quick question about my website please

[kellytoys]

hi


please can I just ask a quick question at my website.

At the moment I offer a flat rate postage of £4.95 buy as much as you like etc for one postage cost, But i am not sure if this is a good idea or not. Will it but people off who just want to spend £2 or £3 or would it encourge people to spend more to make the postage a better deal.


I would love anybodys thoughts or ideas please


debbie

[Astaroth]

On a totally unrelated point, you need to sort out your image sizes, at the moment you have large files being "squished" to the size that you are wanting them to display which has all sorts of issues but most importantly it is making some of your products look bad.

Back to the main topic :)

At the end of the day you need to look at the average price of your products, average transaction value and competitor pricing.

As a consumer I will look at the total value of my cart. Whilst I may be agrieved to pay £5 for P&P of a £2 item if the average price for the item else where is £10 then your £7 price will probably win me over but I would be a little agrieved at paying so much P&P for a colouring in book or such.

P&P is difficult to do, I personally favour "free" P&P as it means that whilst it isnt free, it is built into the price of the item, it does allow me to easily see the price it will cost me. I hate sites where you have to go through umpteen pages just to find out how much it will cost me and will refuse to register, as some sites require, just to see the total cost

[blown away]

I decided to offer various rates of p&p, relating to the whole order price, from £2.25 to £5.95, with free postage for orders over £100.
I agree with astaroth about hard to find p&p details, and having to register on a site, my new site was chosen because you dont have to register to shop.
I cant seem to get onto your site Debbie, I have tried the link from your profile and typing in the address.

[blown away]

I have managed to get onto your site Debbie, I just wanted to ask you how you are getting on with google checkout?
I am waiting for my site providers to integrate it into their package at the moment, and I really want an alternative to paypal.
Your photo quality looks ok to me, does it depend on your screen resolution Astaroth?
I had lots of people telling me that my pages were far too wide, they were perfect on my pc but people sent me screenshots from lower res. screens and I was horrrifed.
Now on my screen my sitepages look very narrow, but everyone else says they are fine.

[kellytoys]

hi

yes my photos look ok to me too must be different screen resolutions can you name a photo Astaroth so I can re look please. ?

I am finding google checkout ok, different system to pay pal. you need to charge the customer than click when you have despatched but the system is easy to use. Not many people use it at the moment. I have a credit card system and most people use that online or via the telephone

[Astaroth]

The baby bouncer on the top right of the landing page - the photo itself is fine but because the browser is compressing the image to the size you have defined in the HTML the arms/ supports/ not sure what they are called as dont have kids look distorted.

Even if the images to display fine you are using extra bandwidth and slowing the speed the pages load at by having the images larger than the size they actually display at.

[sirearl]

we have a scale as below which works fine I suggest you have your postage rates published on the site as you don't want to shoch the little darlings :)

UK Mainland, order value up to £13.00 carriage £2
UK Mainland, order value £13.00 to £25.00 carriage £3
UK Mainland,order value £25.00 to £50.00 carriage £5
All other destinations, please e-mail

[superprint]

The issue most people find with postage is whether it's a genuine cost or just a way of generating a bit of extra cash at the checkout.

If something costs less than £10 and then the customer has to pay £5 postage the final price isn't particularly keen and can probably be picked up on the high street cheaper.

The incentive for most is cost, if your products are competitively priced even with a reasonable postage fee likelyhood is you'll make a sale.

A staged payment based on weight is a better approach.

Clearly state postage prices from a link on the homepage and be as transparent as possible, you will probably notice higher conversion rates in doing so.

You may also find you can leverage a better deal from your courier firm once you generate a good number of daily orders.

[fisicx]

Clearly state postage prices from a link on the homepage and be as transparent as possible, you will probably notice higher conversion rates in doing so.

Agree 100%, nothing worse than getting to checkout and discovering an extra P&P cost.

Why not do the amazon thing and just say P&P free for orders over £XX. That way people will know there is a delivery charge but may well look to boost their basket to get the feree delivery.

[Spock]

So is it best practice to give a delivery price with cheaper items, or more expensive items with free delivery?

e.g.
Item A is £10 + £2 delivery
Item B is £12 + FREE delivery

Do studies show one works better than the other at conversions?

[KidsBeeHappy]

First thing I do with any online shop is look for a menu option off the main menu bar for delivery & shipping, and find out what the prices are.

If this isn't there, then I don't progress to the shopping cart at all, i go elsewhere.

[superprint]

It works very well for amazon who offer free delivery once you reach a certain price point. It's an incentive for the customer to spend more money.

We offer free delivery on all products so when the customers see a product price they know exactly how much it's going to cost from the outset.

Users find it frustrating when they've hunted around for a good price only to find there is a fairly hefty postage rate at the end.

The issue isn't charging for it, it's informing the customer there is postage at the earliest opportunity during the sale process.

For instance one way would be to display the price and underneath the price have something like "+ postage" which could act as a link to a postage page which gives a basic breakdown of postage rates. i.e. under £10 - £1.99 postage, £10-£25 - £2.99 postage £30+ - Free postage.

There are no studies as such but if you but yourself in the shoes of one of your customers what would you like from a shopping experience? If you went into a shop and a product was displayed at £49.99 but then you get to the checkout and realise you have to pay another £9.99 to have it delivered you wouldn't be best pleased.

Which is why even in a shop you'll typically see the price of the item followed by postage costs, it's clear for everyone to see and customers won't feel ripped off.

[imageonline]

I also offer free delivery on all products. I have just started adding 'free delivery' to item titles and sales have increased as items are found in searches.