Paddy Pallin overcomes shipping challenges with Temando

Challenges

When Paddy Pallin first approached Temando they were having issues effectively managing their online shipping. Having access to only one carrier was restrictive as they sent items ranging from t-shirts through to tents. Additionally, they did not have a technology solution to manage their shipping process and as such, relied on manual data entry with minimal carrier compliance.

Solution

Temando's Magento Extension has provided Paddy Pallin with a powerful tool to manage their fulfilment process. They now have access to multiple carriers in one system, allowing them to reach all of Australia and benefit from excellent rates at the same time. Temando has given the Paddy Pallin team visibility over their orders and streamlined their fulfilment process. Now, Paddy Pallin enjoys:

• No manual data entry
• One-stop fulfilment
• Faster, more consistent order turnaround times
• Increased order visibility
• Reduce head count required to process orders
• Pick slip and label generation
• The ability to choose from multiple carrier quotes for each order

Looking Forward

Since integrating, Paddy Pallin has also activated Temando's Click & Collect functionality. This allows them to drive their online audience in store and provide a more personalised level of service to their customers. As they grow and look to move into a central fulfilment center, Paddy Pallin is confident Temando will continue to enable them to surprise and delight their customers.

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Putting shipping tips into practice

We recently posted about reducing cart abandonment with simple shipping tips. In this post, we’ll take a more practical look at how businesses are using these strategies to improve the appearance and flow of their customers’ purchase experiences.

With the examples, note the way in which the various shipping messaging is prominently featured on the site. This goes a long way to building trust with the customer and allaying concerns about purchasing goods online.

Offering Choices

Offering choices not only allows your customers more freedom, it can also help you to stand out against your competitors. In the highly competitive online fashion space, The Iconic’s 3 hour deliveries allows it to not only compete with other online retailers but also against traditional retailers as well. Notice that they display options for both 3 hour and standard overnight at the top of the page. Something for everyone!

Shorty’s Liquor on the other hand often gets orders for specific events and therefore, by allowing pick-a-day delivery, the order gets to the customer when they want it, not before. They also offer cold deliveries as an option which is a no brainer with alcohol because really, who wants to receive their beer warm?

Finally, be sure to utilise your strengths when choosing your delivery options. Dick Smith offers both standard delivery and collect from store functions to both give options and also leverage their physical footprint.

Transparent Costs/Free Shipping Threshold

Making delivery costs visible is very valuable. It prevents any confusion and means customers won’t baulk at prices when they reach checkout. This can generally be done in one of three ways: offering free shipping, offering a flat rate for shipping or displaying exact quotes for shipping.

The Iconic and ASOS both display their free shipping thresholds at the top of their webpages, just beneath the navigation:

If you don’t want to offer free shipping and aren’t comfortable picking a flat rate, consider incorporating a shipping calculator into your product pages and checkout. Our shipping calculator, for example, allows the customer to input a postcode for delivery and creates a dynamic quote of the actual shipping cost. With this method you don’t lose money on shipping and your customer understands what they’re going to pay.

Returns

The window that businesses can give customers to return goods obviously depends largely upon the type of products. In online fashion, recent trends are towards longer times with companies generally choosing anywhere between 4 weeks and 100 days. If a customer is unhappy, it’s unlikely they will wait until the 99^th day to return a good, but offering a generous amount of time will allow your customers to feel less pressure when making the purchase. EverMe, for example, offers 100 day returns and broadcasts it from the top of their home page:

Oscar Wylee has built a part of their business model around offering simple returns. That’s obviously not going to work for everyone, but it does demonstrate the value of a simple to navigate returns process. They give an option for a free home trial of 5 pairs of glasses for 5 days, after which you arrange to return them. Free shipping, free home testing of the products and then a small payment to return the glasses. Their returns portal is very simple as well. It allows the customer to pay for and print their shipping label and either drop their return into a post box or arrange for a courier to collect it. Easy!

Regardless of what you feel you can and can't realistically offer, it pays to be upfront with your customers. Make sure information about shipping, options and returns are easily accessible and understandable - it's definitely not going to lose you any sales.

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Abandon-proof your purchase process

Online retail is very similar to traditional retail. We still need to persuade customers and build trust. Yes the methods have changed – we can use Facebook, Instagram, Google and PayPal to do these for us now – but they’re still an important part of getting customers to complete purchases with us online. Arguably the most difficult skill to transfer to the online experience is handling objections. As we don’t get to speak to the customers as we would in a store, we have to rely on our purchase process being as smooth as possible to ensure we maximize our conversions. As shipping is consistently the number one reason for cart abandonment, here’s how you can update your processes to stop pushing customers away.

Offer multiple shipping methods

With some surveys indicating as many as 50% of responders have abandoned a purchase based on a lack of shipping options the message is clear: customers want choice. Offering multiple options isn’t all that hard to do either. Simply offering both express and standard shipping methods could have a significant impact on your conversions. This allows you to appeal to those after the best price as well as impatient customers who are happy to pay to receive their goods faster. To really give your customers choice, however, you could look at incorporating 3-hour shipping, delivery to secure parcel lockers or a click and collect option if you have physical stores.

Display accurate shipping costs

Several of the top reasons for cart abandonment involve shipping costs. Shipping costs inflating the total cost of an order, not qualifying for free shipping and showing shipping costs late in the checkout are all huge contributors to abandoned orders. Be clear and upfront about your costs. If you have flat rate shipping, let everyone know and if you have a free shipping threshold, make that clear – you’ll increase average cart value and convert more sales. So long as customers know from the beginning they will be paying a flat rate for shipping or that there is a threshold for free shipping then they won’t be surprised come checkout time.

Have a simple returns policy

86% of customers check shipping and returns policies as a precaution before buying online. By providing clear instructions or having a simple process that doesn’t require the customer to jump through hoops you build trust and allay any possible concerns the customer might have about a product. That’s not to say you need to offer free returns – it’s a good option for the right business but it’s also hugely expensive. A really simple way to make your returns simpler is to stop hiding your returns policy in an obscure page full of fine print. Prominently advertise it on your website and state the amount of time customers have to return items – at least then customers know that you have a returns policy. The next step is to provide your customers with all the tools they need to return an item. Shipping with re-usable satchels or boxes means customers don’t have to find or buy their own. Being able to provide customers with a method of printing their own shipping labels is even more helpful and saves customers having to visit a post office.

Make it faster

Yes faster deliveries would be nice, however making the order process faster for your customer is a good start. A one second delay page response time can result in 7% fewer conversions. This means that you want to have as few checkout pages as possible and make sure there is nothing to slow down the process. One of the more common delays can come from websites querying courier companies for rates which can take up to several seconds depending on the company. To solve this you could either hedge your bets and set a flat rate for shipments or engage with a shipping solution partner that holds all of the shipping rates in their logic. 

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