How to Package and Ship Orders: Ecommerce Shipping for Beginners

Key Takeaways

in this video i'm going to show you how to package and ship your orders so that your packages are arriving safely on time and that you're saving as much money as possible stick till the end of this video where i show you how i package and ship my [Music] orders i'm creative strategist michelle bally and i've worked with successful e-commerce brands to help them achieve reliable low-cost shipping strategies however if you're not familiar with this process it can feel a little bit overwhelming as there are so many options out there so get ready because this is the only video you'll need to watch to start shipping your orders here's what you're going to learn we're going to talk about packaging options we'll cover how to charge for shipping and what carriers to go with we'll also take a look at insurance and tracking customs and declaration and labeling your packages and finally we'll look at shopify shipping and how it can save you time when you're fulfilling your orders and stay tuned to the very end where i show you step by step how i ship and package my orders packaging options there are a few common options for packaging you can go with a box an envelope or a padded envelope and if your item is fragile you'll want to look at padding like crinkle shred or biodegradable peanuts but right off the bat i want to give you an amazing resource to buy your materials check out arca with arca you can customize your boxes mailers packaging tissues tape and stickers easily and all online i love them because you can get your boxes quickly in under 10 days and they integrate with shopify also their boxes are optimized for shipping rates so you don't have to worry about any extra costs one of my favorite solutions are biodegradable polymailers they offer multiple benefits they're lightweight which reduces your shipping costs and they can adjust to different volumes and weights depending on what's included in the order so for example the same size poly mailer could accommodate one pair of socks or five and you wouldn't be overpaying on packaging weight or dimensions for the single pair you may also want to try thinking outside of the box and look at less traditional packaging options so for example you could try using a mailer that could be planted and grown into a flower opting for sustainable packaging is not only the right thing to do but it's a good look for any company check out no issue and grounded packaging for sustainable options at larger volumes some other larger packaging suppliers you might also want to take a look at are value mailers fastpack and esupply store many carriers like usps dhl and ups offer free packaging when you go through certain classes of mail if you have a variety of items you may want to carry many packaging sizes and materials a word of advice the smaller and the lighter the shipment the better because most shipping options are based on size and weight so small packaging means that you're saving on shipping costs for you or your customer how to charge for shipping here are some common strategies to choose from offering your customers free shipping is one of the best ways to incentivize purchase but in reality shipping is never free someone always has to pay so to make free shipping work you have a few options you can increase your product prices to cover your shipping costs and this basically means that the customer pays you can pay the full price of your shipping out of your own margins which means that you're paying or you can find a middle ground by increasing the prices of the products slightly to cover the partial cost of shipping this will mean that both you and your customer are paying try offering free shipping once a customer reaches a certain dollar threshold on an order a larger order is obviously going to mean more money in your pocket but at the end of the day you're still going to have to pay for shipping so make sure that that threshold that you calculate does make financial sense another effective shipping strategy is to charge real-time carrier rates for shipping you can set up real-time carry rates on your shopify store so that when a customer is checking out they can choose what service they want to pay for a popular option is to offer flat rate shipping make sure that you're not drastically overcharging or undercharging your customers flat rate shipping only really works when you have a fairly standard product line of items that have similar weights and sizes so if you're a furniture business for example and you sell picture frames on the smaller end of things and bed frames on the larger end of things flat rate shipping probably won't work for you another method to consider is local delivery where you personally drop off items when you set up local delivery you can customize your delivery area and rates using a zip code radius customers who are within your defined delivery area will be able to select local delivery as a shipping method at checo how to choose the right carrier between fedex dhl ups canada post and the other hundreds of services that are available it's hard to know what the right option is when reviewing different carriers make sure that your products are supported some carriers exclude services for very expensive or very fragile items and make sure that your carrier ships to your customers locations see what tracking services they offer and compare how quick packages get sent it's important to note that not all shipping carriers provide insurance so if that's important to you double check this convenience will also be another factor that comes into play so if you're tight on time select a shipping carrier that can pick up the packages from you and finally make sure that you're cognizant of price in my experience the way to get the best rates is by going through a shipping broker i'm honestly not sure why more businesses don't do this the only shipping broker that i've ever used is e-shipper the way that e-shipper works is that they get shipping rates in bulk and then they mark it up and then they make those discounted rates available to the public it is of course marked up on their end but it's ultimately cheaper than most shipping rates that are out there i was shipping a package to indonesia and it cost me 39 with e-shipper rather than the 100 that it would have cost me and it's of no cost to you or your customer so to create a profile just click the link in the description box to get started insurance and tracking depending on the value of your products shipping insurance and tracking offers security with most carriers insurance and tracking is relatively inexpensive and it provides you recourse if your package gets lost or damaged some shipping services like ups and usps priority mail offer complimentary coverage for up to 100 customs and declarations forms if you're shipping outside of your own country you'll need to include the proper customs documentation these are available online through shopify or at the post office these forms disclose what is in the package how much it costs and whether it's a gift or merchandise check with your country's postal service to find out exactly which forms you'll need to attach to your package these forms should be completed honestly and clearly to prevent your package from being held up in customs tariffs taxes and duties if there are any additional custom fees due when a package reaches its destination your customer will be responsible for them at the time of delivery it's always a good idea to make sure to include this information in your shipping policy page so your customers aren't surprised by unexpected fees here's an example of how your disclaimer might be written regarding customs and duties and