 50% of my customers on the shipping page. This sounds kind of high. I charge $9.95 shipping and order sizes are generally 80-150 bucks.
Does 50% loss on shipping page seem to high. The $9.95 flat rate shipping is advertised allthru the site, so why would they actually bail on the shipping screen?
Does 50% loss on shipping page seem to high.
Sounds a bit high if they've already made the committment and entered their name and address before getting to that page.
I charge $9.95 shipping and order sizes are generally 80-150 bucks.
Also, personally, I prefer some options when I hit the shipping page. Even if you offer flat rates with two or three different carriers, your customers would feel they have at least some control over their shipping costs.
[edited by: john_k at 5:28 pm (utc) on Mar. 14, 2006]
Then I go away and go to some other site, and do the same thing.
After visiting several sites (bailing out at the shipping screen on all of them), I'll go back to the one where ProductX plus shipping was the most cost-effective.
I don't know if losing 50% of customers on that screen is normal, but I do that a lot.
You might also view it with a fresh browser under IE and Firefox/Mozilla, etc. Maybe there's one of those "This secure site has some insecure items" messages because one of your images is not sourced as https, or maybe there are other issues. Maybe the shipping page is confusing, or the "buy now" button isn't obvious or it doesn't tell them how long shipping will take, or something about the page makes them nervous.
Can you find out what browsers the people you're losing are using, maybe what screen res, and what IP blocks they're coming from? It could even be something simple like you're getting a lot of traffic from Indonesia for some reason and you don't ship there...
JK
I often bail on the shipping screen because I'm shopping for overall cost.
That's a good point. And, having this type of setup where a user has to enter a name and address first before seeing shipping information is going to really skew the statistics based on the above practice of shopping for the best shipping price.
(E.g., in my urban area the USPS never even tries to deliver a package on its walking routes, just delivers a note to pick up the package at the nearest post office; this always takes about an hour of waiting in line, and must be done during working hours. Not likely.)
Our shipping page has other options than the flat rate shipping option (ie 2 day air etc). We ship by FedEx
All items on the shipping page are secure, and works across all popular browsers and versions.
Most of the competition has shipping charges a few bucks below us (this is why we lowered the shipping). But our product prices are below the competition.
I would expect a fair loss on the checkout page, as the user is entering name and address info, and alot of people are just checking. But once they had done that work, I would expect only a few people would abandon at the shipping page.
The funny thing, after the shipping page, we tell customers with small orders (under $25) that their is an additonal small order fee of $4.75, and we lose only a few orders at this stage.
(The small order page is only shown to customers with small orders)
Here we are discouraging small orders and can't get rid of them, but the more sizable orders are scared away by shipping. Go figure.
is this where the customer first learns what their shipping charges will be, or is it where they input their ship-to address?
if it is the former, then i think you have a big problem - you are asking the user to input their personal info before they know what their total is with shipping included - if you read nielson or some of the other usability people, you'll see that this is the #1 cardinal sin of ecommerce checkout procedures - never ask you user to give you personal information before you have disclosed to them their absolute total price.
The only reason we have a shipping page, is we also offer Air service (which is calculated by Zipcode/Postal Code)
as they add items to their cart, show the small order charge (with a little 'spend $10.42 more and avoid our small order charge!' reminder) and the flat rate shipping - next to the shipping, you could have a colorful graphic that says 'need it sooner?' when they click that, they can put in their zip and get the faster shipping options.
If that is correct I am surprised anyone would order from you at all as it is way too excessive. Personally I would X out of your site immidiately when seeing the cost.
The $9.95 shipping on a $26 order would also seem too high to many buyers.
Their is no point in filling small orders, if they don't make you any money.
I don't belive in minimun order size, and the small order fee works great for us.
Now only if we can get the $100+ orders to stop abandoning the cart at the shipping stage.
take all of your fulfillment costs (packaging labor, customer service labor, phone, packaging materials, utilities, rent, insurance, cc commissions +++), then divide by the number of orders - for me it is $22 - so, at 50% gross profit, i lose money on orders less than $44
I dont think its that simple. There are benefits of taking these orders, even if, say, you break even or possibly lose a few dollars. For example, how much do you spend on aquiring a customer?
