For a small shop, shipping is the second-largest cost after the product itself and the leading cause of negative reviews. Most sellers set it up once during their first week of trading and never revisit it. Revisiting it is usually worth more per hour than any marketing activity. ## Start with the true cost per parcel Add these up for your most common order: - Postage for the service you actually use - Box or mailer - Filler and internal protection - Tape, labels and any printed insert - Payment processing on the postage charged to the customer - Your packing time, valued honestly That total is your shipping cost. Compare it with what you charge. Many sellers discover they subsidise every order by a small amount that compounds into a serious annual figure. ## Free shipping or charged shipping? Both work; incoherence does not. - **Charged shipping** suits heavy, bulky or low-margin goods and international orders. It keeps pricing honest and protects margin on distant destinations. - **Free shipping** improves conversion and search placement on most marketplaces, but only works if the cost is genuinely built into the item price. Build it in per weight band, not as a flat guess. - **Threshold free shipping** - free above a set basket value - is the compromise that raises average order value while protecting you on small orders. Set the threshold just above your current average order value, not far above it. ## Shipping profiles: the setting most sellers get wrong Marketplaces let you attach a shipping profile to each listing. Create one profile per weight and size band, not one profile for the whole shop. A single profile means light items subsidise heavy ones and heavy ones lose money. Three to five bands covers most catalogues. Set processing time honestly. Under-promising and shipping early builds better reviews than promising same-day and missing it. ## Choosing carriers Use more than one, chosen by job: - **Small, light, low value:** the postal operator's basic tracked service is nearly always cheapest. - **Medium parcels, domestic:** compare the postal operator against a parcel carrier; the crossover point is usually around a couple of kilograms. - **Heavy or bulky:** a parcel carrier or a dedicated large-item service. Postal pricing rises steeply with weight. - **Fragile or high value:** whichever carrier gives you the best claims record, not the lowest price. - **International:** compare a tracked postal product with an express carrier. Postal wins on price, express wins on speed and clearance quality. Track your own on-time and damage rates by carrier for a quarter. Real data from your own shipments beats any published league table. ## Buy labels through the cheapest legitimate channel Marketplace-integrated labels usually carry the deepest discounts because they use aggregate volume, and they automatically attach tracking to the order, which protects you in disputes. Multi-carrier platforms are the next best option and give better rate comparison. Counter prices should be your last resort. ## Packing for cost, not just protection - **Right-size everything.** Dimensional weight means empty space is billed. A smaller box is often a bigger saving than a cheaper carrier. - **Standardise on three box sizes and two mailer sizes.** Fewer SKUs means bulk pricing and faster packing. - **Use paper or recycled filler.** Cheaper than branded void fill, better received by customers, and easier to store. - **Protect the corners.** Most transit damage enters through a corner impact. - **Never let anything move inside the box.** Shake it; if you hear movement, add filler. - **Weigh and measure once per product**, then store the values. Re-measuring every order wastes the most time of anything in the packing process. ## Branding without waste A stamped kraft mailer, a printed thank-you card and a sticker cost very little and drive repeat purchases and photographs. Custom printed boxes rarely pay back at small volumes. Spend on the insert, not the box. ## The orders that go wrong Roughly one order in a hundred will have a delivery problem. Have a policy before it happens: - **Not arrived, tracking stalled:** wait out the carrier's service window, then offer a replacement or refund and file the carrier claim yourself. Do not make the customer chase the carrier - they cannot, because the contract is yours. - **Marked delivered, not received:** request proof of delivery, ask the customer to check with neighbours and any building reception, then resolve it commercially. The cost of one replacement is lower than the cost of one detailed negative review. - **Damaged:** ask for photographs of the item and packaging immediately, replace, then claim. - **Refused or unclaimed international:** usually an unpaid import charge. Ship duty-paid where the platform supports it to remove this failure mode. Insure above a value threshold you set, and self-insure below it. ## Metrics worth watching monthly - Average shipping cost per order versus average shipping revenue per order - Percentage of orders shipped within your stated processing time - Damage and loss rate by carrier - Percentage of orders hitting the free-shipping threshold - Time spent packing per order Four of those five can be improved with settings changes alone. ## Bottom line Profitable shipping for a small shop comes from four decisions: banded shipping profiles instead of one flat rate, right-sized standardised packaging, the cheapest legitimate label channel, and a written policy for the small percentage of orders that fail. Set those up properly once and the savings recur on every order you ever ship.