Free shipping is a wonderful marketing tool for your online store

You are shopping and when check-out, you realize that you are 20 USD from qualifying for free shipping. The shipping rate is only 10 USD but you will find one more 20 USD item to qualify free shipping.  Customers will be happy to increase their order to get free ship. This is why eCommerce companies always offer free shipping with conditions. If you are selling online, consider optimizing your free shipping conditions. In this thread, I will tell you why customers don’t want to pay shipping and how to use it to increase your profit.

Customers don’t consider shipping as a service.

If you purchase products online, you need it to be shipped. There’s no other way.  This is completely different from the traditional trade, where customers need to go to stores to take products. The shipping price is a must, and customers see it as an annoying thing.” I bought this thing for 200 USD, why would I need to pay 220 USD for it? I don’t want to waste 20 USD.”

Seeing a free ship option gives us a “choice”

When you need to pay for something, you will want to find the cheapest option. The free shipping methods give you that option. Instead of pay 180 USD and 10 USD for shipping, the free shipping method gives you an option to pay 200USD and free shipping. We all understand that nothing is free, the shipping cost is included in the 200 USD we paid. But by choosing the free ship option, we feel a lot better.

The power of “free”

We automatically overvalue “free” things. The power of “free” is so powerful that when Amazon introduced free shipping in Europe, the number of orders increased dramatically, everywhere but France. Instead of being reduced to zero, the shipping price in France was mistakenly reduced to 1 franc (about 10¢), and this was enough to prevent a jump in sales. People place such a huge value on “free” that they viewed 10-cent shipping as not a good enough deal. So why don’t you just add that 1 franc to your product price and give the free ship to your customer?

Make it work for you

Free ship influences consumer behavior on a deeply psychological (and often irrational) level, adding a powerful boost to your average order value. If you are using WooCommerce, consider using WooCommerce Free Shipping Bar, a plugin that will help you to encourage customers to spend more to get free ship. Learn more.