Remember how you used to ship parcels (你知道, like gifts to your loved ones) before launching a business? You waited in line at a post office, filled out shipping labels, paid full-price shipping rates… That’s fine when you ship once or twice a year, but a real no-no when you run a business and ship orders regularly.
Wait, you’re telling us you still ship your products that way? 作为企业主, you can’t afford to lose time and money on shipping – you have so much to do already, from promoting your store to communicating with your customers, to innovating on product inventory.
And if you sell in the UK – there are lots of ways you can save on shipping costs while also keeping your processes time efficient – and we’ve got just the tool for that. Read on to find out how to automate your shipping, and start selling more!
What Is ShipStation?
船舶站 is a shipping solution that helps you to import, organize, and ship orders quickly and easily. You can use it to create shipping labels, print packing slips, ship with popular carriers (like UPS or Royal Mail), send tracking numbers to your customers, 和更多.
现在, how exactly can you upgrade your shipping with this tool?
How to Choose the Most Cost-Effective Shipping Option
One of the coolest perks for our online UK sellers is that you can access discounted rates with ShipStation. 要做到这一点, you can either create an account with popular carriers or connect your existing account.
ShipStation connects to popular UK carriers such as Royal Mail and some of other leading carriers: 联邦快递, UPS, 加拿大邮政, 澳大利亚邮政, 亚马逊物流, 敦豪快递, or many more.
Negotiate your rates with UPS
When you get more orders (which is great on its own), the volume of your shipments grow too. Paying more for shipping isn’t cool, especially if you find yourself running free shipping promotions to boost sales regularly. And with UPS, you can negotiate your base rates and surcharges.
To negotiate your UPS rates, gather your shipping invoices and paperwork for the past few months, and reach out to your carrier. Make sure to provide the following data:
- total number of shipments per month
- total shipping costs per month
- average cost per shipment
- additional costs: tax and duty, insurance, surcharges
- destination countries.
After you negotiate for your new rates, don’t forget to connect your existing carrier account to ShipStation.
Enabling negotiated rates in ShipStation
Access discounted rates
Even if you don’t get the rates you were hoping for, no worries! With ShipStation, UK sellers can still access pre-negotiated rates with UPS and other carriers.
例如, when you sign up for a UPS account on ShipStation, you get reduced UPS rates. That means UK sellers can access the rates below when printing UPS labels with ShipStation:
- 取决于 50% off UPS® Ground shipments
- 取决于 66% for UPS 2nd Day Air® service
- 取决于 65% for UPS Next Day Air® service
- 取决于 76% off International services on eligible packages.
Prefer to ship with Royal Mail? Connect your account to Royal Mail through ShipStation to access various domestic and international services, reduced shipping rates, and other benefits.
学到更多: Introducing Automatic Shipping Rates for Royal Mail
Consider flat rate options
With flat-rate shipping, 无论重量如何，包裹的运输费用均相同. 在某些情况下, that can prove to be very beneficial. 例如, when shipping heavier products and/or products traveling further across the country. These flat rates can help you budget your shipping and sometimes even avoid certain surcharges.
Each carrier has its flat-rate limit, so make sure to check out several options to find out the one that works best for your business.
学到更多: 企业主如何通过统一运费节省费用
Use multiple carriers
You can ship with multiple carriers to get the best discounts based on your orders’ size, 重量, shipping method, and destination.
Because ShipStation supports all the major UK shipping carriers (UPS and Royal Mail), you can select from a variety of shipping options. You manage all your shipments in one place, even if you create and print shipping labels from different carriers to avoid confusion along the way.
How to Automate Your Shipping to Save Time
All of your orders are imported into a single ShipStation dashboard, making managing your shipments a breeze. You can connect to and compare rates from 40+ carriers, print labels and shipping documents, and even automate multi-step shipping tasks.
Print shipping labels and documents
Instead of buying and filling in shipping labels at a post office, why not do everything from the comfort of home? When you’ve found the best rates for your orders, you can quickly generate shipping labels for them. Send print jobs directly to the printer or scan a barcode to print a label.
Need to print other shipping documents? ShipStation can handle that paperwork for you too, by generating printable documents. 例如, you can print packing slips to accurately complete an order. This makes preparing orders for shipment much easier.
You might appreciate the printing documents option even more if you ship internationally: ShipStation automatically creates customs declarations for each item you ship.
Manage return labels
Returns happen. You can’t avoid them entirely, but you can make the return process as fret-free and painless as possible, both for you and your customers.
Create return labels in ShipStation, so your customers can get their items back to you with maximum efficiency. The easiest option is to generate and send a return label with your original shipment. 那样, your customers can return orders without having to contact you for a label if they aren’t satisfied with their order.
You can also create return labels upon a customer’s request
还: How to Write a Return Policy for Eсommerce Stores
Automate your workflow
Another time saver to take advantage of is automating the repetitive tasks you do to prepare your orders for shipping. 例如, why not use automation for:
- Configuring shipping services, package type, and insurance needs
- Adding notes to orders
- Sending the order to a connected fulfillment provider
- Including a return label
With ShipStation, your automation can be as complex as you need it to be. You can even create customized shipping rules for different locations – handy if your products are stored at multiple warehouses, or your team contains multiple members based in different places (hello working from home life!).
How to Connect Your Ecwid Store to ShipStation
ShipStation is available for sellers in the United Kingdom, 加拿大, 和澳大利亚.
Here’s how to connect ShipStation to your Ecwid store:
- 在Ecwid应用市场, find the 船舶站 应用程序.
- 点击“获取”。
That literally couldn’t be easier, 正确的? We designed it that way on purpose! But if you have any shipping-related questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our 客户关怀 team – we’re always here to help.
Upgrade Your Shipping Today
One of your main goals as a business owner is to make sure that everyday processes help you grow your store instead of wasting your precious time. With ShipStation, you can prioritize actually selling while also keeping your shipping cost low. We call that a win-win!
