Shipping options

[Helen27]

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Hi all,

I know this has been posted about recently, in fact a post at the top relates to it. I had a slightly different slant to my question so I thought I would post it anyway.

So I’m going to be starting an online store – and like many people are getting stuck on shipping options. Auspost seems to be the way to go….I think, although I haven’t investigated courier companies to well yet.

Auspost has pre-paid boxes, (which I will need to ship in boxes not the satchels) but these costs a couple of dollars just for the box, then on top of that the actual sending cost is around $15…. I’m worried this high cost will put customers off, and I probably can’t absorb that cost and still make a profit. Plus i am unsure if my items will fit into these boxes (some are larger items but light).
If I box things myself will this be cheaper or more expensive?
How would I then calculate shipping for customers during the order, without taking it up to the post office to be weighed first? Plus when I used a shipping calculator to estimate it seemed like it would cost a fortune! Customer’s aren’t going to make small ($50-$100) sales, and be willing to pay $24-$30 on the order!

How do other online businesses handle shipping? Are there other auspost options I haven’t considered? Would a courier company be better for me?

[Hatching_It]

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HI Helen,

Depending on your shopping cart you will be able to set the dimensions and weight and it will connect to AusPost to generate custom shipping prices depending on the visitors postcode.

Something to be weary of here though is that it usually treats products separately so may total your product cubic weight up too much (versus putting them together in a big box)

In my store that I’m building I’m basing my pricing off an average cost of posting from Canberra to Adelaide and just winning or losing on the postage costs depending on where the customer is. When it’s more expensive I use the prepaid satchels and put the box inside it.

Have you looked at how your competitors are doing it? This will be a good indicator.

Maclean

[Helen27]

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My competitor offers a few different shipping options, all at set prices, fastway courier, express post or bulky item road freight (which they don’t specify), with s cost listed for each option. I guess maybe like you they are just going off an average delivery amount from A to B, and wearing the difference.

I just discovered interparcel.com.au through another thread, I could see this site being a huge help since it compares methods of shipping. Toll seems to be the cheapest out of the options surveyed when I did a few test calculations.

I’m excited to get this up and running, but I need to sell my current business first (a bricks and mortar, very full on business) to get the funds for this online business.

What does your business sell?

[Hatching_It]

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Interparcel looks interesting, I’ve not seen them before. We use Temando which are the same but they integrate with eBay and our Magento store automatically.

We’re not focusing on a particular niche or anything, we’re attempting to only stock high profit items and we don’t care what they are, just as long as they have proven sales history and profit. (It sounds shallow but we’re part of a bit of an eBay experiment and I plan on assisting others in working from home once I have some proven business)

Ecommerce is the way of the future (I’m not just saying this as someone who has worked in the industry for 7 years), for the majority of the things I buy I’d rather buy them from home and I’m sure the person I’m buying from would rather be as well!

Maclean

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