One reason why everyone complains about shipping is sellers (on eBay for example) who under-price products and then hammer buyers with ridiculous shipping and/or handling fees.

That has long been a ploy of television infomercials and direct catalog sales so people – especially older people – are wary of being taken that way. You want your buyers to understand that YOU don’t set the shipping – the shipping company does.
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The cost of shipping is the number one complaint received by every ecommerce store I ever worked with – and finding a way to offer free shipping is the best way to increase sales. Obviously that cost has to be somewhere – usually in the product price instead of separately.
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Every site should be doing landing page optimization and conversion rate testing. We have put together a private group specifically to share what we know about increasing conversion rates.

We have our own private forum where we discuss our use of Conversion Doubler to measure what works so that we can teach others how to use that particular tool because it is among the easiest to understand and use and suitable for even the smallest business.

The biggest mistake I believe any ecommerce business that has any kind of cashflow or budget at all is making is not hiring an expert to increase their conversions. The average conversion rate is a paltry 1-2% and that can usually be at least doubled.

Those who can afford it should be hiring someone like Bryan Eisenberg because with his intelligence and vast experience he can increase conversions by far more than anyone new to testing possibly could.

A business that has money is making a serious mistake wanting to do everything themselves because of all the lost opportunity occurring while they’re learning by trial and error.

Anyone wanting to increase conversions and especially generate more leads should look into the Lead Generation solutions, especially what they call Lead Nurturing.

They should also read blogs specific to generating leads and increasing conversions including these:

• Hubspot Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
• Dr. Pete User Effect Usability Blog
• Conversion Doubler Landing Page Optimization Blog
• Bryan Eisenberg blog on Improving Conversion Rates (And read his books!)
• Marketing Experiments Optimization Research

Those are the ones that come to mind right off.

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Now that I am ready to get serious, as I see the HUGE potential due to the absolutely HORRIBLE conversion rate I have, I would love it if anyone has some suggestions on shipping. I truly believe people are getting to the cart, which actually calculates the shipping cost for them, but are deciding that shipping might be high. What is some experience of others in setting shipping fees?

I have wrestled with including shipping in the price, but that is too hard to communicate when someone is just reading a title on Google… it also creates a problem for International buyers. I am currently leaning toward charging like 10% of the order amount for shipping fees and then obviously having a separate shipping option for International Orders, because those buyers are expecting a little extra work… I could let everyone know up front that shipping fees equal 10% of the sale.. Any opinions as to if the intial reaction of people is that 10% is too high or anything? I honestly do not believe 10% would even cover the total shipping cost at this time due to my size, but I understand I have to eat a little bit to establish my web presence and grow my business… Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on this whole shipping conundrum I am currently experiencing?

I wish more Web designers would read these points. And if businesses think using a Web design company that caters to Fortune 500 companies will save them they are mistaken. Much of what I know came from watching one of them destroy a business that we grew to $1.1 million in sales in only eight months.

These are the two mistakes they made that almost put that very strong business OUT of business. Even though these are two very well known issues and the company involved was extremely well-known they not only made these mistakes – they took so long to finally correct them that a business that was supporting 4-5 employees laid them all off and the owner had to take paid work elsewhere to keep her site online.

Every time a business suffers and I know the fix but they won’t listen it makes me so sad. I hope anyone reading this will not dismiss what I say. Get a second opinion or even a third if need be – preferably from an ecommerce site that has a conversion rate of much higher than 2%.

It still amazes me that more online stores are not hiring an ecommerce optimization expert to increase conversions. < << That link is the best place to read more and find the most talented optimization experts.
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