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 to the end of this video, where I show you how
I package and ship my orders.
I'm creative strategist Michelle Bali, 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 and 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
and 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 poly mailers.
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 ValueMailer, Fast-Pack 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's 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 checkout.
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 customer's location.
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 your title and 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 as eShipper.
The way that you eShipper 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
eShipper rather than the hundred dollars that it would've cost me.
And it's of no cost to you or your customer.
So to create a profile, it 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 offer 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 a hundred dollars.
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 e-commerce 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 take 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 the fulfillment warehouse, there are several
that integrate with Shopify.
Checkout Shipwire, FulfillRite, and for my Australian business
people, check out Fulfilio.
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 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 and 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 everyday 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 four by five 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 blueprinting 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's 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 $8 and 84
cents Canadian, and that's for a Purolator shipment.
So when I go to the actual Purolator site and get an
estimated shipping cost, it's showing $21 as the lowest price.
This is why I stick to eShipper, and why I love eShipper.
So, if I were to just click submit order here, it's going
to give me a shipping label and it 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 labelwriter 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.
Um, 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 adopter is good because my computer only accepts USB-C.
So this is a USB-C 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 and 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.