FREE Shipping or Great Prices?

[Honey Bros]

Here at HB we are constantly striving to bring the Arb Industry the best possible deals possible, with the best possible service. As the Internet age brings dealers competing against each other for business and driving down prices, as shown by the recent Arb Show post regarding show prices vs online prices, the winners being you guy's , our question is this....

 

Bearing in mind dealers need to make a margin to cover running costs. Do we build shipping costs in the product price OR best possible product price with a sensible 'trackable and insured' shipping charge?

 

At HB we value the opinion of the Arbtalk community, and ask for sensible suggestions to this age old question.

 

Do you compare product price, or total cart price when comparing Arb Gear online?

 

Over to you....

Edited June 19, 2012 by Honey Bros

[AlvinD]

I personally compare the total cart cost and go from there, as long as the product price is good and sensible and the P+P nicely priced, efficient service etc t'would be hard to go wrong in my books

[Ashes_Firewood]

Always compare the total price including postage. Places that sell a product a bit cheaper tend to have high postage costs so end up being no cheaper over all.

[bob]

generally it,s the complete service.

I.e avaiability speed and reliability cost (total) certainly influences i try to avoid paying postage even if it means adding extra gear.

But the fact that the company sells what i want at that time.

I would not buy 1 product from 1 company and 1 product from another ect.

Admittedly i will wait a while to fill an order from you and the next will probably be from another supplier but that will because you do not sell some of those bits.

 

although would it be better to have a loyalty thing on postage ie after i have spent £..... then free postage in a 12 month rolling period

but certainly think free over £... rather than those that do spend £5 getting it posted free with the product been dearer

hope that makes sense.

[Dean O]

I think free shipping over a given value, be it £50 or £100.

It makes all the difference on a large order and tempts you to add to the order using the money "saved" otherwise spent on postage.

I tend to only shop around if going for a bigger order.

[Stereo]

I think the key thing and the thing that most sites fall down on is the lack of clarity in displaying their shipping costs up front. I actually asked a very similar question to the OP here a year or so back as we sell on the web and on eBay. On eBay we are all free p+p because that's what they want and to be honest, ebay buyers tend to mainly want one item and not big multiple orders.

 

On our webby, we are price plus postage but one thing we learned from studying the traffic flow on our site is that just about every new customer has one thing in common. Before they start adding to cart they want to know the shipping cost. It's amazing how many sites hide this away. We made the point of smacking a big link on the home page and have a dedicated page on the top menu which explains our shipping costs and time frames in detail.

 

We also run a simple shipping table by weight. I hate shopping on sites where it's plus 20p per kilo or whatever. Your courier may charge you that but it's just punishing the customer for adding more to their cart. Yes we have to cover our costs but I think the simpler the better. You win some and lose some.

 

I have toyed with the idea of free p+p on the site for ages but can't bring myself to do it. Even though the majority of our sales are for one item and for those people, it may add clarity (unless they are highlands, islands, NI blah blah), we would almost certainly lose out on the many customers who buy in volume from us as the total price would be ridiculous.

[likeitorlumpit]

It's got to be best price overall though I wouldn't go back to a business that gave me grief over in guarantee repairs.

[WorcsWuss]

Total cart price, but then I like doing spreadsheets to make sure I'm getting the best deal!

And I always spend up to the free postage threshold....

Flat carriage pricing is always helpful, but then we wouldn't necessarily get the best deal. I don't mind not finding out the exact postage cost until the end, but it's nice to have an idea. Like I say though, having a figure at which postage becomes free acting as a target suits me just fine...!

[Honey Bros]

We have now reduced our FREE shipping threshold from £100 to £75 for orders to the UK mainland.

[timtree81]

I look all prices up in the net before hand then make an order , I always know how much my usual items cost and I'm not to botherd on a few pounds p p , shipping etc if I'm getting a good service in return , that counts for a lot IMO