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[Badalou]

Is free shipping an incentive for you to buy? Do you offer it? Just read in entrepreneur magazine a survey shows that 74% is shoppers buy from an on line companies because they offer free shipping. But you know many companies work on small margins and it isn't always easy. Can you build it in price? Then you have the risk of making it look like you are inflating the price. If you offer free shipping have you found it is a plus. If you do then what method do you offer free, USPS, UPS, FedEx?

[American logoZ]

As a consumer, free shipping catches my attention, but I am a bit wary of "free" and do my pricing homework to ensure I'm not getting gouged.   I am offended by handling fees.  And it ticks me off when shipping is unknown or inaccurate.  It is very important to know my costs when placing an order.

[tiger3000]

We look at the total lowest cost of say two companies
with and with out free shipping on the same item.
We ship by USPS, but get most things shipped in by UPS.
  USPS for shipping and recieving gives us 6 days
instead of just 5. Works for us.

 

[uncle remus]

If 2 places have the same stuff & the prices are close, if one offers free shipping then thats where i purchase from...for example coastal & conde offer basically the same things, but coastal offers free shipping for orders over $199, so i buy most of my dye-sub stuff from coastal.
What really chaps me is places that will not tell me shipping costs when i order, i refuse to order from them. I also do not like handling fees....
Clothing suppliers can really make me mad sometimes, they offer free shipping over a certain amount, but if you include 1 white shirt or something on closeout then you no longer recieve free shipping..
On my e-commerce site, I have offered free shipping before, but currently i do charge shipping. I would set-up free shipping over a certain amount, but i have not figured out how to do that with my new cart.
We ship 98% of the time via USPS, cause we are located in a rural area & UPS wants $10 to come pick up.

[tiger3000]

   "places that will not tell me shipping costs when i order, i refuse to order from them. I also do not like handling fees"

  I'm agree with you on that statement uncle.

[precisioneng]

I only ship USPS and offer FREE shipping on orders of $75.00 or more. Been working great for me.

[EnMartian]

We've tried free shipping in the past,  but we don't offer it as a regular thing.  Sometimes we'll do a free shipping special,  but actually we've found percent off sales tend to do better.  Everyone says they want free shipping,  but it doesn't seem to motivate our customers as well as other types of specials do. 

EnMart ships via Fed Ex.

[knifemaker3]

Lou,
Look at your bottom line before offering free shipping.  What I mean is sometimes you are better off to give a percentage off than offering free shipping.

Say someone buys an item off of you that you charge $25 for.  You have to ship and shipping cost you $5 (haven't shipped priority in awhile so I may be off on rate but you get the picture).

Now you are getting $20 for your product.  But, if you offer 10% discount without free shipping you would get $22.5 for your product.

Free shipping doesn't always get their attention as much as a percentage off IMHO.  But, I may be wrong..... plus it could cost your bottom line more than what you would offset in sales by offering free shipping.

Maybe try it for a period of time and then offer a percentage off for a period of time for comparison?

[boomerbabe]

I will often look for free shipping, but I'm cheap. My question though is this: Where do you add the cost of your packing materials and labor? Do you add to the shipping costs or the item cost or give it the name of handling fee? I am never sure how or where to get back this expense. Usually I eat it.

[roxanneupnorth]

Like any business expense, it is figured into the price of what you are selling....Some show it as a separate line items and some have enough of markup on their products that they hide it....