AZ Digitals Blog

There are many essential aspects that make or break a successful e-commerce business. A supply of high-quality products, an effective marketing strategy, great packaging – you name it. No less important is figuring out how to ship your product from point A to point B, at the same time keeping the shipping costs for both parties as minimal as possible.

Shipping costs not only affect the profitability of your business, but they are also the number one reason why online customers abandon their shopping carts. All the more reason for keeping them under control as much as all other operating costs.

To calculate your shipping costs, or even just estimate the approximate price to ship a given package, you will be needing to consider the following factors. Let’s start with:

Package dimensions and weight

This is one of the main determining factors for your shipping costs. To put it simply, the larger the package, the more you’ll have to pay for shipping. The same goes for package weight – a heavier package will cost more to be delivered.

While you cannot affect the weight, you do have a say over what type of packaging to send it in. The package size should be big enough to hold your products, but relatively smaller to protect your product from unnecessary shaking and damage.

A good idea is to stock several package sizes and packaging materials so that you can select the most appropriate for each of your products.

Distance

Apart from the size and weight of the package, the departing location and destination are also an important cost factor. The further the package travels, the higher the cost of shipping.

To see how distance will affect your shipping costs, you can use an online calculator – like the one on eShipper, a Canadian shipping company that provides shipping solutions across Canada, the US, and internationally.

Or create your own free eShipper online account to get access to a more extensive calculator where you’ll be able to see a list of competitive rates from trusted carriers like FedEx, UPS, and others, see a breakdown of prices and compare them by carrier, service, estimated transit time, etc.

Regarding the distance traveled, it isn’t much you can do here. However, when your business grows big enough, it might be time to start thinking about using a fulfillment warehouse by analyzing past sales and their destinations, reducing your shipping costs overall.

Tracking & Insurance

Insurance and tracking are two very important considerations that offer a great deal of security but might increase your total shipping rates.

Tracking almost always comes at some additional cost. At the same time, it can be important for not only proving you sent the package but also for the customer experience.

In the case of most carriers, insurance and tracking is relatively inexpensive and covers your expenses in case one of your packages gets lost or damaged. Shipping services like UPS offer complimentary coverage, but only cover your merchandise up to a certain amount.

For low-value, high volume shipments, consider using eShipper’s SmartPost tracking that offers competitive prices for full tracking to 28 countries and domestic.

If you’re shipping items of higher value or packages that are easy to break, consider purchasing additional insurance or even using a third-party insurance provider like ShipSurance or Insureship that will cover all your packages automatically.

Also, read the related blog: CONVENIENCE RETAILERS WELCOME TO LOWER CREDIT CARD FEES

Customs & Duties

If you’re selling across international borders, one of the biggest challenges you’ll face is dealing with customs and duties.

Usually, when there are additional customs fees or taxes involved upon the arrival of the package, your customer will be responsible for them. To avoid confusion, include that information on your website, for example, a shipping policy page. Here’s an example by a brand that creates inspirational posters:

International Shipping Costs
Shipments outside of the USA may incur customs fees depending on your country of residence. The fee may vary depending on your order value, country limits, and other factors.

Startup Vitamins does not take responsibility for possible fees.

Make sure to explain as clearly that any taxes or duty fees are shipping costs that are beyond your control and not something you will earn a commission from.
To get an idea of what fees might occur, check out resources like:

1. The USPS Customs Information

2. UPS Import and Export Guide
3. FedEx Guide to Customs
4. Canada Post Customs & Duties Information

Handling

If you have employees handling your package prior to shipping, remember to account for this when determining total shipping costs. Even if your business is a solo job – your own time is valuable too.

To figure out handling shipping costs, there’s a simple formula that you can use. Multiply how long it takes to package an item and divide that by 60. Then, multiply the number you got by an hourly wage.
•If it takes 20 minutes to package and send an item, divide that by 60 and get 0.33. If the hourly wage in your company is $10/hour, multiply that by 0.33 and get handling costs – $3.30.

Conclusion

As you can see, figuring out your shipping costs is not as simple as you may think, as there are many changing variables along the way.

If you need any help, you’re welcome to contact us at eShipper for recommendations on what packaging might be the most suitable, yet money-saving to keep shipping costs on the down low and for other tips and tricks for best shipping experience.

