How to set up Shipping for BigCommerce? Guides & Apps

When it comes to running an online business, every merchant wants the best for their customers. From the very pre-purchase phase to the post-purchase phase, your service needs to be perfect. And shipping would be the delivery system to make sure that your products safely arrive at your consumer.

The more shipping options online retailers offer, the higher chance they can attract more customers. For this reason, BigCommerce shipping options will be the main topic of today’s article.

We will go from reasons and things you need to know How to set up your BigCommerce shipping options to a tutorial guiding you through steps to set multiple BigCommerce shipping options. Keep reading to find out more!

3 standard BigCommerce shipping methods

Choosing a suitable shipping method is crucial when running an online store with BigCommerce. Let’s look at the three most common ways to ship your products to customers:

1.Self-Shipping

You can send out orders when you’re just starting. This method means you’re packing boxes and visiting the post office on your own.

It’s a good way to keep full control, but it might become hard to keep up as your business grows. Also, managing your stock to avoid running out of products is a big part of self-shipping.

2. Using Shipping Integrations and Apps

BigCommerce lets you set up basic shipping options directly. But, for more advanced needs, the BigCommerce Apps Marketplace is your friend.

It offers various tools for printing labels, managing orders, tracking shipments, and even drop shipping. These tools can make shipping easier and more efficient as your business expands.

3. Outsourcing to a Fulfillment Partner

Consider outsourcing if your store is growing and you’re dealing with many orders monthly. A third-party logistics partner (3PL) can handle the heavy lifting of BigCommerce fulfillment for you.

This way, you can focus on growing your business, helping customers, and marketing. A good 3PL provides shipping services and tech for managing inventory and analyzing your shipping needs. All of which can help you offer better shipping options to your customers.

The importance of fulfillment and shipping in the eCommerce industry

It would be difficult to provide delivery solutions with affordable prices that do not eat into your profits if you don’t look about how you will reliably meet and export orders.

Customers will have the ability to pick out the right delivery choice for them by offering a variety of BigCommerce shipping options. The biggest reason is that each shipping system requires a diverse price range for the separated zone and most consumers tend to choose the most frugal one. When they need their order to be delivered in the shortest time possible, a fee for expedited shipping should also be available at your store.

You will offer better, more affordable delivery options while reducing travel times and shipping costs by identifying ways to maximize the supply chain.

Types of Shipping options for your BigCommerce store

Another important thing to consider in the pre-determined phase of setting up BigCommerce shipping options is to plan your fulfillment and shipping strategy. Below is four types of delivery choices you can choose from depending on the scale of your company and your requirements, allowing you even to conduct the sales through BigCommerce omnichannel:

Live rates

Live rates are real-time transactions received from carriers such as UPS, FedEx, or DHL right from the moment your products are successfully delivered to their owners. This is considered the most effective BigCommerce shipping option.

There are substantial cost differences based on the item, the location, and the distance from your inventory to your customers’ addresses. Hence, it is more troublesome to utilize live rates as a marketing tactic. However, by charging your customers the lowest reasonable amount of what you will be paying your shipping providers, you can guarantee that this is the most economical delivery service out of the four.

Moreover, eCommerce is full of competitive brands, live rates are the first choice of many well-known ones. Whether your customer lives far or near your store’s locations, you can always undercut the market by increasing delivery rates while assuring the expenses are protected.

A more complicated case is that you want your BigCommerce shipping options to make up the total amount of money spent for packaging and administration, you can have a surcharge. Your rate of return is, therefore, lower than the average in your industry.

Freeship

In the present age, the “free shipping” term is everywhere, it is the easiest shipping option for online merchants and is also the most favorite type of shipping fee that customers love. The origin of it must be starting from the moment Amazon decided that their buyers do not have to pay any shipping fee if they shop for more than $25 every time.

The difficult part of freeship is that you will still have to pay the postage and assure that your profits can cover up the shipping fees that you have paid for your customers simultaneously. Because of this, most large companies do not allow shipping free beyond a certain threshold and only for several categories of products.

Besides, some of the advantages of offering free shipping as your BigCommerce shipping options are:

• Customers fall in love with it
• Beneficial impact on your conversion rates
• Require simple explanation

Do consider how you can affect the bottom line as you deliver free shipping alternatives. Even if you are getting further profits, it would be no value if you are losing money on each deal you get. So, the only scenario you can give it a try is when you realize that the sales margin would exceed the total shipping costs.

The best thing to do is put an appropriate weight limit on your business’s orders and do not include items that were too large or heavy to send them free of charge.

Shipping flat and table rates

The two definitions of flat rate and table rate might sound more unfamiliar than the two first ones. Let’s explain each by each together!

First of all, a flat rate acts as a uniform shipping fee for all of your orders despite their size or weight. An example of this is how Overstock.com only charges $2.95 delivery to most places in the United States. You can do the same thing by assigning a $10 shipping or lower for every order value.

