Can you keep up with Shipping?

The year is now 2020 and many things have changed.  We all had a toilet paper scare and many people lost their jobs or were forced to work from home.  The world literally took a turn and many economies slowed to a halt.  The one area that kept on running and working overtime was the ecommerce side of our economy.  The world economy too for that matter was sustained largely by e commerce companies.  This caused a paradigm shift in how we shop, think about shopping, and leaving the house.  Since lots of brick and mortar shops were closed down or limited, shopping online became the main rage and shipping supplies became paramount.

 

If you were unable to get your shipping supplies then you might now have any way of actually making money for your business.  This was a huge shift in the economy and many companies pulled a 180 and changed their business model overnight to adapt and survive in this economy. The gumption of Americans made me proud and we were able to pivot and succeed, but it still was hard and is still hard on many companies. The ability to ship takes a whole new department and also adds cost to each product that is now sold.  So keeping up with pricing and competition sometimes comes down to the boxes and tape you are able to source and ship.

 

The most important part is being efficient and knowing exactly what you need.  When you can narrow down the products you must use to ship for your inventory then you can actually shop for the best price and start being competitive or smoke your competition in the ecommerce game. It is not always about price or boxes, and bags, but that can play a huge part of it.  The ability to be seen and known online is also a big part of shipping success in ecommerce, because you cannot ship or sell an item if no one knows you exist.

 

This is where e commerce can be expensive and hard and that is being found online.  Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising, but if you are unknown as an ecommerce company you may have to start doing Search Engine Optimization and that is expensive and takes time to get onto organic search traffic. Pay per click is a possibility or google adwords, but those cost for each potential customer and can be very pricy when competition is high. So be smart and ship well!

How to be cost effective while shipping

Businesses are getting more complicated every single day now.  Most of the time being successful is hard to do but with the ever changing economy of 2020 and the rules of every country, city, and state ever changing supply chains and shipping can be insane. So being wise with your money in all aspects is even more important and planning ahead has become paramount in the scheme of success.  Some areas that people didn't pay too much attention to like their shipping department or in many companies newly formed shipping department was the cost of shipping supplies.  This is an area that many companies are new too and have now found that 50-100% of their entire sales are coming from online instead of through the front door.

Panamedic forced companies to pivot and look at sales and marketing in a different way and e-commerce has been the answer.  This means that instead of giving customers a bag filled with your items that now you are taking the items and putting them in a box or a bag, taping it up and printing a shipping label to go to their personal residence. The complications in these small and yet different steps can sink a company or let it swim. 

  That sounds a bit silly, but the cost of a box, loaded with packing peanuts or paper and then shipping costs really do add up.  The question is are your orders big enough or important enough to either cover the cost of shipping or important enough that people will pay extra to get it due to shipping.  This means you need to calculate the margins you have for everything because you may not want to sell all your items online or put a limit on what can be sold singularly.

 

Now shipping supplies can be sold to fit many if not all types of items, but you should know how much you are going to make or what the item is worth in order to ship effectively and efficiently. Staying competitive may mean offering free shipping and you may lose money doing this on some items.  So know the limit at which you will not lose money on free shipping and then make that part of your store policy. This is a smart way to stay competitive and not lose money but be profitable. Knowing is important and I suggest you stay on top of your game or a competitor will beat you out eventually.