This piece is a guest blog written by a representative from Arka, the packaging experts who take a highly personalized approach in creating custom packaging for your brand while making it their mission to give you both affordable pricing, and quick turn-around time.

A new shopping platform announced at the World Economic Forum aims to change the way consumers buy many brand-name products. Loop, like the platform, is called. It would do away with disposable containers for items such as shampoo and laundry detergents. These are from some of the world’s biggest manufacturers. The delivery is always unique i.e. to be delivered in sleek and reusable containers. Washed and refilled, these will be picked up at your door.

“Loop is about the future of consumption. And one of the tenets is that garbage shouldn’t exist,” says Tom Szaky. TerraCycle, it is a NewJersey based international re-cycling company and Tom Szaky is the CEO. TerraCycle is the company behind Loop.

“Removing plastics from the ocean is not enough. We need to get at the whole idea of disposability and un-reusable items,” says Szaky. “We’re going back to the milkman model of the 1950s. You buy the milk but the milk company owns the bottle. This is the bottle that you leave in the milk box to be picked up when you’re done with it.”

Companies partnering with Loop include Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, and other top brands.

“Our goal is that by 2030, all of our packagings will be reusable or recyclable,” says Virginie Helias, vice-president, and chief sustainability officer at Procter & Gamble. Loop, she says, “is a very new idea and somewhat risky because no one has tried it. But the response has been very positive. To be part of the pilot project 10 of our brands have been selected.  We will implement with a plan to add more later pending positive results.”
Pantene shampoo, for instance, “will come in a beautifully decorated, lightweight-aluminum pump container,” Helias says. “Tide in the U.S. will come in a stainless-steel bottle with a durable twist cap. Cascade will come in ultra-durable packaging. Crest mouthwash will come in a glass bottle. The idea is ultra-durability, convenience, and also ultra-luxurious packaging.”

Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream. Delivered in stainless-steel tub and is double-walled with a posh exterior. Hence the product is a Nestle product, one of the biggest brands. For longer hours and having more impact, the designing of the cup is such that it keeps the ice cream cold.

Placed in un-reusable and durable diaper containers. It started only in Paris soiled diapers can be a replacement. This is instead of the dirty disposable diapers t landfills. Loop will replace the old one with a clean empty one. This is when the container is all filled up and needs replacement. New technology allows Loop to process and recycle the dirty diapers, something TerraCycle has already started doing in Amsterdam.

“We want to strive for Zero Waste at both the production and consumption level,” says Laurent Freixe, CEO of the Americas Region of Nestlé, which hopes to do away with all its non-recyclable packaging by 2025. “Loop is so innovative that we felt we had to be a part of it and learn from it.”

The rise of the “Zero Waste” movement and concern about the environment has led many businesses to try to reduce packaging and un-reusable containers. The loop is unusual in its international scope and the size of the companies participating.

Initially, Loop will offer about 300 products, with plans to add to the list later. According to TerraCycle, partners include Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever, Mars Petcare, The Clorox Company, The Body Shop, Coca-Cola, Mondelez International, Danone, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, BIC, Nature’s Path, Thousand Fell, Greenhouse, Grilliance, Preserve, Carrefour, UPS and the sustainable-resource management company Suez.

Greenpeace joined in a panel about sustainable consumption. Loop was officially announced on Thursday in Davos, Switzerland. Initially, Greenpeace was also under criticism for creating much of the plastic waste that is a hazard for the World’s oceans.  Jennifer Morgan, the international executive director of Greenpeace, said beforehand, “While Greenpeace welcomes the aim of the Loop Alliance to move away from throwaway culture and disposability. What the platform will mean for the environment depends on whether corporations worldwide are actually ready to change their business models, or if this effort just becomes a distracting side project to generate positive PR.”

She warned that most businesses behind the initiative are still expanding the production of single-use plastic. The company promised more sustainable, un-reusable & durable packaging. This is in response to their earlier promises towards packaging and the dedication of the company’s representative.

Paris and its suburbs, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York is where Loop is ready to launch in spring. In the form of simplistic and specifically designed totes for shipping. With carefully delivering at the customer’s home, an easy approach. Now from the Loop website, Zero-Waste products will be the shopper’s best choice. Eventually, at participating retailers, such as Carrefour grocery stores in Paris.

