Shoppers Love Free Shipping
Research backs up what we know instinctively. The Internet Retailer 2016 Marketplaces Survey asked online shoppers what they care about more – free shipping or fast shipping. While 40% of shoppers wanted the best of both worlds (don’t we all?!), close to 60% emphatically claimed free shipping was their #1 priority. So yes, consumers love free shipping.
Sellers, not so much. Most of us who ship products view free shipping as a burden–something that eats into our margins but must be done to keep up with competition. But is that all there is to it? A recent study showed that free shipping was the biggest reason online shoppers signed up for Amazon’s incredibly popular Prime program. When we offer the shopper free shipping, we artists pick up the tab for delivery instead of our customer. Amazon, the big daddy of e-commerce, spent a net $1.74 billion on offering free shipping to its users. Clearly, Amazon seems to have gotten the pulse of the online shopper just right.
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