Learn More About Shipping Software
What is Shipping Software?
Shipping software is designed to streamline the entire shipping process from label creation to destination arrival. By integrating with an e-commerce platform, shipping software can provide accurate shipping calculations for your products, create shipping labels, and ensure your shipments are compliant under international, federal, and state laws.
Key Benefits of Shipping Software
- Manage shipping orders as they arrive
- Compare rates from a variety of shipping carriers
- Generate shipping documents such as labels and invoices
- Receive shipping discounts based on number of orders
Why Use Shipping Software?
With the number of online consumers increasing every day, businesses cannot afford to fall behind in the efficiency of their shipping operations, especially when customers so often abandon their shopping cart and choose to not purchase a product because of shipping concerns. This can include too high of a shipping price, too long of a shipping time, or simply that the business is unable to ship to their location. In this regard, if customers are willing to purchase a product, businesses must guarantee that they are able to provide multiple shipping options at low prices and deliver convenience along with their products. Shipping software can save businesses and consumers both money and time.
Save money — Shipping software offers steep discounts for retailers and e-commerce sites. This is an incentive that is given to retailers so they choose their shipping solution. Different solutions offer different discounts; while some software may offer free shipping up to fifty orders a month, others offer better discounts for high-volume shipments (unlimited monthly orders). Before choosing a software, make sure to evaluate how many shipments are made on a monthly basis.
Save time — Businesses that ship products every day have to determine the shipping cost of each order by adding the weight and dimensions of each product and then calculating how much it costs to ship to a certain location. Manually calculating the shipping cost on each order can take up plenty of time. Shipping software, on the other hand, automatically calculates the cost and presents customers with the best shipping options. This saves time for businesses and provides the most affordable option for consumers.
Who Uses Shipping Software?
E-commerce sites — E-commerce sites can benefit from shipping software by eliminating cart abandonment and optimizing the final stages of the purchasing cycle. Oftentimes, consumers abandon their carts when they realize the cost and time that is associated with shipping. Shipping software provides discounts to e-commerce sites that ship out a high volume of products, since they often have working relationships with third-party logistics providers. This enables these websites to access the best shipping rates and offer them to their consumers.
Third-party logistics providers — Third-party logistics providers have a symbiotic relationship with e-commerce sites. Businesses such as FedEx and UPS provide e-commerce companies such as Amazon with a streamlined supply chain, while e-commerce companies provide third-party logistics providers with the customers to drive revenue. An effective logistics provider will provide excellent service and shipping analytics to display that orders were shipped and received in a timely manner. Shipping software helps these companies with route optimization, order tracking, and rate management.
Retailers — Although it is more popular for e-commerce sites to connect with third-party logistics providers to ship customer orders, some retail companies are choosing the “ship from store" method. This is a fulfillment process in which brick-and-mortar stores make the physical store a distribution hub and ship orders straight from the store. Since this method relies on the product being available in the on-premises inventory, it’s important to make sure that your inventory integrates with a shipping software solution. This will help retailers track and manage inventory in a way that correlates with customer demand.
Kinds of Shipping Software
Multi-carrier shipping — Multi-carrier shipping enables shippers and exporters to choose between different carriers. This software allows shippers to compare rates, transit times, and arrival speed for each individual carrier, thus letting them choose the most efficient and valuable shipping option. This type of software is typically used by shippers who export a high volume of products.
E-commerce shipping — E-commerce shipping solutions integrate across online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay. These are intended to help sellers leverage consumers' buying decisions to influence better shipping strategies. If consumers are consistently choosing two-day shipping, then sellers can use this data to shape their strategy around optimizing a two-day shipping time.
Freight broker — Businesses that are involved with selling and transporting freight should look into freight broker software. This software helps freight brokers manage freight loads, communicate with carriers, dispatch drivers, and invoice customers.
Shipping Software Features
Shipping labels — Any business that ships products must make sure their products meet shipping regulations, help consumers identify shipments, and maintain compliance with environmental health and safety standards. With shipping label creation, businesses can ensure all of these needs are met, as well as save time and money, by printing shipping labels straight from their desktops.
Order management — Order management tools can help both consumers and businesses track and manage the orders that they’ve placed. If a customer needs to return or edit the address on an order, businesses can automatically be notified of this and make adjustments accordingly.
Rate management — A good shipping solution will offer rate discounts for businesses. These discounts can sometimes range up to 70%. This allows businesses to offer better shipping rates to consumers, which increases the likelihood that they will complete their order.
Reporting tools — An important feature of shipping software is advanced metrics reporting. With shipment history, users can visualize key metrics that indicate where the most shipments are going and how much each shipment costs. This can influence decisions like establishing shipping centers in high volume areas and using predictive modeling to forecast how much shipping will continue to cost for your business based on historical data.
Drop shipping — Drop shipping refers to shipping products that stores don’t have stocked on site. Instead, third-party logistics providers ship those products directly to the consumer. This can save money for businesses since they don’t need to establish a physical store to stock all their inventory. Shipping software offers seamless fulfillment for drop shipping and can facilitate orders between businesses and third-party logistics providers. While this certainly saves time and money for businesses, businesses should understand that it also gives more shipping visibility to the third-party supplier who is shipping your product. This way, if there is an issue with the order, the consumer must contact the third-party and solve the issue through them.
