The other day a client asked me to remove the shipping cost information from their feed. This caught me by surprise. My first response was to give the advice that I always give to merchants: You should provide as much data to the shopping engines as you can. The more product information the consumer is able to get on the shopping engine, the less likely they will be to click over to your site just to get that information and before they are committed to a purchase… ie: your goal should be to attract less browsers and more buyers.
Needless to say, I asked the client about their concern. They felt that the total price (base + tax and shipping) displayed on the shopping engines was misleading for users who were interested in buying multiple items. Take the example below. This red polo is $29.50 at Gap.com. Shipping is a flat rate of $6, bringing the total to $35.50, which is the price prominently featured on Shopping.com.
Our client’s concern was that if a shopper wanted to buy two shirts, for example, they might do a quick calculation by doubling $35.50 and assume they would be charged $71. In fact, they would be paying for two shirts at $29.50 each with the same $6 flat rate for shipping, bringing the total to only $65.
I’d honestly never thought of this before. The client believed that that negative impact of removing shipping information from their feed might be offset by the positive impact of not misleading and deterring consumers who are interested in buying more than one item. I won’t tell you what I personally think because I’m a numbers guy myself. I’m all for testing and letting the results speak for themselves. As such, we removed the shipping cost information from one of the shopping engines as a test. We are waiting to see how it has affected both traffic volume and performance.
Some of the shopping engines don’t display tax and shipping in certain categories, so this issue doesn’t arise. Also, of those that do display it, some break out each charge and others roll it all up (like Shopping.com above). You would imagine that a consumer interested in buying multiple items would be more likely to calculate the correct total price given the first scenario… in fact, you simply can’t calculate it from the data Shopping.com presents. Delving into some of these engine specific scenarios made me realize that there is a separate post here (hence, part 1). Look out for Part 2…
Feel free to post up your thoughts on this strategy and the validity of this argument.
That is very interesting. I had never thought of the negative effect of a flat rate shipping in the CSEs. Perhaps an ambitious site will see the trend of merchants online moving to a flat rate model, and allow that to be specified. That way it could say “$6 Flat Rate Shipping” and the customer could at least be aware.
Please do post the relative results of the test. It would be very interesting to see.
Comment by Rick Galan — November 6, 2007 @ 8:58 am
The shipping issue has become a slippery slope. We offer free shipping. We get asked weekly to price match and inevitably the competition doesn’t have shipping built in. A problem with free shipping we have to assume everything is going to Seattle. The problem there is (we are in Chicago) the customers in Kansas and Kentucky pay more than they should.
We have broken out our bird food line so bulk – 20 pounds and more is calculated by zone. The $15.00 savings a Midwestern customer receives against what a coastal customer pays has made a strong positive impact in our sales.
Another “down side” to free shipping is returns. As clear as we try to make it. People are always amazed we deduct outbound shipping from returns – the typical comment is “I though shipping was free!”
We received one of competitor’s catalogs recently. The bold headline declared “free shipping over $49.” We looked at some of the pricing and couldn’t figure out how they could ship so cheaply. The fine print stated “any item over 3 pounds is excluded from free shipping.”
Bottom line? I worry less about what they see in feeds and PPC as long as the platforms are sending visitors economically. The WEBSITE must make it clear how much the customer pays as they fill a shopping cart. I think shoppers bale from websites from as much as what they don’t know or can’t find out. The same holds true of the feeds. I would encourage the client you wrote about to include shipping information and send visitors to a landing page making the multiple item purchase savings clear.
Comment by Mitch Rezman — November 6, 2007 @ 8:59 am
The reality for me has been that customers will post incredibly negative comments in the SCE Feedback Forms about the practice of not showing a Shipping Price in the SCE and then having one appear when the customer is in the checkout line.
Comment by vic berggren — November 6, 2007 @ 11:03 am
Thanks for posting everyone. As Mitch has pointed out, shipping is an interesting topic in terms of coming up with a marketing strategy. However, Mitch, you say: “I would encourage the client you wrote about to include shipping information and send visitors to a landing page making the multiple item purchase savings clear.” I believe that the client’s concern is that the shopper won’t even click on their product listing in the first place, if they are mislead by a higher price, and so they therefore wont have the opportunity to convert them on their end.
Comment by Colin Murphy — November 9, 2007 @ 1:01 pm