How Artelo Handles Shipping
At Artelo, we charge artists for shipping whenever we dispatch an order to your customers. The shipping charge depends on two factors: the weight of the product and the destination country. As an Artelo seller, it's important for you to develop a shipping strategy that works best for your business. Below, we'll explore various shipping options and strategies, including the use of shipping profiles and templates within Etsy and Shopify.
What are Shipping Profiles?
Shipping profiles are shipping settings used to manage and apply consistent shipping rules across your product listings. These profiles can vary based on the platform you're using, such as Etsy or Shopify. They play a crucial role in determining how much you charge your customers for shipping.
The main thing to know about shipping profiles boils down to this:
It defines a shipping charge that your customer must pay
These shipping charges can differ depending on the destination country
Shipping Profiles on Etsy
On Etsy, shipping profiles are assigned at the listing level. This approach, while straightforward, means that it's challenging to get exact shipping rates for each order. It requires a more generalized approach to shipping costs. This creates an annoying problem unique to Etsy.
For example, assume that one of your Etsy listings is a framed print that offers 3 variants:
8x10 Framed Print - (Artelo charges you $5.00 for US shipping)
12x16 Framed Print - (Artelo charges you $10.00 for US shipping)
24x36 Framed Print - (Artelo charges you $15.00 for US shipping)
*Note: The shipping prices listed above are for illustration purposes and do not reflect our actual shipping rates.
Here is the problem: Since Etsy only allows you to set a single price per country in a shipping profile, this means that you can only charge a single price for shipping for that listing. So a customer purchasing any of these variants will always pay the same shipping rate regardless of what Artelo charges you to ship the item.
Shipping Profiles on Shopify
Shopify offers more flexibility with shipping profiles, allowing you to assign them to specific product variants. In addition, the shipping rates within countries can also vary depending on weight (this is how Artelo has configured shipping profiles for you by default). This capability enables you to charge your customers exactly what you're charged for shipping, ensuring accurate and fair pricing.
Artelo's Shipping Profiles
When you create an account with Artelo, we automatically generate shipping profiles for you. These profiles can be assigned to your listings on Etsy or Shopify. The assigned shipping profiles will then determine the shipping charges passed onto your customers. The shipping profiles we create for you do not necessarily need to be used on your listings, including the listings we fulfill for you.
Choosing a Shipping Strategy That Works for You
Choosing the right shipping strategy is crucial for your success on platforms like Etsy and Shopify. Artelo's shipping profiles provide a starting point, but you have the flexibility to tailor these to your specific needs and business model. Remember, the key is to balance cost-effectiveness with customer satisfaction.
Our general recommendation is to always provide free shipping to customers within the US.
Common shipping profile strategies
The strategies below are commonly used by Artelo artists and many other e-commerce businesses. We will be creating a video tutorial about each of these strategies in the near future to show you how to implement each of them.
Strategy 1: Free Shipping in the US, Paid Shipping Worldwide
Pros:
Offers your customer's free shipping in the US where Artelo's shipping rates are the cheapest.
Limits your downside risk associated with more expensive shipping in other countries.
You can offset the higher shipping charge for larger items by increasing your prices.
Increased product exposure on Etsy because of the Free Shipping Guarantee
Cons:
Multi Variant Etsy Listings: It will be nearly impossible to charge your international customers the exact rate Artelo charges you for shipping (unless each variant is of the same size).
Strategy 2: Excluding Certain Countries
Pros:
Provides the highest amount of flexibility and control over your margins.
Easy to implement and avoids potential customer service headaches.
Allows you to select the exact countries where you know your customers reside.
Cons:
You may miss out on sales from excluded countries, especially if those countries are popular.
Strategy 3: Free Shipping Over a Certain Amount
Pros:
Shopify makes this extremely easy and offers convenient free shipping for larger orders.
Customers are likely to convert on higher priced items when shipping is free.
Cons:
Your margins may be lowered once the free shipping kicks in.
Strategy 4: Worldwide Free Shipping
Pros:
This will lead to the highest conversion rates and coverage of customers.
Cons:
You won't have as much control over your margins as you cannot adjust your sale price depending on the country you're shipping to.
Strategy 5: Partially Charging for Shipping (Partial Offset)
A partial offset is passing on some of the shipping costs to the customer, but not all.
Pros:
Partial offsets lessen the burden of shipping on the customer, instead, you could raise your sale prices to make up for the difference.
You can charge uniform and more predictable shipping rates.
Cons:
You won't know your exact margins since your shipping costs depend on the destination country.
Some customers will not want to pay for shipping and your conversion rates will be a bit lower.
Strategy 6: Fully Charging for Shipping (Full Offset)
A full offset is passing on all of the shipping costs to the customer, but not all. This means if Artelo charges you $9.10 to ship an item, you would then also charge $9.10 to your customer.
Pros:
Shifts the entire burden of shipping to the customer, which allows you to have exact margins.
Cons:
Some customers will not want to pay for shipping and your conversion rates will be a bit lower.