Choosing the Best Shipping Platform for Your Business
We live in a world that desires and often demands prompt service. This includes everything from food at a restaurant to your online order arriving on time.
Choosing the best shipping platform per your product requirements is critical to competing with companies offering next-day or even same-day shipping services.
Factors to Consider While Choosing a Shipping Platform
Shipping is one of the major building blocks of your eCommerce business, and choosing the right platform can be challenging. You must find the best fit for your business even among the top-notch shipping platforms. Consider the following factors when choosing a platform:
Quote Comparison
Cost plays a huge role in many business decisions, so this should be a priority. Does the shipping platform offer quotes from various carriers? Do they provide a reliable network of carriers?
Choose a shipping platform that offers enterprise shipping rates from a wide range of reliable carriers. Often, SMBs find it hard to get discounted rates as enterprises do. A few shipping platforms offer enterprise rates to small to medium businesses. Do keen research before deciding on a shipping platform.
Customer Service
Customer service provided by the shipping platform impacts your operations and overall experience. Personalized support from a dedicated team of experts is ideal.
This is especially important for insurance purposes. Handling claims and insurance can be complex, time-consuming, and requires strong attention to detail. A shipping platform that offers assistance to file claims and deals with carriers on your behalf can help make your shipping process simple. Ensure you partner with a shipping platform that provides expertise and experience in customer service and after-shipping solutions – it is crucial to keep your business running smoothly.
Tracking and Monitoring
Look into the tracking capabilities and monitoring services offered. Tracking is essential for customers to follow their package along its journey. You want complete visibility at all times.
Regularly updated tracking information is key to a good customer experience. It helps build trust and loyalty to your business.
Specialization
Depending on what you offer, you may need special shipping services. For example, white-glove delivery service is the best option if you are shipping delicate products like medical equipment requiring special care and assembly services. If you need special services, choose a platform with plenty of options for delivery services.
Delivery Service
Deliver speed and range are two crucial factors. Delivery speed is essential to your customers as they want their purchases as soon as possible.
The delivery range is essential to your business as you want to reach as many customers as possible. Ensure you partner with a shipping platform that offers its services where your customers need them.
API Integration
Lastly, check what integrations they offer. If you’re already using platforms and services for other business areas, the more you can integrate, the better.
Benefits of Partnering with a Shipping Platform
Once you find the best shipping platform for your business, you’ll enjoy many benefits.
Peace of Mind
When you partner with a good-quality shipping platform, you can have automatic confidence in all carriers.
They pre-vet everyone and make sure they only offer you the best services. Your goods are in trusted hands, and you know you’re always getting competitive pricing.
Better Experience
Using a shipping platform offers everyone a better experience. Your work will be seamless as you enjoy on-demand tracking and easy access to all services.
It also gives your customers a better experience as every facet of your business is organized. This means fewer service interruptions for them.
Total Visibility
You can watch and track every aspect of the shipping journey in one place. In-depth metrics and analytics give you premium insight into the success of your process. This transparency allows you to spot trends, patterns, and weak spots.
Better Reach
When you have multiple carriers to choose from, you can reach more customers without issue. This allows you to offer your products to a broader geographical range.
Your choice of shipping platform will affect a lot of different areas of your business. Ensure you are partnering with an experienced platform that offers expertise and reliability. Shipping is generally the last touch point your customers have with your business; make sure you make it memorable.
The Benefits of Partnering with Freight Club
Choosing a shipping platform can often be confusing, but with Freight Club’s years of expertise and excellence, you can ensure you are ahead of the game.
At Freight Club, we help you simplify your shipping process by effortlessly managing everything from quoting, booking, and tracking to complete claims management and secondary insurance protection - all on one platform with zero subscription fees.
We offer one of the largest selections of residential shipping solutions in the United States, with up to 7 levels of delivery services - from back of truck to white glove light assembly.
Freight Intel, our intuitive analytics dashboard, gives retailers complete visibility of their shipping data, including carrier transit times, damages, and overages, helping them make fast, informed decisions based on real-time data and analytics at no additional cost.
Our members enjoy enterprise rates from 30+ pre-vetted carriers with no volume requirements – ship your big and bulky products with ease!
Whether you are an SMB or an enterprise business, we can help you help your business grow and reduce shipping costs and damage rates.
Trusted by thousands of small to medium businesses since 2015, Freight Club enables shippers to ship with confidence and ease.
Are you ready to leverage the same technology used by industry leaders? Get in touch to know how we can help you enhance your shipping performance.