William.
far different story when somebody hits a serp or adword for "fuzzy blue widgets" and ends up at fuzzy_blue_widget_superstore.com - when they are asked to fill out a form (and they don't have google toolbar autofill) they are making an investment of a minute or two of their time - is it worth it? what if i fill out all of this and then they spam me forever? what if i fill out all of this and the shipping charges are high?
if possible, it is great to be able to have a fixed shipping rate (to the lower 48 us states if you are us) - then the issues above come off of the table - worked for my sites...
Could you reduce the drop out rate if you guarantee your rates to be the cheapest available - i.e. guarantee to match any other price if found lower?
I know it's risky.
TJ
Sure you take a little less profit, but you are stealing a sale from your competitor.
Check out your competitor's total cost including shipping. Price the same items just a little under your competitor's total price...but take adding shipping cost out of the equation on your own website.
Free shipping on all orders...the price they advertised is the price they pay..no add ons at check out. You still re-coup some of your shipping costs.
I agree with others here...when shopping for a particular item I go all the way to checkout to get the real price. The go on to another until I find the best overall deal.
Free shipping = high conversions.
Not always, and not for all stores.
We extensively tested free shipping versus flat rate shipping. The conversion rate difference between the two was inconsequential.
Shipping cost is clearly displayed on the home page and on every product page (right under the hard-to-miss price).
1 - Free shipping is very useful in attracting customers to your website. I used to run multiple sites, same products. My Adwords ads would target the same words and my bids were the same for two sites. The "free shipping" ads always outperformed in terms of CTR.
2 - I found that in my target audience, people generally cannot add numbers. I played this game for years. I found that even though the "free shipping" site had a higher overall cost, the coversions were in fact better than the competing site (which offered a shipping charge + product that was less than the "free shipping" site). I chalked this up to "people like to brag about free shipping to friends."
I'm not talking about a large difference in costs between the two sites, maybe a 2 - 5% difference.
The above insights are based on hundreds to thousands of sales and was very consistent. In this particular example, shipping and handling was less than $10.00
As a consumer, I start to get turned off when someone is going to charge me over $10.00 for shipping - unless the item is bulky (large in dimension) or heavy. I also watch for sales tax. If the shipping, handling and sales tax push the price over what I think I can buy locally, I will abandon the shopping cart. And this is from a consumer that feels it is very convenient to shop online (I do it all the time).
My Adwords ads would target the same words and my bids were the same for two sites. The "free shipping" ads always outperformed in terms of CTR.
Interesting observation - probably worth a test in its own right.
I'm always interested to learn how others test something like this. Did is you implement one of the options for some period and then the other option?
I'm always interested to learn how others test something like this. Did is you implement one of the options for some period and then the other option?
No, it was simultaneous A/B. Uses were either shown free shipping or flat rate shipping. A cookie was used to make sure they saw the same shipping rate if they returned to the site later. (The percentage of our users with cookies turned off is close enough to nil to be effectively nil.)
Doing time based A/B testing doesn't work - our conversion rate fluctuates based on time of the year.
The primary considerations for customers to purchase products online are:
1. Is the product readily available at a brick and mortar within a close proximity?
2. If so, can the product be purchased online less expensively than at the brick and mortar?
Not only do you have to consider your online competition, but also the offline competition (your potential customer considers the same factors). The advantage of online is no sales tax, but the added cost of shipping is a major turn-off to customers.
An online business should be able to sell a product for less than an offline business without charging shipping. If shipping cost is a makes or breaks your profit margin...then you need to examine your operating overhead because it should be significately less than a brick and mortar business. Or either you are paying way too much for the product you are re-selling or producing.
Bottom line...let the customer know on your primary landing page whether you offer free shipping, or if not, what the shipping costs are before the check-out page. Free shipping over a certain amount purchased also works well to increase average ticket sales.
