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What Is Rate Shopping Software – What Features Should You Look for in a Rate Shopping Software Solution?
For any business with an online store, shipping cost is a crucial factor for ongoing success.
Providing customers with a choice of shipping rates allows them to manage their own shipping preferences, so they can always access the best balance between delivery, speed and value for their shipping costs.
This makes the checkout process more engaging and improves conversion rates through increased customer satisfaction. For these works the rate shopping software is the best.
I am starting with what is rate shopping.
What Is Rate Shopping?
Rate shopping is a practice of checking several lenders while you need to borrow money. If you are planning to avail of the loans rate shopping is going to help you which working out which lenders are meeting your needs.
By enhancing the customer experience with shipping flexibility during checkout, shipping software can boost your sales performance, leading to higher sales and increased profitability. But what options do you have for shipping software, and how can it benefit your order fulfilment process? No matter the size of the business, an online store provides a number of order management process challenges.
With so many carriers to choose from, such as FedEx, US Postal Service, UPS, DHL and so on, knowing which to choose for your order fulfilment can be an issue. Do your customers want the fastest delivery time or the cheapest carrier?
Why Do You Need The Rate Shopping Software?
Meeting customer expectations for so many choices brings new challenges for order fulfilment, but if you value customer satisfaction there is a solution. The easiest way to overcome this problem is to avoid answering the question altogether, and simply ask the customer as part of the order fulfilment process.
By incorporating shipping software into your checkout, inventory management and order management system, your customers can compare different carriers and types of shipping with real-time carrier shipping costs during the checkout.
The result is that order management systems provide a positive customer experience that allows easy comparison of shipping prices, but also helps with your order fulfilment process too. Because each customer can choose the exact shipping solution to suit their needs, it helps in two ways.
Increased customer satisfaction for your purchasers, and you don?t have to make any choices. You can save time in order fulfilment and provide the best possible service for consumers with integrated shipping management software. Shipping software allows easy rate shopping, streamlines the management of fulfilling customer orders, and can even benefit supply chain provision too.
What Is Rate Shopping Software?
It is a shipping software that allows for easy integrations with major e-commerce sales systems, your inventory management solution, supply chain and so on, and allows your customers to select the exact shipping cost they wish during the checkout process.
Rate shopping is an incredibly useful feature that not only gives customers more flexibility but improves the e-commerce fulfilment process of customer orders too.
The shipping software allows customers to manage their own shipping costs by presenting them with real-time shipping prices for their orders. This allows them to choose from an economy shipping option, expedited shipping and even individual carriers, so they can customise their order fulfilment as easily as they choose the products they wish to purchase.
Because the rate shopping software is integrated into the order management system, it can also print out appropriate shipping labels and notify the chosen carrier that a package needs collecting, saving time in warehouse management too.
This ability to choose the perfect shipping cost, carrier and delivery speed, along with automated label and carrier notification features, means that shipping software refines and streamlines order fulfilment services. This improves efficiency and saves time and money by eliminating time-consuming manual processes.
Why Is Rate Shopping Important?
While the right product and price are essential to draw customers in, an e-commerce business needs more to deliver a continuous flow of successful conversions.
This is why so much attention is paid to the overall sales funnel, the design of the site, product descriptions and so on. But customers can change their minds at any point, even during checkout, and this is where a rate shopping solution comes in.
With real-time shipping carrier costs displayed to customers within the checkout process, an order management system that incorporates this shipping software allows consumers to manage delivery costs as they wish.
Some may prefer a low-cost solution and accept that means a slower delivery time, while others want everything immediately, and will pay extra for it. By having shipping software that gives the choice automatically during order fulfilment, you provide the right option for every customer within the entire process.
There is another key area where the ability to provide a choice matters too. Shipping software integrates real-time pricing from multiple carriers, allowing each consumer to choose not just the speed of delivery, but who will provide the shipping service. Because carrier quality is not consistent across all regions, with many it can be affected by the local service, consumers often wish to avoid specific carriers due to their personal experiences.
In fact, customers may avoid an online store altogether if they use a particular carrier with no option for other services. But with the right shipping software, a flexible order fulfilment solution allows customers to choose from a range of carriers and manage their own shipping methods, take advantage of carrier discounts in real-time and so on. That is the order management system that provides the best service for your current and future customers.
What Advantages Does Rate Shopping Software Present To An E-commerce Business?
Shipping software that tightly integrates into the checkout process and allows customers to manage their shipping choices offers several advantages for both the consumer and your business.
The clear advantage for the consumer is more choice. With real-time shipping rates from multiple carriers displayed in the checkout process, a customer can select the right cost and speed of shipment for their needs, and even select their preferred carrier too if they have one.
This builds trust and gives a more personalised feel to the online purchase process. But there are numerous ways shipping software helps your business too throughout the order management and fulfilment process. The order fulfilment process can be needlessly complex, as your team is constantly seeking the most cost-effective order fulfilment solution.
But by giving customers the choice to select what they want, that process is entirely eliminated, saving time and money. It allows you to centralise your orders, with the shipping software taking care of the labels and in some cases even contacting the relevant carrier for you.
This streamlines the e-commerce fulfilment solution and eliminates the human error that can lead to customer dissatisfaction and complaints about online orders. This automation of parts of the order fulfilment process is essential for sellers wanting to build scalability into their business too.
Shipping software refines e-commerce fulfilment in a way that delivers advantages to all, without any downside. With customers able to manage their choices, and those choices automatically incorporated into the e-commerce fulfilment process, errors are eliminated, while the whole rate shopping process is much easier to manage.
In addition, because it integrates with third-party logistics systems from carriers, providing information such as a tracking number and other valuable data, it not only helps your inventory management and other order fulfilment processes but ensures the customer receives the best experience every time.
What Features Should You Look For In A Rate Shopping Software Solution?
Every business is different, however, there are some essential features of shipping software that every application needs. The ability to integrate into your e-commerce fulfilment system is crucial. It is this seamless integration that delivers the benefits that save time and money on every order.
Some, such as Calculated, are flexible rate shopping solutions that can be easily incorporated into most e-commerce systems, but always check that shipping software is compatible with your existing solutions. Ecommerce shipping solutions powered by shipping software should offer a range of functionality for the consumer and your business too.
Real-time carrier rates for customers to choose from in the checkout process are key, however, the system should also offer multiple carrier prices as well as multiple shipping levels, so customers have the best choice possible.
With customers able to choose between a wide range of carriers and shipping services, that brings with it complexity in managing each order to select the right shipping process, which is why shipping software that also integrates that into e-commerce fulfilment is also important.
Conclusion:
With rate shopping software that can print labels and notify carriers of parcels automatically, errors are eliminated and reduced oversight on shipping is needed. With these in place, customers can choose the shipping rates that suit their needs, and your fulfilment solution will ensure that each order is sent with the right shipping every time.
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