Moving on to table-rate shipping, even though it is more elaborate than the flat rate, understanding how it works does not take much time of yours. Just imagine the further your customers live away from your distribution center, they will have to pay more money as the shipping fee.

Or you could charge per order depending on the overall amount of the order, $10 for small orders under $50, $5 for ones cheaper than $100, and non for the greater ones. Additionally, you might charge various prices with different weight classes.

One way or another, it will be a plus point in your plan for BigCommerce shipping options!

The mixture

Despite the fact that the three mentioned techniques are more common and mostly employed in the eCommerce industry, a distinctively non-conventional combination of these elements may also prove to be highly productive.

Alternatively, provide free daily shipment (with no commitment) alongside delivery services such as the Second Day or Overnight shipping depending on the order value.

Using “The mixture” would allow you to align your advertising and sales revenue goals.

How to set up BigCommerce shipping options

If you have made up your mind clearly about which BigCommerce shipping option will you go for, it is the perfect time to learn how to set it up in your BigCommerce control panel. Our tutorial today will guide you through three main sections:

When you go to the BigCommerce Shipping Manager, you will have the access and ability to make changes to your shipping information including your store’s address, your preferred shipping zones, and shipping options.

Without further ado, let’s start step by step:

Step 1: Set up Shipping Origin

Your Shipping Origin address, or the location where you are working, is utilized to estimate which delivery methods are possible for your target customers and answer questions about when will a shipment arrive in front of their house. Instead of showing them on your website’s storefront, BigCommerce will use them for the postage and logistics-related address.

If you are utilizing the Automatic Tax Setup, the value you input as your location would be charged with the right sales tax. Furthermore, if you are also one of the BigCommerce Shipping service’s users, they will automatically transfer the shipping details from your settings.

At your BigCommerce Dashboard, find Store Setup > Shipping, this is how your screen will look like:

Here is how a typical Shipping Origin label will appear:

There is an “Edit” button where you can adjust everything related to your BigCommerce shipping options: the company name, the street, the city, the country, or even the postal code is included.

With that amount of information to fill in, do not forget to double-check your address so that your customers and shipping companies won’t get mistaken!

Step 2: Set up Shipping Zones

While setting up a BigCommerce online store, it is recommended that you need to provide your customers with multiple shipping zones. These are the regions that your products are able to be shipped. If an address is not found in either of your delivery areas, an error message will be shown.

E-tailers can separate their BigCommerce shipping options into nations, states, or provinces or simply just their postal codes. It is possible to have multiple transportation facilities in various shipping areas.

At your BigCommerce Store Setup > Shipping page, scroll down a little bit then you will see there is a button saying “Add shipping zone”:

In the image, we have set up three typical BigCommerce shipping options for our clients to choose from, you can “Edit” or “X” to delete any of the available zones based on your current situation.

When you click on this button, BigCommerce will require you to choose out of these three options:

Select whatever fits with your expectation, with every choice you click on, there will be a form for you to fill in further information related to the BigCommerce shipping zones. For example, below is when you divide your shipping locations into different countries:

The most important thing is not to forget “Submit” the form after all the questions have been answered!

If “Rest of the world” is your choice, where your buyers would be able to choose a delivery service from every corner of the world that has not been specifically set elsewhere. The outstanding feature about this very option is that online merchants will have the ability to provide their customers with nationwide shipping without losing the $10 fee for a flat rate. This is the only selection that no form will appear later on.

Step 3: Set up Shipping Options

Usually, retailers stock several BigCommerce shipping options so that they can meet the different needs of customers. There are two types of consumers here: people who value expediency over cheap prices, willing to spend a couple more days for the items to arrived and some want their products to be delivered in the shortest amount of time by paying an extra fee.

As we have mentioned diverse types of BigCommerce shipping options in the previous part, now is the time for you to set up and configure your choice. At your Shipping control panel, next to the Shipping Zones that we have just built, there is an “Edit” button for you to click on:

Then there will be four types of Static shipping quotes and a toggle underneath each of them:

Based on your preference, please turn on or off any type that is suitable for your store and customers.

The next thing you see is Real-time shipping quotes, where delivery companies will appear for you to connect and work with them:

Last but not least, choose “Done” to save your work!

Best apps for BigCommerce shipping services

EasyShip

EasyShip offers BigCommerce store owners a user-friendly shipping solution, enabling live rate quotes and simple label printing. It's compatible with major marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy, boosting customer satisfaction with real-time tracking and upfront duty calculations. 

Available in multiple countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States, EasyShip is a flexible choice for international shipping.

EasyShip's pricing is designed to accommodate businesses of various sizes:

EasyShip pricing

• Free: Best for starters, with up to 50 monthly shipments at no charge.
• Plus: For growing businesses, $29/month for up to 500 shipments and added team support.
• Premier: Aimed at scaling businesses, $69/month for up to 2,500 shipments with more integration options.
• Scale: Designed for high-volume sellers, $99/month supports up to 5,000 shipments and extensive team features.

