Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

[AdamB]

Hi everyone!

We’re back with the next installment in our “get expert advice” series. This time, we’re focusing specifically on shipping. 📦 📦 📦 

The holidays are right around the corner, and this is a great time to make sure you have your shipping rules, box sizes, and rates ready to go for all those holiday orders.

Not sure how to handle boxes when you have items of very different sizes? Unsure of how to set up rates to provide the best prices for yourself and customers? Our resident shipping expert @BernadetteA will be on hand to answer your questions between Today and Thursday, October 28th.

If you’d like advice on all things shipping with your online store, post your question below! 👇

[sgf]

I'm new to Square ecommerce.  I'm not sure what the best way to set up my shipping rates is.  Right now I have set up as Free Shipping and trying to incorporate each individual items shipping with the listed price.  I have items of all different sizes and weights, from a single trading card to a full set of fine china dishes.  How would you suggest setting up shipping rates for these types of items, and how do I charge different shipping rates for these items for international packages?

[BernadetteA]

Welcome @sgf  😊 The first thing I would suggest is outlining where you plan on shipping to, and research your pricing points through each carrier. Second step is to decide which rule makes the most sense for your store. Weight based shipping is one of my favorite options, but I do see a lot of stores that will use flat rate shipping, or they will determine a shipping price point by the dollar amount of the cart. If you are just starting out this may be a bit more difficult to determine, but the good thing is that you can always adjust your shipping rules if you start to notice a discrepancy in what you charge, and what you ultimately have to pay for the labels.

As far as international shipping goes, you would need to add a new shipping profile set to “default” and then select the country you wish to ship to. You can add several countries, or create a separate profiles for individual countries if there’s a significant price difference in shipping rates. 

Edit to add

You can also create separate profiles for US states. Edit your current default shipping rule for the US, and then click on your shipping rule to edit the states. Remove any states that you wish to use in a new profile by unchecking the box next to the state, then save the rule.

Now when you add a new default rule you’ll be able to select the United States, and then select the states for the new rule. You can repeat this process as many times as you need. I think this a great way to split up the US by regions since it will cost you less to ship within your state or states near to you, compared to shipping to the opposite side of the country based on where you are located.

[TRC2020]

I'd like to know when Real Time Shipping is actually going to work.  It doesn't take into consideration actual volume of your items, so it overcharges assuming larger boxes are required than actually are required.  We are paying for RTS only for International, as there is no other option, but have chosen to use flat rate, where I control the rate by weight.  Even then, your people have said my shipping is expertly set up, but I still have it glitch.  The last was that it defaulted to a lower rate, when it clearly should have been in a higher weight category.  Your team had not idea why it was doing that.  They sent it to an internal team, and I never heard anything since.

[BernadetteA]

Hi @TRC2020 Real Time Shipping can only calculate the shopping cart with one box size. It will either use the default box you have setup under Shipping > Advanced Settings, OR it will use the largest assigned box based on the items in the cart.

I'm sorry to hear you are having some trouble getting this to work for your site. I'll take a look into your previous support request, and will send you a follow message once I hear back from the team.

[BeadedLioness]

I typically ship using bubble mailers and double bubble wrap if many items are purchased. To date, all items made it safely. My items are really small but I am considering using boxes due to increased holiday mail and chance of broken items. I already add insurance to first class items. I charge a flat rate for shipping but if I go to boxes, that may increase. I only ship in the US at this point. 

Will insurance on first class and priority mail cover broken items? Will using boxes instead of bubble mailers prevent broken items? 

[BernadetteA]

Hi @BeadedLioness (love your name, btw) 😊

It sounds like the bubble mailers and wrap are already working out for you, but I do understand the concern that comes with holiday shipping. Have you tried pricing out the difference between the mailer and a box? A box option sounds more sturdy, but will you need more filler or padding? Does this raise your shipping cost significantly?

For the insurance question, my understanding is that as long as the shipments are properly packaged and clearly marked, you should be covered for broken items with the insurance option. Although, I do recommend verifying this with your shipping provider as I'm sure there's some fine print somewhere.

[grovetealounge]

What's the best/easiest way to get the best shipping rates? Is the Shippo master UPS account the best there is to offer? Or should I be looking somewhere else (either directly with UPS/FedEx or another shipping platform? I pass on all shipping costs to customers, but want to make sure I'm not only getting them their items as fast as possible, but also at a competitive rate.  My understanding is that the Ship Master UPS account isn't able to be linked to our Square online store so we aren't able to make the most of it?

[collinsandcoupe]

I have been able to link my shippo account to UPS and FedEx by calling their customer service (i think?) and that lowered my rates a bit. Give it a try. It's either call shippo to link the accounts or call UPS/FedEx but I can't remember what I did. You do have to have an account set up with all the carriers though.

[BernadetteA]

Hey @grovetealounge 🌊 Did you sign up for a UPS account through Square? I do not believe it is possible to use Shippo's master UPS account, but I'll get some clarification on that. As @collinsandcoupe mentioned, you can also use your own UPS negotiated rates. You would need to have an active invoice from UPS (within the past 90 days) in order for the system to reflect the proper rates.