Loop intends to expand to the U.S. West Coast, Toronto, and the United Kingdom by the end of this year or early 2020, followed by Japan– ideally in time for the 2020 Olympics, Szaky says.

“It means more delivery trucks, but far fewer garbage trucks,” he says.

A year after Amazon opened its first cashier-less store, startups and retailers are racing to get similar technology in stores throughout the world, letting shoppers buy groceries without waiting in line.

If they work, cashier-less stores will not only save time but maybe money too. From cameras and sensors, the stores will know when shoppers pick up a product and put it down, and can send them a discount to tempt them to buy it. Merchants will receive more insights into how people shop. They can create more space for merchandise, better track when shelves need replenishing and draw more business from the hordes of customers who detest long lines.

But the monitoring system underlying cashier-less technology is bound to raise new privacy issues and worries about customer data falling into the wrong hands, especially if stores deploy facial recognition software in the omnipresent cameras watching shoppers.

“It could be scary, and it could be creepy” says Peter Trepp, the CEO of an LA based company that so far has only sold its facial recognition tools to retailers trying to identify shoplifters and other criminals. “But if it’s used to give people a 30% coupon on something they want that is going to be a nice benefit. That kind of experience will help people embrace the technology.”

Amazon has a head start in the U.S, opening 10 convenience stores in three cities: Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. The stores sell salads and sandwiches for lunch, everyday items such as toilet paper and Advil, and groceries such as Cheerios and raw ground beef.

Shoppers scan an app to enter the Amazon Go store, grab what they want and walk out. Cameras and sensors on the ceiling track what’s taken so their credit or debit cards are automatically charged when they leave. Shoppers will know how long it took to shop, since Amazon sends an alert with their shopping time.
A consumer who runs a technology startup said it reminded him of the first time he rode an Uber. “You just know it’s going to be the future,” he said.

Amazon doesn’t say how much money its cashier-less stores make. But analysts from RBC Capital Markets recently visited Amazon Go’s two San Francisco stores to come up with a number. Based on their observations of traffic patterns, they estimated about 400 to 700 customers per day will visit each of the roughly 2,000-sq.-ft. Amazon Go stores, generating sales of $1.1 million to $2 million annually, assuming an average purchase of $10. At the high end of that range, it works out to twice the sales of a typical U.S convenience store, RBC calculated.

Catching-up surrounding the idea
Several startups are pitching technology to retailers who want to create Amazon Go-like stores of their own. One of the companies, called AiFi, said it had signed deals with the Carrefour chain in France and Zabka convenience stores in Poland. Others, including Zippin, Grabandgo, Trigo Vision and Inokyo, said they were negotiating deals with retailers in the U.S and other parts of the world, though none were ready to identify them yet.

“Once a few big retail chains begin to deploy this technology, it’s going to snowball and we will see more and more of them doing it,” says Michael Suswai, co-founder of Standard Cognition, another cashier-less technology startup.

So far, companies working on the technology are finding ways to do without facial recognition. Their systems rely on cameras for identifying objects rather than people.

Amazon appears the most likely to make cashier-less stores a more common sight, partly because it can afford to open stores with the technology already built into them, given its current market value of about $800 billion, ranking among the most valuable companies in the world.

But the country’s biggest retailers are also trying to speed up the shopping process. Sam’s Club, the warehouse-style club owned by Walmart, opened a test store that has no cashiers. Instead, shoppers use their smartphones to scan products and pay. 7-Eleven is testing something similar at 14 stores in Dallas.

As cashier-less stores become more common, there will likely be more political pressure to ensure they still offer an option to pay by cash to avoid discriminating against lower-income consumers without bank accounts and credit cards. In anticipation of that likelihood, Standard Cognition already has set up a separate kiosk for all-cash purchases in its test store.

RBC said it believed Amazon would eventually introduce its cashier-less technology in its Whole Foods supermarkets, though Amazon said it had no plans to do so. For now, Amazon seems to have its eye on smaller stores: Late last year it introduced a 450-square-foot version of Amazon Go that can be plopped into office buildings or hospitals.

We can assume a possibility that within five years, just about everyone will have experienced what autonomous checkout is. And within 10 years, regular checkout stands might be very rare.