ShipperHQ

ShipperHQ provides comprehensive control over shipping rates and options. It simplifies logistics management by integrating with over 50 carriers like USPS, FedEx, DHL, and UPS for real-time pricing.

ShipperHQ pricing: The app offers 4 distinct plans, starting at $75 per month, designed to scale with the size and complexity of your business. With ShipperHQ, merchants can embark on a 15-day free trial.

ShipStation

ShipStation simplifies the shipping process for BigCommerce store owners by offering an all-in-one platform that integrates with over 70 different carriers and networks. The integration capabilities of ShipStation mean merchants can sync their sales from various channels, maintaining visibility and control over every order.

A standout feature of ShipStation is its dedication to customer support. Regardless of a merchant's experience level, ShipStation's support team is ready to assist at every step, ensuring users can maximize the platform's capabilities..

Pricing overview for ShipStation:

ShipStation pricing

• Startup: At $25/month with a free trial, suitable for up to 3 users and 500 shipments.
• Accelerate: $65/month for growing businesses with up to 3,000 shipments and 5 users.
• Scale: Designed for larger operations at $155/month, supporting 10 users and 7,500 shipments.
• High Volume: Tailored for high-volume shippers with custom solutions, encouraging interested parties to get in touch for more details.

ShipSaver

ShipSaver offers a user-friendly approach for merchants to bulk print shipping labels and insure their packages directly from their BigCommerce store. The service aims to simplify the post-purchase process with efficient claims handling, often resolved within a week, and reimbursements issued directly to the user's PayPal account.

With ShipSaver, you can access discounted USPS rates typically lower than retail prices. Additionally, the app offers competitive insurance pricing, both domestically and internationally.

For label prices, ShipSaver offers reductions on USPS retail rates. Insurance costs are clear-cut, too, with domestic coverage starting as low as $0.65 for up to $50 of coverage, scaling up affordably as the coverage amount increases. International rates follow a similar structure.

ShipBob

ShipBob offers an all-encompassing fulfillment service that integrates seamlessly with BigCommerce. By syncing with ShipBob, merchants can automate the delivery process, as the service takes on picking, packing, and shipping orders from their network of fulfillment centers. 

Beyond handling physical logistics, ShipBob provides technology-driven solutions to optimize shipping routes and reduce costs. Their advanced algorithms and bulk rate negotiations with carriers like FedEx, DHL, UPS, and USPS ensure cost-effective delivery options.

ShipBob offers standardized fees for receiving inventory, warehousing, and shipping orders. Notably, they provide a 'Free Picks' feature, where each direct-to-customer (DTC) order includes four picks for free, and additional picks are charged at $0.25 each.

Shippo

Shippo makes shipping easy for BigCommerce merchants by offering straightforward label printing and carrier coordination without complex features. It provides essential services like customized tracking and easy returns, integrating seamlessly with BigCommerce, Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, etc., for smooth operations across online stores. 

Shippo's pricing:

• A free Starter plan.
• A $19/month Professional plan for high-volume shipping and competitive discounts on USPS, UPS, and DHL Express. 
• A Premier plan for customized solutions, premium support, and other advanced features.

Conclusion

To sum up, setting up various BigCommerce shipping options can gain you access to better customer service, and obviously, as a result, higher profits seem to be more reachable. However, before making any decision relating to this topic, it is important to have a certain amount of understanding about it.

We hope that this BigCommerce review has fulfilled both of the goals and then you can deliver the best experience possible to your consumers!

FAQs

How do I choose the proper shipping method for my BigCommerce store?

Evaluate your product dimensions, weight, and shipping destinations to select suitable shipping methods. Compare carriers' cost-effectiveness and delivery timelines, and consider customer preferences for faster delivery or lower costs. Utilize BigCommerce's shipping settings to configure your chosen methods accurately.

Can I offer international shipping through my BigCommerce store?

Yes, you can offer international shipping. Select carriers with global services. Factor in duties and taxes. Provide clear international shipping policies to customers to set the right expectations.

How can I reduce shipping costs for my BigCommerce store?

To minimize shipping costs, optimize your packaging to be as lightweight and compact as possible. Negotiate with shipping carriers for better rates, or utilize shipping apps that offer discounts. Explore various shipping options to identify the most economical routes and methods. 

What are the benefits of integrating shipping apps into my BigCommerce store?

Shipping apps streamline operations, automate label creation, and provide real-time tracking. They can offer discounted shipping rates. Integration helps manage orders more efficiently, saving time and money.

How does offering free shipping impact my BigCommerce store's sales?

Free shipping can increase conversion rates and average order value. Set a minimum order amount to qualify for free shipping. Analyze margins to ensure profitability.