If I include free shipping, will it automatically increase my sales? Does free shipping make people buy more?
These are a couple questions that I have been asked about the free shipping topic. Unfortunately, the answer is, it depends… With Amazon selling so many things people have been accustomed to being able to get free shipping on a great deal of their orders at a lower dollar amount. Amazon does a fantastic job of customer service with free shipping, easy returns, and ease of shopping.
Just adding free shipping on a product that we offer does not mean that will automatically generate more sales. We need to look at our products that we are offering and understand the current customer buying habits first. How often do we receive returning customer purchases for the same product. Who is buying our product. Why are they buying the product again and again.
Before we just pull the trigger of offering free shipping, we should understand what our business is doing and understand our customers. This will help us understand if free shipping is worth it. Simply adding free shipping is not going to be the end all save all either.
We may need to know how to get customers to buy add on products so that we can generate more sales as well. This means that we will need to set the dollar amount high enough to get add on sales. If we simply add free shipping for one product we will lose the opportunity to sell more accessory products to our customers that they may be missing out on.
We likely have a great product line that the customers have not tapped into yet so we need to find ways to get them to buy more or our offerings. Typically add on products that are smaller in purchase price have higher profit margins as well. How can we entice others to buy these add on products.
Amazon in their app makes it so easy to get to the dollar amount by getting customers to order multiple things. They also offer prime service subscriptions so that people can get their orders faster, but the customers pay for this. Amazon also makes it easy to return products which is why people keep coming back.
It revolves around customer service. How we serve the customer affects our sales more than free shipping could ever do. If we want to generate more sales, the customer experience with us has to be high. The customer has to know that we are there to help them be the hero of their own story. If we do that then we will win more sales.
Free shipping alone will not drive more sales unless we are doing other things to enable the customer to win when they do business with us.
How can we serve them better should be the filter we use to drive more sales.
“Businesses wonder why it is still hard to be thought of as the brand of choice with customers. How can our business make more profitable transactions and stay out of the commodity battle with low profits? I equip your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate explosive revenues with greater profits!”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lWIVasmkFsoYL4h0AqIZgH6LC3qaw_gI/view?usp=sharing – client profile sheet
https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Process-Uncovered-Success-Influence/dp/0578421518 - Book