7-Eleven Inc. announced that participating stores in Canada will now accept Chinese mobile payment systems Alipay and WeChat Pay. The world’s largest convenience retailer is collaborating with cross-border mobile payment company and market leader CITCON. Alipay and WeChat Pay will now be available at 35 select locations. These are different locations in Vancouver and Toronto, with plans for expansion in next few months.

7-ELEVEN & DIGITAL PAYMENTS:

“Digital Payments are on the rise and consumers across the world are embracing them for convenience. 7-Eleven is redefining convenience for our customers across the globe which includes providing mobile payment solutions,” said Gurmeet Singh, Chief Digital Officer & Chief Information Officer of 7-Eleven. “With 67,000 stores worldwide, Alipay and WeChat Pay are just one of the many solutions that we provide. Our global consumers so they can enjoy a frictionless experience in our stores. 7-Eleven is the first convenience retailer to provide Alipay and WeChat Pay mobile payment solutions in Canada. In addition to this, we continue to drive digital transformation with the latest in consumer-facing mobile technology.”

Wei Jiang, President and COO of CITCON, explains, “Consumers today are increasingly relying on mobile to meet their needs. The explosion of mobile usage and QR-based mobile solutions offer opportunities for retailers. These are opportunities to provide an engaging and new retail experience. Redefining Convenience in Canada, we have a huge thrill of working together with 7-Eleven.”

7-ELEVEN GIVING A UNIQUE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE:

In an increasingly digital world, 7-Eleven continues to push for solutions that elevate their customers’ experience. For Chinese consumers, mobile payments are the norm—cash and even bank cards are a thing of the past. By implementing Alipay and WeChat Pay, China’s leading mobile payment platforms. The company 7-Eleven is providing residents and tourists with an easy and familiar way to complete transactions abroad.  Also, setting a new standard for Canadian retailers.

“7-Eleven is no stranger to firsts,” said Doug Rosencrans, VP and General Manager of 7-Eleven Canada. “7-Eleven has always sought out innovative ways to provide customers with convenience. Its Customer satisfaction, How they like it, and when they like it. Alipay and WeChat Pay are just another way we are enhancing the customer experience.”

HOW MOBILE IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF CONVENIENCE?

Mobile is shaping the future of convenience every day. 7-Eleven is working to stay ahead of the curve by focusing on its services. This is around mobile pay apps and other innovative convenience solutions. Facilitating transactions through mobile technology will provide an enhanced convenience experience for 7-Eleven Canada’s customers.

“Alipay looks forward to supporting 7-Eleven in providing a seamless experience for Chinese consumers as they visit North America. Also, offering further convenience in the food and beverage space along their routes so they can travel with ease. We are extremely excited to be part of this activation. Hence, we look forward to collaborating with 7-Eleven and CITCON,” said Yulei Wang, General Manager, Alipay North America.

7-ELEVEN & THE E-COMMERCE COMPANIES:

About 7-Eleven, Inc.

7 Eleven, Inc. is the premier name and largest chain in the convenience retailing industry. Based in Dallas, Texas, 7 Eleven operates, franchises and/or licenses more than 67,000 stores. These 7-Eleven stores are in 17 countries. These countries include 11,800 in North America. Find out more about 7-Eleven Canada at www.7-Eleven.ca CIO, CTO & Developer Resources About CITCON

About CITCON
CITCON is a cross-border mobile payment and marketing solution leader, enabling merchants to accept QR-based mobile wallets in-store and online on a global scale. Among the payment options supported by CITCON, Alipay and WeChat Pay. These are two of the most popular wallets with over one billion active consumers. On top of payments, CITCON also allows merchants to run marketing and loyalty campaigns through their partner network. Find out more about CITCON at www.citcon.com

About Alipay
Operated by Ant Financial Services Group, Alipay is the world’s leading mobile and online payment platform. Launched in 2004, Alipay has evolved from a digital wallet to a lifestyle enabler. In addition to online payments, Alipay is expanding to in-store offline payments both inside and outside of China. Alipay’s in-store payment service covers over 40 countries and regions across the world and supports 27 currencies currently. Alipay works with over 250 overseas financial institutions and payment solution providers. They enable cross-border payments for Chinese travelling overseas. As well as for overseas customers who purchase products from Chinese e-commerce sites. Connect with Alipay on Twitter.