Shipping Online Orders from your Store
What are the shipping options for a business selling products online?
Okay, so you have an idea for an online store, or are maybe already selling a few items on eBay or Amazon. There are two things you still need to figure out to complete your online order fulfillment operation.
1 – What is the best way to package the order for shipping? Here is an article on eco-friendly packing materials.
The goal for this article is to address the second one;
2 – What are the options for shipping the order?
There are two parts to deciding what the best option is for shipping an order. The first is to figure out how quickly the order needs to get there. The second is what carrier you want to use. For the most part, the Post Office, UPS, and FedEx offer similar services. I’ll save the discussion on quality of service for another time, but generally speaking all three offer roughly the same services that most online retailers would need.
If you have time: the least expensive and slowest delivery method with UPS and FedEx is their Ground Service, which will service most of the US in four to five days. The Post office is a cheaper but slower option than Ground with the other two carriers.
If you need to get it there quickly, then overnight and 2nd and 3rd day delivery is an option. Obviously more expensive then Ground, the service is guaranteed for the stated transit time. One thing to keep in mind when choosing the service level is many times you can get overnight service for a Ground price. For instance, if you live within a one day transit time for Ground service with UPS, then there is no need to pay the over-night price. Your Logistics software can help with the routing decisions from your fulfilment center.
Logistics Blog 