ecommerce site- delivery options

Hello everyone,
I am hoping people can help me with the the following. I am setting up a site for my hobby/ small business. It will mainly consist of small items -20 - 300 euro, 1-10 kg. I would like to offer delivery to Ireland, Britain and maybe further afield.
What are my options re delivery? Are there low cost courier services out there.? Realistically, what is the minimum worthwhile order value? How should I structure prices?

As I am new to this I would very much welcome any answers

Cheers

Offer a shipping cost that covers you up to 10kg and also offer free shipping on orders above X amount. There is no reason why you shouldn't have a margin on shipping as well as your products, especially if it will be a large part of your cost base. You will have a cash outlay and it will take up your time so cover yourself. There are loads of low cost carriers out there. I am constantly amazed at how little it costs. I can have a box picked up in Dublin at 5.00pm and have it in the This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language end of Mayo by 9.00am the next day for €13. The more you ship the better your rates will be. Talk to everyone. Try UPS, TNT, FedEx, Fastway etc and anyone else you can find in the phone book. If they have a depot near you then you will get a better service, especially if you are a small customer.
Your minimum order value will depend on how long it takes you to process an order and what your hourly costs is. If you want to earn €25 an hour and your overheads require you to multiply your labour rate by two then your hourly rate is €50. If processing takes 30 minutes then your minimum order value is at least €25. That’s the general idea anyway.

I am in the exact same situation as Hounddog so found your answer very helpful Purple, thanks! I asked a similar question ages ago here.
So you literally know the approximate weights of your goods, then go get varying prices from the differing shipping vendors but what type of other costs should be taken into consideration when shipping products that a business sells online i.e. do you provide customers with shipping insurance as default so as to cover you if they state your product never arrived or just provide them with a range of options and let them choose? I'm assumming that all of these options covered by the shipping vendors?

ecommerce site- delivery / Build

Thanks for the very helpful comments.

I have a further query re the actual web site build. Does anyone know of someone who could design a site for me, starting with about a hundred items and ultimately listing hopefully much more. Does stuff like ZenCart offer any possibilities for the non-techie person.

Once again any comments very welcome or feedback from anyone else in a similar situation

do you provide customers with shipping insurance as default so as to cover you if they state your product never arrived or just provide them with a range of options and let them choose?

Click to expand...

I don't know a thing about shipping insurance for goods shipped to a member of the public. This doesn’t really arise in business to business shipping, unless the goods are actually lost. If you use a courier service the customer will have to sign for the goods. That's your proof of delivery. The courier is not liable for your goods, even if they loose them or break them unless you take out extra, and very expensive, insurance.
When you are talking to the companies listed above ask them about how other clients get over the problem. You may find that you have to factor in loosing X% of your turnover every year to this sort of thing.
See about getting insurance for high value shipments. Also see if the buyers’ credit card offers insurance for goods shipped that are bought on their card, if some do and some don't then only accept the ones that do.

Do a search on this forum for "eCommerce" or other related terms as this topic has cropped up many times before. You have many options open to you from self-build to outsourcing your eCommerce development requirements to either an Irish based vendor or an online vendor/contractor etc. You have also many other things to consider with such a service for your business such as security etc... take a look at this guide from Enterprise Ireland;
eBusiness Law: a Practical Guide for Irish Companies
http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/ebusiness/guides/legal_aht/ebus_intro.htm

Personally speaking, I got a complete eCommerce website solution with 3 months support after completion of the website and a years hosting and a whole range of other eCommerce functions for $600 online!

So if you want to even consider this option to outsource your website design and development or just even want to gather requirements by viewing other people's web development projects, try checking out the following;

1. http://www.guru.com
Guru.com is the world's largest online marketplace for freelance talent.


2. http://www.smarterwork.com
Find Service Providers at the Database of Certified Service Providers


3. http://www.freelance.com
Freelance.com provides the fastest and most efficient means of identifying qualified professionals for project based needs or long-term activities anywhere in the world, anytime.


4.

Thanks for that information Purple. I'm just basing my questions re shipping insurance from my experience using other such eCommerce websites such as ebay and shopthestates.com. I'll do a little more research on the topic.

There is a franchise in Ireland, where you can buy prepaid vouchers.
Freeway or fastway or something.

An Post put up their prices in Feb for parcels and packaging.
The other thing about an Post is that their bands are quite broad
1kg is the same price as 1.4kg. Get yourself a decent scales and weigh your items

Oscommerce is a free shopping cart software and there are decent online communities to get help

I would like to ship quite large items so it may be a little prohibitive to send a completely finished product, however, it is possible I could send a flatpack version. So as regards, shipping containers and materials i.e. boxes, cardboard, foam etc what's the best options here... I know Viking Direct do sell a lot of shipping material. I'm assumming shipping vendors have size restrictions as well as weight restrictions for the various bands?

Hi all,
I have spoken with the pre-paid voucher company based out of New Ross and they do indeed sem to offer a very attractive low cost courier service- starting from 8 euro.
I have a general query. I am told that courier companies will normally not insure delicate items such as glass or china. For a site selling such items what are my insurance optionsto cover loss/ breakage ? Is there low cost cover that i can get? Is insurance necessary?

Fastway use perpaid vouchers. In our experience they are by far the best value and most reliable carrier we use. I have no ties or connection to them what so ever.

For simple ecommerce solution try Mals ecart or Remotebasket (unless its a dynamic site) - both offer the shipping options that Paypal dont. Both need you to get dirty with HTML! In the end, I decided it was too much hassle to change all the 200+ items on site, so I've pitched Paypal rates besed on assumption that only 10% of clients will be from UK or Europe - I >10% then I change the %rates.

Also don't foregt to list your self on the ebay and amazon shops.

Hi Folks
I am in the last stages of developing a new ecommerce site. The product is priced from $US2-$US20 so I would appreciate any advice on which payment gateway to use.

We use realex on a number of other sites however in this case it may be too expensive seeing as the product is so cheap.

I have seen other sites that seem to have a seamless page to process bookings through and the company seems to retain the credit card details after the transaction. As we would be selling for a third party this would be important.

Any advice appreciated