Increase Your Ecom Conversions Just by Clarifying Shipping Times

Irene Wanja | Nov 08, 2021

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Alright, welcome back! We are still talking about checkout optimization, and in this video, we’re talking about being clear about your shipping times.

There’s nothing worse than ordering something from a store, and two weeks later you’re wondering where your item is. Like, “I ordered this thing two weeks ago, where is this?” So, they don’t know if they’re shipping from China, or if their order went missing, or if they ever got the order, or if you just took their money. I mean, there are a lot of different circumstances out there that have made this reasoning possible, because there are people that take your money and don’t ever deliver anything, or it does ship from China and you thought it was going to take a week but it’s taking three weeks, and all these other variables that have a lot of people mistrust online stores.

Obviously, when you go into a physical store, you grab your item and you leave with it. But when you order online, you’re trusting that the item you’re ordering is going to show up. And there’s a chance that it won’t. Especially with USPS, there’s definitely a chance that it won’t. So, you want to be clear about the shipping times and when they can expect to receive their item, and this is a great way of doing that.

This video is going to be kind of a two-parter because there’s a way that I’m going to show you that you’ll need a developer to code it in. Or, you can do something like this that you’re seeing on your screen, and you can actually do this yourself inside of your shipping options. So, the way that I show you will take a developer to do, but you can also do something like this on your own. So, I’ll show you both of those ways. This will be kind of a two-parter video, which kind of goes off of the typical, but it is what it is. So, it’ll be really quick and easy to do.

So let’s take a look at an example of a store that’s doing this a really great way. 

This store is doing the same thing that I told you. They’re saying, “USPS First-Class Mail.” They’re even telling you who’s delivering it, who the provider is. So it’s USPS first class mail, and it’s going to arrive in five to seven business days. So that’s what you can expect: five to seven business days, and $5.99 is the cost.

And then option two is highlighted. So, this is the part that, if you decide to do something similar to this, it’s going to take a developer to do.

So, this is highlighted, and it says, “USPS Priority Mail (Expedited Fast Shipping +FREE Delivery Insurance) 3-5 business days.” So, not only does it tell you, “Hey, this is the length of time that it’s going to take to get to you,” but “We’re also going to throw in a delivery service valued at $18.” Having insurance on your order is a huge, huge peace-of-mind offer because you don’t know … Even if you did give the right address, it can get stolen off your porch, it can get damaged on the way there. Depending on what your item is, there are a lot of different circumstances that can cause you to have a bad experience. And you, as the business owner, can say, “Well, you gave us the wrong address” or “It’s not our responsibility if your order got damaged on the way, that’s the post office’s job to keep it safe.” You have that option to say, “We sent you the package that you ordered, and I’m sorry it got damaged, or that it’s missing, or that you gave us the wrong address, but that’s not really our fault … Once it leaves our warehouse, it’s out of our hands. And you can give your customer that experience, or you can say, “I’m going to eat the cost on this and send them a new one. Hopefully that one arrives and doesn’t get damaged as well.” But you can only do that so many times before you start taking a huge loss, right?

So, it’s peace of mind for both of you to do an offer like this. And it tells them the value and gives them the peace of mind, which is going to be a huge conversion strategy. There’s absolutely no question. Yes, I’m paying a little bit more here, but there’s absolutely no question that it’s going to arrive in a good amount of time, and that if it doesn’t arrive or gets damaged, I’m covered. So that’s huge. But you do have to have something like this coded in if you’re going to do a similar option like this. You’d have to have a developer code that into your theme. OK?

But if you want to do this yourself and have just the text that says, “Hey, this is USPS First-Class Mail (5-7 business days), etc., you can do something like that on your own. What you want to do is go into your shipping. Under “Settings,” you go to your shipping section, so “Shipping and delivery.” Go into here and you can choose whatever rate you want. The rate that’s showing right now on my shipping is 5-8 business days. It says, “Economy, 5-8 business days.” So it does give them an idea. And you can see here that I changed this one to say, “USPS priority (2-3 business days).”

And so, if I want to change this to say, “USPS, three to four business days” or “five to seven business days” or whatever, then what you want to do is you just go into the little three dots next to the price and hit “Edit rate.” And then all you gotta do is go into “Custom flat rate (no shipping time)” and name the rate whatever you want. So, this is going to name the rate “USPS First-Class (5-7 business days).” And it says, “You haven’t used this name before. Use the same rate names everywhere to add together, yada yada, yada.” So you can see here, I did that, and this is $4.90. It’s based on weight from zero to 0.9 pounds, etc. And that is done.

So, after I do that, I’m gonna go ahead and hit “Save”—we’ll let that save really quick—and then you can see how that shows up inside of my shipping. So I’m gonna go ahead and just refresh that. Now you can see here it says, “USPS First-Class Mail (5-7 business days)” or “USPS Priority (2-3 business days).”

So that is how that works. You can change that yourself, but if you want to do something more custom, like what they’re doing below, then that would require a developer.

Alrighty, I hope you found this video helpful, and we’ll see you on the next one!

Hey, Tanner Larson here, CEO of Build Grow Scale. And if you enjoyed the BGS video you just finished and you’d like to see about getting our help to help you build, grow, and scale your ecommerce business, then head over to workwithbgs.com.