I have customers and potential customers that desire purchasing, but the products takes forever to arrive plus shipping is so expensive. What is the best way to set up shipping and the entire shopping experience for my UK people?
Hi! I’m glad to hear that you feel you’ve got a market opportunity in the United Kingdom. It’s a significant consumer market! While we can’t break the laws of physics and make international shipping instantaneous, there are still some important things you can do to make it feel easier and more attractive to buy from your shop across borders.
First, you should intentionally rank your priorities: as a brand, with the products that you sell and the margins that they earn you, is “fast” or “cheap” more important when you can’t achieve both? If you sell expensive, high margin products, then you should consider “fast” a buyer experience worth paying for as a cost of doing business. Carriers like DHL Express are capable of impressive delivery times, and the cost may be worth it. Otherwise, slower carriers can be quite cost effective.
But no matter what you choose, to avoid “sticker shock” in checkout you should configure flat rate shipping to the United Kingdom that feels reasonable in price. £5 to £10 for standard delivery will improve your conversion rather than charging your customers the full cost of shipping. But you can still recover the increased cost by altering your international prices. Go to Markets and create a catalog for the United Kingdom, and you can increase product prices by a percentage in order to cover the increased cost of shipping. Work this out based on your average order value and the difference between your flat rate and your true cost of shipping labels: check out the Average Profit Margin by Market report in your Shopify admin to access this data.
Shoppers are less sensitive to product prices that are 10% higher, but shipping in checkout looks reasonable, than they are to that sticker shock surprise of expensive shipping in checkout.
Aside from that big one, make sure you’re showing prices in GBP, and calculating duties and taxes in checkout so delivery goes smoothly, and don’t forget to tell your UK customers on your storefront and in your marketing that you’ve worked out these details for them. Good luck!
Thank you for that link to the analysis in my dashboard. I will definitely check that out…I have a few more people who are ready to shop once I work this snag out.
@femineen Yeah, shipping internationally can be a problem, but to give you a more accurate suggestion, I’d honestly need a bit more context on where your store is based and where you’re shipping from. That said, if you are shipping from somewhere like the US, you might want to try USPS. They’re usually one of the more affordable options, and their international services are fairly reliable without completely eating into your margins. If you’re not shipping from the US, you can still look at carriers like FedEx, DHL, or UPS, which offer time-definite delivery options.
Based on what you’re facing, the best way to set up your shipping is to show live shipping rates at checkout. This way, customers can choose what works for them, whether they want a cheaper option that takes longer or a faster delivery at a higher cost. It puts the control in their hands and removes a lot of problems.
You can also generate shipping labels directly using these same services, so everything stays streamlined on your end, too. There are several apps on the Shopify store that can help you set this up pretty easily, connecting carriers, showing real-time rates, and handling label generation in one place.
If you want, I can recommend a few based on your setup.
Thank you for your response.
My online store is in the US and I ship from Mississippi US.
I use flat rate shipping.
I’ve never set up my store for live shipping.
Is there a tutorial you can share on how to do this?
Peace.
Rene’ Michelle Floyd
CEO Creator- Beautiful Hair Products
http://www.BeautifulHairProducts.com
@femineen You’ve basically got two ways to do it.
The first is using Shopify’s built-in shipping setup, where you can enable carrier-calculated rates using their integration with USPS or any other carrier that they support. You just go into Settings → Shipping and Delivery, add a shipping option, and select the option for carrier or app calculated rates. From there, you’ll see USPS available. Check this out if you need a reference.
The second option, which is better as you grow, is using an app to connect your own USPS account (or even UPS or FedEx). This gives you more control, better rates over time, and lets you show accurate delivery options at checkout, and pretty much everything is centralized, so you don’t have to leave the dashboard… if you need help setting that up. Check out this tutorial.
Oh wow! Thank you. It seems easy. I will set it up and keep you posted on my progress.
Thanks again.
Peace.
Rene’ Michelle Floyd
CEO Creator- Beautiful Hair Products
http://www.BeautifulHairProducts.com