3 Shipping Policy Examples for E-commerce Businesses
It’s a good idea to look at shipping policy examples for e-commerce before landing on a final strategy for setting up your business, especially now that shipping is so critical to consumers’ purchasing decisions. In fact, 80 percent of online shoppers consider shipping cost and speed to be influential in determining where they shop.
To help you impress consumers, we’ve picked out a few shipping policy examples from successful e-commerce businesses (and Shippo users). These three companies present their shipping policy in the same way: they include it in the FAQs on their websites. The FAQs are prime real estate to prominently feature shipping details, ensuring that policy information is easy to find for customers.
Here’s a look at the information these retailers included, along with screenshot examples of each e-commerce company’s shipping policy.
Shipping Policy Example #1: Bean Box
Bean Box is a subscription service that partners with Seattle’s top independent coffee roasters to curate and deliver high-quality, freshly-roasted coffee to customers.
Their FAQs answer whether they do international delivery and how long domestic delivery will take. Since they ship their orders routinely every Wednesday, they included a bonus FAQ explaining this to their customers.
Here are a few examples from their website. You can see their full FAQs page here.
Shipping Policy Example #2: GOAT
GOAT is a marketplace for users to buy and sell sneakers. GOAT verifies every pair of sneakers to make sure they’re authentic and live up to their product description.
The shipping experience for GOAT is unique — their verification process requires sellers to ship packages to GOAT warehouses before they get sent to buyers. Given that, they clearly describe the entire process in their FAQs to explain the slower delivery times.
GOAT also offers a flat rate for shipping, depending on where you live. You can see their full FAQ page here.
Shipping Policy Example #3: BONLOOK
BONLOOK designs, manufactures, and delivers fashionable eyewear.
The retailer includes details about its international shipping offerings and shares an easy-to-read chart listing its shipping costs for different customers and purchase orders.
You can see the BONLOOK FAQ page here.
While these shipping policies are great examples of what successful e-commerce businesses are doing, it’s important to keep in mind that the best policy is one that fits the needs of your company and customers.
You’ll want to answer these questions for your business:
- Are you offering shipping for free, a flat rate, or a variable fee? Typically, we see retailers promote free shipping, a free shipping threshold, or flat-rate shipping prominently on their website. If the cost of shipping varies based on the purchase, most sellers won’t share shipping prices until the checkout process.
- How long will it take for your customers to get their packages? Do you offer same-day, next-day, or other express delivery options? If your company sells perishable goods or timely novelty products, it’s important for customers to know that they’ll get their product when they need it. If you offer customers Ground and Express shipping options, be sure to mention them.
- What carrier(s) do you ship with? Customers want to know if they should be looking in their mailbox for a small package delivered by the USPS or if they should be looking on their porch for a FedEx or UPS package.
- Do you ship internationally? Make sure potential international customers know right away whether you will serve them or not. Otherwise, you risk frustrating consumers.
- Do you have any special shipping circumstances that should be shared with customers in advance? As you saw above, subscription boxes ship on specific days, for example, and it’s important to pass that information on to customers.
Once you decide on your rules, be sure to clearly communicate them to your customers, either through an FAQ page or other prominent space on your website.
For more e-commerce insight, check out our recent post featuring advice from a panel of experts on how to retain customers through personalized experiences.
Shippo is a multi-carrier API and web app that helps retailers, marketplaces and platforms connect to a global network of carriers. Businesses use Shippo to get real-time rates, print labels, automate international paperwork, track packages and facilitate returns. Shippo provides the tools to help businesses succeed through shipping.
