How to Get Your Shipping Strategy Ready for a Peak Sales Season

5th September 2022, 2:02am in Shipping Advice by Laura Hurtado Isalt

The peak sales season is right around the corner, which means only one thing.

You're going to be busy.

Before you know it, you'll have purchases flooding in, and you won't have time to waste on manual processes. Before the rush starts, you need to create a shipping strategy that allows you to fulfil orders quickly so you can focus on the parts of the business that require your immediate attention.

Whether this is your first peak sales season or you're looking for a new approach to fulfilment, this guide will help you create a shipping strategy that will help you succeed and scale during this period.

Know Your Profit Margins

The best place to start is to review your profit margins. How much does it cost your business to ship a parcel, and what's the profit you make? Once you know this, you can start making some decisions. You might want to offer free shipping during the sales season to attract more customers or a flat rate to keep it simple.

If you want to offer free shipping without impacting your profit margins, you could incorporate the costs into the pricing of your products. However, you should research competitors to understand where you're placed in the market. Alternatively, another strategy is to offer it on orders over a specific value.

Consider Live Shipping Rates

Instead of stressing about what delivery costs to provide your customers, you can offer live shipping rates. Whatever the courier service of your choice charges for a parcel to get delivered is what will be displayed on your website. It won't impact your profit margins, and you won't have to update your rates if a provider starts charging more for delivery.

You don't need to learn how to code or contact your webmaster to add live shipping rates to your online store. With Interparcel, you can activate this offering in four easy steps.

Request access to third-party shipping rates in your ecommerce platform
Go to the Inventory tab and upload your product measurements
Activate cart services
Enable live shipping rates in your Interparcel account

Optimise Your Packaging

One significant factor that determines how much you pay for shipping is the weight of your parcels. During a peak sales season, it's likely that customers will purchase multiple items from your store. That's why you must optimise your packaging to ensure you're not spending any more than you need to on delivery.

You can use Interparcel's Smart Boxing feature to optimise your shipping. Simply follow these four steps to have it up and running:

Go to the My Account tab, select Business tools, click on Smart Boxing, and upload your box measurements.
Go to the Inventory tab and upload your product measurements .
Activate cart services
Go to the Smart Boxing tab and activate Smart Boxing

Once you've Smart Boxing is ready, our platform will tell you what packaging to use to ship your products.

Manage Risks Using a Multicarrier Solution

One of the biggest frustrations for ecommerce owners is suppliers negatively impacting their brand. From a fulfilment perspective, it could be delays in getting the parcel to the customer or the lack of flexibility around shipping packages.

You instantly de-risk your business when you use a multicarrier shipping solution like Interparcel. You can choose from dozens of renowned courier companies based on price or speed of delivery. There are even choices you can make around standard and express delivery. You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket again.

Provide Tracking Notifications

A message you might regularly receive from customers is "where is my parcel?" During a peak sales season, your inbox can get flooded with this enquiry. It could take a whole day to respond to each and every one of them when you consider that you have to find out where their package is.

As part of your shipping strategy, you should plan how to manage these enquiries. One solution is the Interparcel Branded Tracking portal. You can include a link with all purchases so customers can track where their parcel is at all times. You can even brand it in your colour scheme and offer vouchers to entice them to shop with you again.

Get Your Shipping Strategy Ready

The peak sales season will come sooner than you think. The faster you create a shipping strategy, the smoother your fulfilment will be during this busy period. At the same time, you'll provide a better customer experience, have more hours to focus on more critical aspects of your business, and won't spend more than you need to on delivery.

With Interparcel's multicarrier solutions, you can implement an effective shipping strategy that allows you to thrive in the peak sales season. From Smart Boxing to the Branded Tracking portal, we have everything you need to get a parcel into your customer's hands as soon as possible. Check out our full suite of shipping solutions here!