Free Postage, Amazon and Your eCommerce Website

By Adam  |  8 Aug 2015 12:00:00

Amazon used to offer what it called Super Saver deliveries and, to be honest, it was a 'super saver' because it was great to be able to get free deliveries on your order. Sure, you had to wait a day or two longer for your items to arrive, but it felt like it was worth it to save the money. The problem is that Amazon has recently changed this system and now you only qualify for a free delivery if you place an order that costs more than £20! This isn't such a good deal when you consider that a lot of items will not cost that much; indeed, by putting it up to £20 they are actually encouraging more purchases, because now, if somebody were to spend £15 on something, they then might decide to buy a £5 item too so that they could qualify for the free delivery.

This change came about a couple of months ago, but it provides you with something that could give you an edge over Amazon. I've written about the value of free shipping before, but it cannot be overstated. People are much more likely to purchase something if they see that it comes with free postage: while the price of an item online combined with the shipping cost may well be less than the price of that item new in a shop, the average customer is not that likely to know that. The average customer will see the price and then think of any postage fees as an additional cost; an additional cost they may not be willing to make. So you might make less money on each sale if you do not charge for postage, but if you then make many more sales, you might actually be making a profit.

So it's worth a try, even if you only remove the postage cost for a brief trial period. If you don't really gain from it, switch back after a couple of months, but if you do, it was worth your time! Amazon dominates the market, but there are a lot of small ways like this that you can outdo them. But, of course, if you have yet to launch your eCommerce website, sign up for Sellr now and get things started for no cost at all.