I was wondering how many sellers here offer Next Day / 1 Day shipping for the continental US, and/or Alaska/Hawaii?
I’m wondering how much business I might be losing - but my biggest competitors don’t offer next day shipping.
For my customizable / personalized products I would have some insulation against returns. And if an item is refused or has a bad address, I may be able to get the shipping cost reimbursed via a Safe-T claim.
My average order value is $49. Next Day air is $55 to $75 (just taking a quick look, could be higher costs for rural routes in the farthest zones).
Is there an e-commerce formula where you should not exceed shipping value that exceeds a certain % of your order, COGS, or other value?
I don’t have an MBA, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night.
Edit: I just want to mention that I don’t offer any customized or handmade items, and I do offer some of my most profitable/highest volume items through FBA, so if someone wants to pay extra for expedited shipping they can, but Amazon deals with it. I am not interested.
Can’t comment on an order value formula, but the last couple of years UPS (and Fed-Ex) Air services have been horrible. They find any excuse for a delay that voids the guarantee promise. Then add weather issues on top of that. Buyers will not accept after paying this premium and you will be eating a lot of NDA cost. Amazon CS will probably side with the buyer and refund on your behalf.
In the past, NDA and even 2DA has been like Murphy’s law for me. More orders go sideways than not.
I used to.
Then they pulled the BS of if the order comes in before 12pm PST it must ship the same day. That is 3pm for us. Then throw in the error of pending orders that go live at 5pm and it made it impossible for us to ship overnight or 2nd day.
They also started flagging our 2nd day and overnight shipping prices as too high. I pulled an order showed them that the price for overnight to Calif was indeed that much. Their answer: you should charge the median, yes you will lose money but it will delight customers.
No I will not lose $50 to ship a $20 item overnight.
In the end we only had 2nd day or overnight orders 1-2 times a month so we didn’t lose much.
75% of my products are finished and ready to go, but 25% are custom / made-to-order. I decided many years ago that preserving my sanity was worth more than getting a few extra sales from customers who might feel entitled to throw a hissy fit if postal speeds hit a snag.
Nope. Don’t need the headache with last minute orders, and carrier delays. I have UPS and Fedex drop offs both within 2 miles of me, and a very good USPS hub about 3 miles away. But nope, not a chance do I want the kind of customer who wants it tomorrow.
I appreciate everyone’s feedback and experience. I’m trying to find every leg-up I can get on the competition. Even on 2-Day orders I’ve had some returned as unclaimed or undeliverable.
I recently did an analysis of my 2-Day shipping orders for 2026. I found that when I increased the price from $8.99 to $10.92 that I had more people use 2-Day. Apparently buyers like to see a number that doesn’t look arbitrary AND they see more value in something that is more expensive.
They start out mad (before they order) because you haven’t shipped something they needed yesterday. And then you charge them way too much. It just goes downhill from there.
I have been doing pretty well managing the stress in spite of declining traffic, day-parting, listing violations, category changes, and so on. I figured I must be doing something wrong.
I used to, but changed everything that was in the 1-day category to 2 days, and left the 2 days as 2 days at the beginning of the year.
I’m in a void (FL panhandle) so there’s really not much 1 day shipping (North FL and south GA, AL, which also happen to be mostly farms and swamps)
2 day shipping represents a significant part of my orders, but not a make or brake percentage. I have grown when compared to last year, more than the 1-day shipping represented, so I don’t really care about it anymore.
I don’t know how it is in handmade. But (in not handmade) you can set in your shipping templates the 1-2 day regions, limiting areas where you don’t want to ship. So if say, you have a max cost of shipping of $15 (just to say a number) check the rates of ups/fedex/usps ground on that radius. For instance, I would never offer 2 day shipping to WA or OR from FL, but I do to everything south of the Mason-Dixon and most of what’s east of the Rockies.
Seller Fulfill Prime would require you to offer 2 day shipping to very large swats of the country, with some exceptions for larger items (where it generously allows for up to 4 days), but SFP requires weekend shipping, so it’s a whole different animal. I tried for two weeks and said “bye”
Outside of real emergency, what could someone possibly, absolutely need in 30 minutes?