You might have ever considered getting involved in the cross-border E-Commerce sector when you see it has generated enormous opportunities, but many people start doing E-Commerce in China are getting in an error, they confused the definition of cross-border business with the bonded warehouse, which is a totally different business mode, the latter one is with a higher threshold in terms of funds and equipment, furthermore, many operations on marketing strategies have to get permissions from the government.
Seemingly, the high starting point of cross-border E-Commerce closes its door to you, and you are wasting time, opportunities, money in doing useless preparation. Really?
Photo: mobridge.org
What is Cross-Border E-Commerce?
There are different approaches and perspectives to E-Commerce.
For the purpose of this Framework of Standards, cross-border e-commerce is characterized as follows :
Online ordering, sale, communication and, if applicable, payment；
Cross-border transactions/shipments；
Physical (tangible) goods; and
Destined to consumer/buyer (commercial and non-commercial).
This Framework sets standards mainly for B2C and C2C transactions. However, Members are encouraged to apply the same principles and standards to Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions.
So, there is no such threshold for E-commerce, you don't need to own a huge warehouse and hiring a group of workers there, your imported cargoes doesn't have to reach a certain amount. Even though importing only one bottle of whiskey from Europe to China, it also counts cross-border E-Commerce.
Don't miss great opportunities
Frankly speaking, there is a blank page on the law regarding this area in China, how much capital one should have? What kind of licenses are required?
Where there is a blank area, there is an opportunity, today, we will present a complete guide on one of the most complicated parts of cross-border E-Commerce - shipping.
A Simple Guide to Startup Cross-border E-Commerce
Creating a sort of positive customer experience requires in cross-border E-Commerce is a great deal of work behind the scenes by retailers, especially in shipping. Here we give a simple guide to E-commerce shipping from the following aspects:
Packaging
Set up shipment fee standards
Choose proper shipment carriers
Shipping and tracking
Setup your own business accounts
Declare customs and handle taxes
Putting labels and stamps on your packages
Packaging
When it comes to your E-Commerce packaging, postal business packaging, and best-in-class transit packaging, you want it to be good value for money, quick to fulfill, stylish, and assured to get your product to your customers intact and on-time. We provide you some packing companies for E-commerce here, you can check the packing material and standards and enjoy their services.
Papermart
eBay
eSupplyStore
Uline
Fast-Pack
Setting up shipping fee standards
Before you can ship products, you』ll first need to decide your strategy for charging your customers. Here are three options for setting up shipping fees. You could set up the standard based on balancing your product margins and the shipping cost.
1. Offer free shipping
Offering free shipping - usually just for domestic orders - is a sure-fire way to get your customer's attention, free shipment technique no doubt provides you significant advantage over any competitors. However, depending on your margins, it can also potentially cut into your profits.
1.1 Increase price of product to cover shipping fees
Deciding to offer free shipping will require you to either absorb the cost or slightly increase your prices to cover it. Using this way to cover shipping cost is really depending on which niche you niche. If you offer luxury or handmade, one-of-a-kind items, rolling in an extra percentage for shipping and handling into the cost of your products probably isn't too much of an issue.
1.2 Require a minimum threshold to drive order value
Except for increasing the prices, many merchants also try offering free shipping with a minimum order amount or minimum number of items. This should drive up the average order value and help you have more profit dollars to apply the shipping cost against.
If you're in a highly competitive market where both free shipping and the lowest prices are the norm, like refurbished cell phones for example, requiring a minimum threshold of your products to cover shipping costs will be a better idea than marking up the price of products.
2. Charge what you get charged
Basing on the margins of different items to set up real-time shipping quotes - in other words, your customers more or less pay exactly what you would pay to ship your products.
Simple Sugars, a store that was recently on Shark Tank, employs this tactic, offering real-time shipping quotes to their customers at checkout. Once a customer gets to the checkout, they select where they want their order shipped to, and the calculator does the rest.
Using a real-time calculator like this can win you a lot of trust with your customers. It shows that you aren't inflating your quoted shipping fees or raising your item prices to cover the charges.
3. Offer flat rates
Your third option is to offer a flat rate for every package, or flat rates for weight ranges and order totals. This particular method of charging for shipping requires a bit of preparation as you need to figure out your average cost of shipping a package. This is a best practice you should be doing anyway to make sure that you don't drastically undercharge or overcharge your customers.
Choose proper shipment carriers
To reduce shopping cart abandonment and avoid unhappy customers, retailers must continuously revisit their shipping strategy and streamline fulfillment and delivery processes, all while keeping prices low.
It's a fine balancing act, but one that becomes more achievable once you identify the right shipping carriers. You can choose a proper one after balancing the followings
1. Shipment cost
Both government and private carriers have advantages and disadvantages. The table below illustrates some of these for government carriers and private carriers.
