Are Excessive Shipping Costs Costing You Sales? – Irv Brechner

Here39s an online shopping experience that recently happened to me one that is played out mostly likely millions of times every single day And it39s costing etailers untold hundreds of millions per year in sales and profits And it wreaks havoc with all of the acquisition campaigns amp8211 DRTV search display social amp8211 where significant dollars are invested only to be wasted when customers abandon their online shopping carts due to excessive SampampH costsI needed to buy a remote keyless transmitter to open the doors on my Honda Pilot After wasting time and gas traveling to the dealer who wanted 95 plus tax I researched it onlineI found several sources offering it in the 50 rangeI started the process of purchasing from one of these online stores But when I got to the payments page and they tried to hit me with a 1292 SampampH cost my first thought was quotAre you kidding mequot My second thought followed quickly by my trigger finger clicking on my mouse was to go back to the search results page and try another sellerThe remote I was ordering measured about 2quot x 1quot x amp188quot thick It weighs less than an ounce Even in a padded envelop or small box this thing would have cost a couple of bucks to mail Had they charged me 5 SampampH I would have been OK with that But 1292 Yikes The SampampH cost was a whopping 26 of the product39s selling price Are they out of their mindsSo I kept searching and found what I needed for 3999 plus free shipping Five different sites selling the exact same product missed out on my order Five sites that left a bad taste in my mouth One site that got my order and one that I will go back toI39m certainly not aloneShopping cart abandonment rates have been hovering in the 70 range for years and hit 75 in the first six months of 2011 And according to Forrester the 1 cause is that shipping and handling costs were too high turning off 44 of consumers who were absolutely definitely ready to buyAs a direct marketer I understand the need to include SampampH costs and even to pick up a few points when doing so But there comes a point where you39ve got to realize that tacking on too much to SampampH will result in a loss of sales especially in an environment where consumers are used to free shipping and in a down economy where pennies countIf you know or suspect you39re losing sales due to the high SampampH cost that you quote on your site you39ve got to deal with it Every day that goes by you are losing sales And all those dollars you39re spending to get prospective buyers to your site are being negated by this one mistakeSo what is a reasonable SampampH chargeCommon sense needs to prevail here Chances are if you ask 10 people what a reasonable cost would be for a given product most of the answers will be clustered around a number that they consider to be fair That39s a clue to how people perceive SampampH costs in relation to the price of the product Think quotcrowdsourcingquot to help determine an optimal SampampH costYou can also explore creative ways of recovering actual SampampH costs such as giving a coupon for the value of SampampH towards the next order Whatever you do eliminate this cause of lost sales for 2012Grab a PDF of this article at httpA95acquirgynetIrv Brechner has written over 100 published direct marketing articles and 13 books on a variety of topics He39s been a pioneer in online customer acquisition since 1996 and offline for his 35year career He has developed Acquirgycom39s quotCustomer Acquisition Intel Centerquot acquirgycomintel he evangelizes bestofbreed tactics to help companies acquire customers in the digital age He can be reached at irvacquirgycom Read all Irv39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Customer Acquisition IntelCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Are Excessive Shipping Costs Costing You Sales? – Irv Brechner

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