The modern day customer craves convenience when shopping online. A smooth shipping experience strongly affects how they perceive your store, and if they would return to buy from you. This is why you should provide a range of shipping options for your Shopify store.
In this guide, we will look into the various shipping options your Shopify store can offer. We’d help you figure out when to set up expedited shipping, when to fix flat rates, and more.
By the end of this article, you will know how to satisfy your customers by streamlining your order fulfillment process.
Types of Shopify Shipping Methods
Shopify offers various shipping methods to cater to different business needs. Here are the most common methods available:
1. Flat Rate Shipping
Flat rate shipping imposes a fixed rate on all orders regardless of size, weight, shape, or destination.
Usually, the seller determines the shipping costs following the carrier’s rate. This allows you to set up different flat rates based on the order value.
For example, as a Shopify merchant, you can place a flat rate shipping of $20 on orders worth over $100 and $15 on orders below $100.
This shipping option is suitable for businesses that offer products of specific sizes. This method simplifies the checkout process for customers, but it may not accurately reflect the actual shipping costs for each order.
Keep in mind that this method is only favorable if you ship multiple or heavy items in one box. Otherwise, you would end up spending more than necessary as carriers will inflate shipping costs to accommodate heavy items.
2. Table Rate Shipping
Research by Baymard shows that 48% of shoppers abandon their carts due to delivery costs.
With flat-rate shipping, customers who live close by or are shopping for a few items may be overwhelmed by the high delivery fees. Their resolution? Cart abandonment.
To minimize this, Shopify offers table rate shipping.
This Shopify shipping option allows you to offer flexible shipping rates on your store based on factors such as package weight, dimensions, destination, and the carrier’s pricing structure.
The table rate shipping option gives you a competitive advantage if you have a broad customer base. You can create multiple rate conditions and costs for domestic and international deliveries.
3. Expedited Shipping
Know how you sometimes order a dinner gown the day before you need it and pay for quick delivery? That’s expedited shipping. Products shipped out with this method are delivered much earlier than the standard delivery period.
While standard shipping may take several days or weeks, expedited delivery could be as fast as 1-3 business days or even the same day. This is because packages that require this Shopify shipping option are often high-priority items.
Typically, carriers that offer expedited shipping services have robust tracking capabilities and dedicated shipping networks so shoppers can monitor the delivery’s progress.
This option is perfect for customers who want their packages as soon as possible. Considering the nature of this shipping method, it often attracts higher shipping costs and varies from carrier to carrier.
Below are examples of expedited shipping services offered by different carriers:
USPS Expedited Shipping
USPS refers to expedited shipping as Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express. While the former requires 1 to 3 business days for items to arrive, the latter takes 1 to 2 business days.
DHL Expedited Shipping
For DHL, expedited shipping is referred to as SmartMail within the US and International Direct for international delivery.
- SmartMail Parcel takes 2 to 5 days
- Parcel International Direct takes 3 to 10 business days
Canada Post
Canada Post offers both domestic and international shipping services to the US and beyond;
- Domestic expedited shipping takes 1 to 7 business days
- International expedited shipping to the US takes 4 to 7 business days
4. Local Delivery or Pickup
Local delivery or pickup is a Shopify shipping option that benefits small businesses operating within specific locations. Instead of shipping orders to customers, they can walk into your physical store to pick up items of their choice.
The option saves you the time, effort, and resources that go into doorstep delivery. It benefits your customers as they get to see life images of the product before making a purchase.
This eliminates the common “what I ordered vs what I got” challenge peculiar to online purchases.
To offer local delivery on your Shopify store, navigate to your dashboard, and select specific ZIP/postal codes and radius around your store. That way, only customers within these zones qualify for local delivery.
5. Multiple Addresses
Multiple address shipping, as the name implies, is a shipping method that allows customers to ship an order to different addresses. For instance, a customer could place an order for 5 T-shirts and sneakers, and request for each to be delivered to different addresses.
Aside from providing multiple addresses, this shipping method allows customers to receive their orders using different fulfillment methods.
So, say a customer places an order for some items and wants some delivered to a specific address while they pick up the rest, this passes for multiple address shipping.
Due to the number of stakeholders involved – the buyer, the recipients distributed across different addresses, and you – Multiple Address Shipping is quite complicated for Shopify sellers.
If you can’t handle the complexity, don’t offer it.
6. International Shipping
If your business caters to an international audience, then this is a must-have. International shipping allows you to reach as many customers as possible.
However, this Shopify shipping method requires a high level of formality.
First, you need to submit custom declarations and forms that provide detailed information about the parcel including destination, the content of the package, cost, and whether it is a gift or merchandise for the receiver.
Then you need to declare applicable taxes, duties, and tariffs. Keep in mind that other additional charges may come up which becomes the customer’s responsibility. If you’d set this option on your website, put up disclaimers that inform customers of the costs associated with this delivery method.
7. Conditional Shipping
As a Shopify merchant, you can choose to restrict accessibility to your products or services.
For instance, if your business is located in the US and you only want customers within North America and Europe to shop from you, you can create conditions restricting shoppers from other regions from completing the checkout process.
Conditional shipping is helpful if you are not eligible to operate in certain areas, or you offer sensitive products and would rather avoid the hassle of making your products/services available to a larger audience.
You can offer conditional shipping on Shopify using various shipping apps.
8. Overnight Shipping
Overnight shipping, also known as next-day delivery – as you would imagine, is a shipping method that involves delivery of packages the day after it was shipped.
This shipping option is the perfect choice for customers who are in urgent need of the item they just purchased. It guarantees immediate shipment without delay of any kind.
A majority of carriers such as DHL, UPS, USPS, and FedEx offer overnight shipping at different rates. And they often attract higher shipping costs.
Overnight shipping differs from expedited in that overnight shipping is delivered the next day while expedited shipping often takes a number of days.
9. Freight
Freight shipping simply means the transportation of large or bulky products by land, air, or sea. It is the standard means of shipping heavy items from one country/region to the other.
If you are a manufacturer or a distributor and you find your customers requesting large quantities of products, using freight shipping would be the most convenient means of delivery.
Typically, a package falls under the freight category if it weighs more than 150 pounds or measures larger than 30 x 30 x 30 inches.
There are different types of freight shipping which include;
- Ground freight using trucks
- Air freight using cargo planes
- Ocean freight through ships
- Multimodal freight using a combination of different means of transportation
10. Per Product Shipping
Per product shipping is another Shopify shipping option you should consider adding to your store. This shipping option comes in handy if you sell irregularly shaped products that cannot be put together.
For instance, if you sell products like office chairs and tables, these products cannot fit into a box or wrapped together.
Per product shipping allows you to assign specific shipping rates to each product in your store based on its characteristics, such as weight, dimensions, or the shipping destination.
The shipping cost rate is charged on each item and they are delivered individually. This shipping method reflects the actual shipping cost of each product.
If you use per product shipping on your Shopify store, state it clearly. Provide a detailed price list so customers are aware of the charges involved before getting to the checkout stage.
Wrapping Up
Selecting the right shipping options is crucial for the success of your Shopify store. By offering a variety of shipping methods tailored to your business model and customer preferences, you can enhance customer satisfaction, streamline operations, and drive sales.
Understanding order fulfillment on Shopify can also help you make the best decisions when it comes to choosing a shipping option.
