Are you a small business owner who ships products to customers? You can ship locally, internationally, or both.
Shipping can be challenging if you don’t carry out the right shipping practices. It’s often the case for small businesses since shipping adds to business expenses, which start-ups aim to reduce, among other reasons.
What are the best shipping practices to adopt as a small business? This feature discusses them; read on to find out more.
It’d help to do the following:
- Find Ways To Reduce Shipping Costs
The introduction has already established the need to reduce expenses as a small business. You might consider eliminating shipping services due to the associated costs, but it’s something you shouldn’t do. Instead, find ways to reduce shipping-associated costs.
One way to do this is by finding a suitable shipping partner like UPakWeShip UK . A suitable shipping partner is a company that’ll ship your products at an affordable rate. It’d help to compare several of them and find a suitable one based on your business budget. It’ll be an added advantage to find one that offers discounts on bulk shipping. You can take advantage of such price reductions to reduce costs.
The weight of your packaging also determines your shipping costs. You’ll pay more for heavier packages and the reverse for small-weighted packages. With packaging, it’s important to know something known as dimensional weight. It refers to the weight of your packaging, whether a box or an envelope. Large shipping boxes will have a bigger dimensional weight, adding to your expenses.
- Use The Right Packaging
One of the mistakes you can make as a small business is using the wrong packaging for your products. Improper packaging could damage your goods.
You’ll damage your goods if you use too small packaging for your goods. There’s a likelihood of the packaging tearing and exposing your goods. When exposed, their chances of damage are high during transit.
Packaging that’s too big for your goods can damage them, especially if they’re breakable and you’ve not cushioned them. You should invest in several shipping supplies to assist in packaging your goods. In this case, you should add bubble wrap around your breakables in the box. It’ll prevent them from breaking during transit.
Consider using partitioned packaging boxes if your products are glass-bottled. They’ll remain in place and not knock against each other, which could lead to breakage.
By ensuring your goods don’t get damaged during transact with the right packaging, your customers will receive their orders in one piece. Also, you’ll reduce the refunds and recalls you get due to damaged goods. It’ll be a waste of your production resources.
- Don’t Forget Branding On Your Packaging
As a small business, you hope your business grows to a recognizable one in the future. One way to achieve this is through branding. It entails giving your business identity through a theme colour, logo, and other features.
You can achieve branding through shipping, locally or across multiple borders. All you need to do is customize your shipping boxes to represent your brand. If your business colour identity is red, let the boxes be red. Proceed to add the logo and branding message to the box. Doing so will make your customers feel proud to be associated with a thoughtful brand. Others will get excited as they wait for packages from you, with others making orders just for the customized packaging.
In the end, customers will appreciate your business and tell their friends about you, all because of your packaging. It’ll give you the visibility you seek.
- Consider Tracking Shipping Location And Status
When shipping, you likely are often fingers crossed, hoping your shipped products reach their destination in one piece. Working in such a state of mind will disrupt your execution of other business operations, which is the case if you don’t track your goods. Also, you’ll find it challenging to handle clients who call you by the hour inquiring about the progress of their deliveries, and you’ll have no answer for them.
To avoid such situations, please invest in tracking services. You can place trackers in your packages and track the entire process through an application on your mobile phone or gadget.
Alternatively, there are shipping companies that offer free tracking services to their customers. Most of them have location-tracking devices on their vehicles. Yet they’ll likely require that you open a shipping account with them. By doing so, you won’t incur costs acquiring tracking software.
With tracking, you’ll always know the location of your products and will have answers for your customers as they ask about their orders.
Conclusion
Handling the shipping aspect of your small business is something you can easily achieve with the right guide. By knowing what to do, this aspect will run efficiently like your other core operations. This discussion gives a guide on handling shipping as a small business. You should comprehend and implement this guide for better shipping operations. Your customers will thank you for doing so since you’ll offer them exemplary services.
