Prepaid Shipping? You’ve Said the Magic Word

There’s an enormous amount of power behind the phrase “free shipping.” These days, “free shipping” trumps just about every other enticing term you can come up with. It’s right up there with “95% off,” “Going Out of Business” and “Six for the Price of One,” as a positively provocative promotional phrase.

Below (or click on the image to the right) is an infographic that shows that 46 percent of online shoppers will actually cancel their order when they discover that free shipping is not included. They get all the way to the shopping cart and then they hesitate when they see their $15 purchase is going to include another six bucks for shipping. They shake their head and say that’s just not going to happen. And then they go somewhere else. Where shipping is free.

The infographic also asserts that 75 percent of customers will buy more of your merchandise if free shipping is part of the deal. We call that a win-win.

But let’s face it. Shelling out your own cash to cover this free shipping can get expensive. But there is an alternative and the infographic shows us the benefits of offering pre-paid shipping to your online customers. Amazon has created Amazon Prime, a $79 a year prepaid shipping program that offsets the costs of free shipping.

Through programs like these, the average consumer increases his or her spending by up to three times! And they increase the average number of orders made by two times. Why? Because they want to take full advantage of the full year of free shipping that’s offered by Amazon. They want to make darned sure they get their money’s worth.

Who else is doing this? Rue La La charges $10 for the first product order, and then all your orders are shipped free for the next 30 days. Now there’s an incentive to buy more! The Clymb, a member-based online merchant offering “the planet’s most sought-after outdoor brands,” offers shipping on an unlimited number of products for just $4.99, or free shipping when including a T-shirt from their exclusive collection in any order.

You can view the new infographic below, courtesy of the good folks at Clarus Marketing Group, the company behind FreeShipping.com and FreeShipping.net. It might make you think twice about a prepaid free shipping program for your online retail business.