you can put this on your shipping policy page for more information on the forms you'll need and policies make sure you're checking out the description box we have a link for every region here how to label your packages many new ecommerce entrepreneurs start off by writing the ship to and return addresses on the package by hand this is a great way to start but once you start getting hundreds of orders which of course you will this is way too tedious and way too time consuming and that's where shopify shipping comes in you can print and pay for multiple shipping labels directly in shopify here's how it works from your order list select all the orders you're ready to ship preview each shipment including the carrier shipping service and package adjust or fill in any missing information as needed buy all of your shipping labels in one click then print them as a single pdf you can print your labels on plain printer paper using any printer and then cut them and tape them to the package or to save even more time you can upgrade to a thermal label printer to print directly on self stick labels using a fulfillment warehouse a fulfillment warehouse can help automate and handle the shipping for you your inventory is stored at one of their warehouses and when an order comes in your order is picked packed and shipped on your behalf advantages include cheaper shipping rates less of a time commitment on your end and shorter shipping times fulfillment warehouses aren't for everyone though there are several disadvantages as well that you're going to want to consider so for example the unboxing experience will likely suffer you'll probably have to go with stock boxes that have no branding and while you will receive better shipping rates when you work with a fulfillment partner you'll also have to pay for labor fees for picking and packing as well as warehouse storage fees once you have enough volume of orders and you feel like you're ready to work with a fulfillment warehouse there are several that integrate with shopify check out shipwire fulfill right and for my australian business people check out fulfillio now let's look at how i ship my orders so we're going to start with our shipping packaging on this side we have our uline boxes uline is a pretty inexpensive company to go with you can get around a thousand for 28 but you're not committed to bulk orders so you can buy in smaller quantities and i like these corrugated boxes because they are environmentally friendly and then on this side we have our bubble mailer so bubble mailers are great because they protect whatever's inside but they're also really slim so you can just drop this in any mailbox i prefer an elevated experience of actually opening a box so we're going to go ahead and package this one up today cardboard boxes do have one drawback though when they come to you in the mail they're going to come flat which means you're going to have to construct every single one of them and as you start to scale your business and start to get more and more orders if you have to construct every single one of them that's going to take up a bit of time so just keep that in mind all right so let's get this box filled so the first step is i'm going to include some padding now we've decided to go with this material which is recycled water bottles which we love but you can go with crinkle shred or biodegradable peanuts it's totally up to you there's endless options we're going to pop this right in here and that's going to give us a lot of padding padding is really important to us because we have a lot of glass items so it does a really good job of protecting our makeup and we also really love it because when we pop the makeup in it looks like our products are just floating on clouds so the next step is to include a card this could be a promo card introducing the customer to new products or it could be a card that speaks to your brand values but the point is it's going to help a customer get to know your brand and that's going to encourage repeat sales another option is that you can include a thank you card it's not every day that you get a handwritten thank you card from a founder so this really opens up the opportunity to turn a customer into a brand advocate and we want that so what you can do is you can get a 4x5 card printed with your logo on the one side and leave it blank on the other side and that's going to leave you space for your handwriting you can go to a local printer or you can get it done on moo printing online so i'm going to just take this card pop it in here in the box close it up and we're ready to start putting our shipping label on to get my shipping label all set up i'm going to log into eshipper i already have an account so i'm just going to hit log in and from there i set up where i'll be shipping from this will usually be your house or office and then i'll specify where it's going to and that's where the customer is at put in your box dimensions and the value of the package as well and then we're going to hit submit from there you're going to get a list of rates this will show you various options for pricing different carriers and the amount of time it will take to ship now i just want to show you the difference here as we can see on eshipper it's quoted us for eight dollars and 84 cents canadian and that's for a pure later shipment so when i go to the actual pure later site and get an estimated shipping cost it's showing 21. as the lowest price this is why i stick to e-shipper and why i love e-shipper so if i were to just click submit order here it's going to give me a shipping label and i will just have to print that out and stick it on now let me show you which printer i use so this is the printer that i use it is the dymo label writer 450. in hindsight i would recommend getting the 4xl because that's going to print your labels at the right size i do have to shrink mine down to around 50 not the biggest deal i actually got this on facebook marketplace so you can check out kijiji or marketplace you can get it on amazon as well but what i do is i connect this to my laptop and that's how i print out my labels in order to get these two connected i do have to use an adapter so this adapter is good because my computer only accepts usbc so this is a usbc to regular usb and that's how i connect these two you can get this at amazon for around 20 super inexpensive and that's a great way to start printing your labels so we're all hooked up here and ready to go and this printer really just works as a regular printer so i'm just going to go ahead and click print and it's going to print off a shipping label now this shipping label is going to indicate to the postal service person where this box is going to and that's what the barcode indicates you don't necessarily need to know this but just keep that in mind so that you can put it somewhere visible on your box and we're going to go ahead peel this off stick it on the box gracefully as i do and now we're also going to put down our logo so this is my branded logo sticker and i'm going to put this on the front of the box and we're ready to go so the last step is i take this box i put it outside on my front porch and the postal service knows to come to my front door to pick it up and send it away packaging and shipping should be seen as a strategy that evolves over time you will likely have to play around with a few variables until you get it right so trust the process and experiment hopefully this video has been helpful and i hope now you have a clear idea of how you can start shipping your orders each week learn with shopify has a new video dedicated to teaching you new skills on how to grow your online business so make sure that you hit that subscribe button and i will see you in the next one