[grovetealounge]

Grove Tea Lounge is a cafe in Midland, MI that I own. While we do ship lots of retail-type goods (shirts, hats, mugs, etc), we also have been testing out shipping of perishable goods where we include 1-time use freezer packs.  When people order items from us, they typically are buying a few different items are varying weights and sizes.  The extra cost of the freezer packs (and the extra weight they add) plus the faster shipping times (at minimum we only ship 3-day UPS or faster and only ship Mon-Wed to ensure goods arrive no later than Saturday) make for a lot of variables to take into account with efficient shipping. Any general recommendations for shipping perishable goods that need to be kept cold? More specifically, I'd love to hear pro tips on best practices for boxes and packaging multiple items of varying shapes/sizes/weights to keep the number of boxes to a minimum, shorten delivery time and reduce shipping costs

[BernadetteA]

Hey again! I'll have to circle back to this one because I want to take a look at your shipping rules to get a better understanding of your current setup. 😊

[grovetealounge]

How do people determine when to offer free shipping? I see lots of places offering free shipping if an order exceeds a certain dollar amount (I.e. Free shipping on orders of $50+ or $100+).  Any tips on how to calculate a reasonable threshold where my customers are getting a good deal and are enticed to add that "one more thing" to their order to qualify for free shipping without cannibalizing all my profits by covering the shipping costs?

[BernadetteA]

Hi @grovetealounge Sorry for missing this! It didn't show up for me initially. 🤔

As a consumer, I will 9/10 times add more items to my cart to reach free shipping status. 😆I think it's smart for you to want to consider this, and I also recommend adding a notification bar or pop up to your site once you have determined if you will add the option to your site. 

Have you tried searching for a calculator online for determining the threshold? I'll see if I can find one for you.  

[grovetealounge]

Thank you!

[grovetealounge]

I've found you can get lots of free boxes and envelopes of various sizes from USPS for free.  I had a post office employee tip me off to this and you can order them online! One day they just show up and drop a stack of flat boxes off at your doorstep 🙂 It's honestly super helpful in cutting down costs as we are just starting to figure out how to make shipping a reality for us and do it consistently (most orders are friends/family that live far away or local customers who moved away).  But this is only true if we use the boxes to ship via UPS or FedEx

The issue I run into is that if I use those boxes to ship through USPS, I am REQUIRED to pay for whatever shipping is printed on the box.  For example - if I have a box that is a flat rate box but someone pays for first class mail, I have to cover the difference because the post office won't accept my flat rate package with a first class shipping label on it.

So my question is this - what's the best source for durable and reliable boxes and other packaging materials that is also cost effective? ULINE? Or someplace else?

My own bonus tip for others: In addition to the free boxes from USPS, I was also able to snag a few free rolls of blank shipping labels from our local UPS store that are heat-transfer so I can use with a very solid Rollo printer that I bought!  It never hurts to ask these shipping/logistics companies if they have a free roll or box of stuff you can use for shipping 🙂

[keicollective]

We use EcoEnclose for all our purchased shipping materials. The padded mailers are what we use most, but their boxes are also very nice, affordable, and they are all eco friendly! As you scale up, they also have customization options so you can brand your boxes too. 

As part of our commitment to sustainability, we also reuse all the shipping materials we receive from vendors, including those pesky flat rate boxes. We wrap them in kraft paper before adding our shipping label to them so that we don't get charged the flat rate shipping fee. 

Hope the info helps! 

-Andrea 

[grovetealounge]

Thanks for the suggestion!  I'll definitely give EcoEnclose a look

also - love the tip for wrapping the flat rate boxes in Kraft paper before shipping.  That still ends up being cheaper than buying a plain box! I was able to get a large roll of Kraft paper from ULINE for a great price which helps

[blackberryhouse]

USPS also offers what they call Regional Rate boxes. These are less expensive shipping and allow you to enter the size and weight of the package for actual shipping costs, not flat rate. You can then print your own shipping labels. Are you using a shipper program where you get discounted rates such as XPS Shipper, Ship Station, Pirate Ship, etc? If not, I highly recommend signing up with one as you'll get much cheaper rates. It could be the difference in $20  box vs $10 a box! Also, if you are processing orders via an ecommerce store, the ecommerce platform usually has a built in shipping program. I recommend using it since they often negotiate much better rates for their users. Uline has great deals on boxes, but shipping is heafty. Quill office products online has boxes, and their shipping is always free, however, they have limited box sizes. 

[Candlestore]

We ship a lot in boxes, depending on receivers location for some items we use regional rate boxes from the USPS, and compare Flat Rate USPS rates to UPS and FedEx for farther locations from where we ship.  We compare the rates ourselves and was wonder which services like Shippo, Shipstation, PirateShip... etc everyone else uses.

We signed up for Business shipping with the USPS and use their Click-N-Ship program

Unishippers discounts for UPS shipments

FedEx gave us a Business discount but they usually are more expensive than USPS or UPS for us.

Since our packages can range in weight from 3 lbs for one candle to over 70 lbs (Multiple boxes) when people order 24 or more of our candles for the holidays, was wondering how to get the best shipping rates.

[keicollective]

We range in the 1-5 lb shipments, so I know pricing scales differently, but we have loved using the Shippo integration with Square Online. We get the same discounted rates as in PirateShip (we used to manually check and they always were within pennies), but since we can do it all directly in Square Online and it updates the order as shipped & emails the tracking to the customer it's saved us so much time!! 

We use USPS for most of our shipments, but they have some international locations temporarily removed so we've used UPS for those.