Free shipping – Yes or No
Generally, offering free shipping increases conversion rates. It’s been researched quite a lot and the results are consistent – it helps with conversion.
However, it might reduce your sales in some cases. I’ll explain:
- One size doesn’t fit all – if you’re selling an item that costs a lot to ship (say a 10kg package), you have to take into account that some destinations will be VERY expensive to ship to, and that, unless you don’t adjust your shipping fee to these destinations, you can lose money.
- For example: you’re selling an item for $100 and your standard shipping fee is $40, so you publish the product with a price of $140 and free shipping. If someone buys it from a destination to which your shipping fee is $100 (not $40), then you will probably lose money on this sale. To eliminate the risk of losing money because of the above reason, you can decide to remove expensive destinations, but then you also reduce the amount of potential buyers.
- High shipping fee – If you do take expensive destination into account, then you will have to price your product with a higher shipping fee. That means your price will be higher and that less people will buy.
To conclude
When the shipping fee is relatively significant out of the entire product price, then you should take all of the above into consideration and create a different shipping price for every destination.
