I’ve recently made a few online purchases where the shipping was free. I’m talking next day delivery too. Admittedly, the purchases were in categories where there’s a decent markup, so a sub $10 expense for the vendors isn’t going to send them under.
But this got me thinking. What would you think of a brick’n mortar retailer who added charges on top of the advertised price of their goods. Charges like store rent, or their inbound shipping costs. Or pro-rata staffing costs.
Yet that’s exactly what most e-tailers do when they add shipping charges; they pass their expense onto you. And it’s been happening for so long, that we all think it’s completely normal.
Yes there are businesses out there for whom free shipping is core to their business model. Think Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Asos, Incu, etc. Here’s why they do it:
The 2013 Pulse of the Online Shopper study reports that 88% of those surveyed said they’d abandoned carts, and of those who did, 54% said the reason was shipping had pushed the total price higher than they expected. Bye bye sale.
So what did free shipping do for me?
Well, it was better than getting a discount, but more than that, there was no stuffing around having to look-up, calculate, or otherwise search for what the shipping charge would be.
In short, it dramatically improved my buying experience.
Yes, there’s exceptions to free shipping. International shipping is the big one. But for local e-tailers, there really is no excuse unless you’re selling super-low margin things like milk, in which case, low-cost delivery by automated quadcopter drones, is just around the corner.