As one of the largest shopping carts/marketplaces in the world, Etsy is the go-to destination for millions of online shoppers each month. Shopkeepers are able to create their own beautiful-looking shops using a variety of premade, premium templates, all which are customizable to a certain extent.
With a variety of plugins, add-ons, marketing tools and more that users can rely upon, Etsy makes it fast and easy to get your own seamless desktop-to-mobile-to-social online store up and running. But once it comes time to attract customers, you’ll be tasked with offering excellent customer service, competitive product prices, cheap shipping costs and adequate logistics to assure a steady stream of sales.
This is where the benefit of Etsy shipping software can help you out. While Etsy has some shipping functionality, it does require a bit of manual data entry, copying and pasting and other arduous tasks, remedial efforts that can suck the time out of your day.
With the right software solution in place, you can enjoy a more convenient method of integrating these logistics into your Etsy store. Software is designed to help you tackle tedious tasks, so that you can reclaim some of the lost time from your day. Here are a few ways that integrated software can help ease your fulfillment efforts.
Saving Time on Shipping
Getting your orders ready for shipping can really suck some time from your day. But newer software solutions ease this task. They plug into the Etsy marketplace using a direct API integration. This allows such software to instantly import all new orders. Once orders are imported into the software, they can be sorted, edited and readied for processing.
Multi-Carrier Support
After you have readied the orders, the software allows you to decide what shipping carrier you are going to use. Most solutions that provide shipping software for Etsy will let you browse carrier rates so you can get the best deal. Once you’ve selected your carrier and ship type, the software can generate compatible digital postage and shipping labels in just a few clicks.
Updating Customers & Shopping Cart
After you’ve completed your pick-and-pack process and have shipped out your orders, shipping software lets you update your customers and shopping cart instantly. A few clicks and your customers will receive email updates with tracking number, while the shopping cart will be updated with ship status and any comments.
Reducing Shipping Cost
Getting shipping cost to a price point where you are able to stay competitive with your online store is imperative in the dog-eat-dog ecommerce world of the present day. Whether you are shipping from Etsy or another shopping cart, customers by and far want cheap or free shipping.
Newer software usually offers some added perks to help you reduce shipping cost. Some providers include a complimentary Endicia or Stamps account to help you reduce shipping costs. Others sometimes also include a complimentary Express 1 account, which gets users signature discounts on Priority Mail and Express Mail postage.
Combined, shipping discounts can enable e-retailers to stay more competitive in the ecommerce industry. With larger ecommerce stores offering discounted or often complimentary shipping, it’s imperative to reduce shipping costs for midsized businesses in order to effectively compete.
Improving Your Bottom Line
The primary goal of any shipping software solution is to help its users save time and money. Premium shipping software helps accomplish this goal, as was demonstrated above, in a number of ways. Reducing fulfillment time, improving shipping accuracy, helping to sustain adequate customer service and providing shipping discounts are just a few of the many perks that technology brings during the modern era.