Comments on: Free shipping: Does it actually boost sales?

By: Marius Krinnan

Marius Krinnan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:45:16 +0000

Free shipping certainly seems to be working for Play.com.
At least as far as I can tell.
I mean, why would I buy a dvd boxset from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk when Play gives me the same product for the same price or cheaper (most of the time) with no shipping costs? I wasn’t used to free shipping, even inside my own country, let alone when I order from another country.
When you have low shipping rates, or even free shipping to most or all countries, it lowers the customer’s threshold for buying stuff.
I’m not saying I know what I’m talking about, I’m just making an observation. Feel free to mock my findings.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:35:40 +0000

Great post! I feel if you use incentives to promote free shipping (buy 4 the 5th ships free kinda thing)you can greatly increase sales. .-= Thomas's last blog ... Good Content = Great SEO =-.

By: Dean Rieck

Dean Rieck — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:04:13 +0000

Jodi:
Not necessarily. People have been trained to pay extra for shipping and handing. So they look at the item price to compare. A $7 item with $10 SH could actually sell better than a $17 item with “free” shipping or a $10 item with $7 shipping.

By: Jodi Kaplan

Jodi Kaplan — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:57:31 +0000

True. However, take a real example. I need a new spatula. I can’t find what I want locally, but several vendors on Amazon have just the thing.

In one case, the spatula costs $4.29. The shipping is $10!

Another company has one for $2.95 and $7.00 shipping.

Wouldn’t it be better though (psychologically) to charge more for the spatula and less for the shipping?
.-= Jodi Kaplan’s last blog … When is it Smarter To Have Two Web Sites? =-.

By: Dean Rieck

Dean Rieck — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:03:11 +0000

Jodi:
Yeah, but remember that while the postage might be less for small items, the cost of fulfillment is the same. There’s cost associated with taking the order, having someone pick it, package it, take it to a shipper, etc.

By: Jodi Kaplan

Jodi Kaplan — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:39:39 +0000

Well, it does irritate me when the shipping costs more (or nearly as much) as the item, particularly when it’s something light.

By: Hans de Groot

Hans de Groot — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:39:04 +0000

Maybe it does not work because shipping costs are (almost never) shown with the articles. They only appear as soon as you check out. Therefore I think people take these costs for granted and do not mind much about paying them or not.

By: Dean Rieck

Dean Rieck — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:26:35 +0000

Bill:
Amazon does the same thing. They’ll encourage you to order $X more to get free shipping.

By: Bill Gibson, II

Bill Gibson, II — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:20:50 +0000

Over the holidays, I purchased a software package online. On the way to ordering, a popup suggested that I buy an additional unit, at a slightly reduced price, and if I did so, there would be no shipping charges for either. I didn’t actually need the additional unit, but, (and maybe this is the “holiday” spirit kicking in) I thought, “I’ll spend $10 less on shipping, and $10 less on the extra unit, and for that price, I can give it away to a friend.”

So, I bought two.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:51:37 +0000

My clients have tested free shipping and it doesn’t seem to have much of an effect.

Also, we’ve found that it does condition customers to expect free promotions (as noted in the article.)

And very quickly at that. If we don’t offer a free promotion the following month our customers will ring up and ask us where it is or what we’re offering this month. Also, they will put off their purchase until a free promotion is offered.

But all this aside, I would have thought that if you have to offer something free to clinch the sale then the original offer, product or copy hasn’t done its job.

In other words, you may be better off paying the copywriter a bit more to do a great job, than wasting money on freebies.