Many retailers prefer government carriers because there are fewer incremental charges, such as the brokerage fees charged by private carriers. Generally, customers dislike paying brokerage fees because they are hard to predict and are unexpected by the customer.
2. Calculating rates
All shipping couriers base shipping rates on a variety of factors including:
Package Size
Package Weight
Departing Country
Destination Country
Tracking
Insurance
It can be difficult to compare services exactly as they all offer slightly different options and every business will have their own unique variables. Below we have compiled a list of shipping calculators to some of the largest and most popular shipping couriers so that you can begin comparing pricing and options. (Copy the options and go search on google, you can access their page)
USPS - Shipping Calculator
Canada Post - Shipping Calculator
UK Royal Mail - Shipping Calculator
Australia Post - Shipping Calculator
UPS - Shipping Calculator
FedEx - Shipping Calculator
3. Shipping insurance
Shipping insurance is used to provide coverage on the orders. This added protection may be useful if your selected carrier loses or damages part of your shipments, allowing you to offset all or part of any monetary loss. Most carriers services have built-in insurance protection, with each carrier having slightly different requirements and claim processes. A good shipping carries partnered with shipping insurance companies to greatly simplify this entire process.
4. Same day shipping
Same day shipping is a good policy to improve customers satisfaction, it’s not only for domestics shipment, but international same day shipping can also be achieved by arranging shipping properly in different time zones. It requires to cooperate well with your shipping partner.
A shipping carries which owns more warehouse in different locations, it allows you to send them an order where they will pick, pack, and hand the order to the carrier all in the same day. For an order to be shipped the same day, you will need to send it to the warehouse by the local cut-off time.
Shipping and tracking
Providing order tracking service really does matter, especially when customers notice when their options are limited or vague. Transparency is the best policy to stop them abandon orders. On the last step when people comfirm the order, they will buy based on shipping, not only on product price, consumers know they'll get it in two days, if they don't get an accurate shipping estimate, there is a big chance they abandon the order.
Providing customers with a dashboard can check real-time shipping is a smart choice. It may cost you some money up front to integrate the necessary systems for flexible shipping, tracking and returns, but once they're in place, your customers will keep coming back.
Setting up business accounts
Since you're going to be sending out lots of packages, it's wise to setup a business account. These accounts give you faster systems and often cheaper shipping costs, since each of them have dedicated account dashboards and adjusted pricing models. Once again, it all depends on which carrier you go with, but generally you can set up a business account with each of the following (Copy the options and go search on google, you can access their page):
UPS Business Solutions
USPS Business Gateway
FedEx Business
Canada Post Business Account
Australia Post Business Account
Royal Mail Business Account
Declare customs and handle taxes
If you plan on sending items internationally, the customers who receive these products are most likely going to have to pay customs and duties. Therefore, you'll want to figure out how much these are going to cost. Some companies pass on the cost to customers, while others foot the bill. Try out the customs and duty calculator for help, and check out some of the customs links below, depending on which carrier you plan on using for your international packages. (Copy the options and go search on google, you can access the page)
UPS Customs
USPS Customs
FedEx Customs
Canada Post Customs
Australia Post Customs
Royal Mail Customs
Putting labels and stamps on your packages
Whenever a customer receives an item, they see a stamp or label that has details about the shipping address, customer and shipping provider. These labels can also be important for branding and tracking along the way. Which services can you choose from?
ShipRobot
ShipRobot has several features that make it worthwhile. For example, you can find real-time syncing with the ShipRobot label company, and it creates and prints shipping labels for you. In addition, order status updates are generated automatically, so you don't have to worry about that.
Stamps.com
Stamps.com is one of the most popular options out there, and it's used by lots of startups. The system works by letting you click, print and ship your products. It's not as automated as some of the other solutions, but it's an affordable place to start.
OrderCup
OrderCup integrates with platforms like Shopify, Magento and Bigcommerce, and it connects with carriers such as UPS, FedEx and USPS. A standout feature is the one click batch processing, which comes in handy for every type of business.
Photo: siliconvalley.com
Conclusion
Above is our research on the shipping part of cross-border e-commerce. This ultimate list of shipping tips and tools is sure to get you pointed in the right direction when it comes to cutting costs and establishing an effective shipping machine. In our next article, we will come up with the part regarding Chinese customs clearance for cross-border E-Commerce.
The first China International Import Expo kicked off on November 5th, 2018 in Shanghai, the Expo seeks to promote China as an advocate for globalization and free trade. With cross-border e-commerce in China becoming more and more mature, laws and instructions in this area will become more specific and clear.
Please note that we hope more people get the first-hand information, for articles that we have the footnote of the sources on the bottom, HiTouch does not necessarily endorse the views presented in this article. The copyright belongs to the original writer, and we've tried the best to proofread the content.