Is the cost of delivery making your customers back out- then you need to read this?

I have been in this shoes severaly, I am about to purchase a product and then I see the delivery amount and I just Japa!!!

Recently I saw a tweet by a doctor who wanted to purchase some donuts which cost about N4,000, however the delivery charge for the donuts were N6,000. Seriously Kilode gan. My guy ended up cooking indomie.

I sure he must having been hearing abandon ship! abandone ship in his ears.

It is common knowledge that a lot of entrepreneurs, small business owners etc. are faced with this same issue and are passing the bulk of the cost of transport on consumers which means you are faced with losing a lot of sales because your customer either abandon their cart on the website or look at for other alternatives who would offer the cheaper and sometimes not so good deals.

Let’s not even add today’s icing of COVID to the case. Logistic cost is going higher and higher.

So how can your business work around this to increase sales:

1.Automate and optimize your logistics operation: Just because you run a small clothing line and you are not in the B2B does not mean you should not optimize your operations.

If you have been doing business for a while, chances is you have the data of your customers and can even easily tell when your customers buy more – if it is Sunday or which area they buy most from. Having this data can give you predictive forecasting that will help you optimize your logistics process and schedule purchases.

For example: if you find out most of your customers purchase on Saturday. You can shift most of your orders to Saturday. When you shift this orders you can even offer to give them free delivery of the product if they allow you deliver on Saturday. This way cost is reduced; orders can be taken and delivered on Saturday.

2.Consolidate Shipments: If you have enough data of your customers; you can actually study their behavior and location. If you find out you have demands a lot form Egbeda, Ikeja or Lagos island. What you can do is to actually schedule deliveries say Mondays can be mainland, Tuesdays can be Island and this way customers can book ahead and you can save cost on bulk deliveries which means third party guys like GIG would charge you less for more so you can leverage on that.

3.Offer Spend thresholds: I see a lot of organizations do this especially ecommerce sites like konga. What you can do is let people buy a minimum amount of your product and offer to supply it for free within a 2-day window as the case may be. That way you can pass the price of logistics without the customer feeling it or it affecting your overall sales.

4. Partnership with Carriers: This is a little bit trick you know. While you don’t want to stick to one partner because of time and prompt delivery. You may want to consider one, two, or three based on proximity. This way you have long them plans and negotiations that can work well with your funds. Do also consider alternative sources of transport depending on the area due to accessibility.

There is nothing worse than making your customer feel bad for not being able to purchase their favorite Ankara or shoe because you have decided to pass the amount to them. This is not cast in stone. However, this article points to the fact that you have to look for creative and innovative ways to remove the burden of logistics cost on customers and increase your sales.