How to: Shipping with Shopify

Shipping is one of the key factors consumers consider when choosing where to shop online. Consumers want their orders shipped quickly, on time, and inexpensively, if not free. To meet customer demand while still making a profit, it’s important for ecommerce businesses to take a look at the best way to streamline shipping. The process of packaging and shipping items is a time-consuming process and as a company grows, failing to optimize it can slow operations and ultimately, affect sales. Fortunately, for the millions of ecommerce businesses that use Shopify for their storefront, it’s easy to set up shipping through the platform. Shopify works directly with multiple carriers, which allows ecommerce businesses to get orders into their customers’ hands quickly and in a cost-effective manner. So, how does Shopify shipping work?

Shopify Shipping and Delivery: A Simplified Step-By-Step

The first step to shipping with Shopify is choosing a shipping carrier. Shopify specifically partners with USPS, UPS, and DHL Express in the U.S. (as well as other carriers internationally), which means you can print and pay for shipping labels directly through your Shopify account. The shipment destination, plus the size, weight, package type, and product type all factor in when choosing a shipping carrier. You will want to balance what will be the most cost-effective, while still being able to meet your customers' expectations.Each carrier offers multiple ecommerce shipping services and rates. Shopify automatically calculates the shipping rate based on the weight and size of products, as well as the type of shipping service your business offers. For this reason, it’s important to confirm the weight and size accuracy of your products to ensure the calculated shipping rate is correct. If you choose to set up free shipping for customers on minimum order thresholds, this will become imperative.Once you’ve selected which Shopify order is ready for shipment, the steps to ship are as follows:

• Select carrier and add package details
• Review and print shipping labels
• Affix package labels
• Drop packages off with your chosen carrier or schedule a pickup

Though simple, this shipping process can become timely and tedious, as orders increase and your business expands. At that point, it may be in your best interest to outsource fulfillment and shipping to a partner that can ease the workload and allow your business to scale, like Flowspace, which offers a direct integration to Shopify.

Optimize Shipping Efficiency with Flowspace Integrated with Shopify

Connecting your Shopify storefront to Flowspace’s ecommerce fulfillment service is a simple, seamless process that allows businesses to accelerate their growth with faster, more affordable shipping and the insights you need to keep your customers coming back as return shoppers.The distributed Flowspace network allows brands to fulfill product closer to end consumers, reducing shipping costs and speeding up delivery, and Flowspace software provides real-time access to inventory and order data so shoppers see an accurate reflection of what's in stock. Flowspace is also equipped to handle custom packaging and branding requests, including kits and subscription boxes.

Enhance Your Ecommerce Solution

Successful supply chain and logistics coordination is critical to managing a successful ecommerce business, and modern brands need to partner with a platform that offers technology and solutions to keep things running smoothly to meet customer demand and exceed expectations.Once you've got Flowspace up and running for your Shopify storefront, check out other integrations and find out how to set up omnichannel fulfillment, leveraging the Flowspace platform for all your ecommerce channels. Get in touch today.