5 Clever Ways to Improve Shipping

Starting a business usually means lots of lessons to learn, including the best way to ship your products.  It's usually an after thought and one that you learn from experience, but we want to help you overcome any shipping woes and share a few tips that we've learned along the way.

Here are 5 clever ways to improve shipping:

1. Share images and details on your blog of how you package your products...the package is almost just as important as the product itself.  Customers love to see what they're getting in the mail and sharing images and details of how it's packaged is a great way to give them a sneak peek!

2. Invest in a shipping scale...if you are serious about your online business, it's time to purchase a real shipping scale. Other scales will only cause further costs with returned packages and post office delays so save yourself time and headaches and invest in a shipping scale today!

3. Consider including the shipping costs into your prices. Offering 'Free Shipping' to your customers is always a selling point, so think about building in the shipping costs into your final product prices. Would you rather buy an item for $30 with free shipping or $20 with a shipping charge of $10? Free shipping appeals to customers and you have nothing to lose by including it in your costs.

4. Designate a specific shipping area in your office or house to ensure you can quickly package and ship out any sold items. If you have a dedicated space, you will feel less overwhelmed when you get a few orders at once.

5. Buy in bulk!  At some point, you're going to need to buy shipping materials at the store and for the best prices, buying in bulk will save you money. Just don't go overboard...make sure you can sell the products fast enough so you aren't storing a bunch of shipping materials.

What tips do you have for shipping your products?  What has saved you time and money?

Main image courtesy of fedewild