Online selling has more than a few hassles involved. You need to worry about sending your customers timely notifications, offering enticing prices and more. Moreover, you also need to ensure that your package is being delivered on time to the customer. This makes the entire shipping process complex. And while you’re sorting this out, one of the biggest dilemmas strike you. That’s choosing between standard shipping vs express shipping.
Standard shipping vs express shipping has been one of the longest debated in eCommerce. Online sellers find it difficult to choose between the two. Moreover, they find it challenging to decide whether to provide one of these or both on their online store. In addition to this, what makes the entire process complex is the delivery fee associated with each of these.
The dilemma arises because today’s customers want faster delivery options. They want their products to be delivered as soon as possible. While providing this is a lucrative offer on online stores, it also means increased costs.
Therefore, as an organization you have to consider the demands of your customers while at the same time be careful about the costs. But, before you choose any one particular type of shipping, it is important to know the precise differences between standard shipping vs express shipping.
Why is it Important to Know the Difference between Standard Shipping vs Express Shipping?
When you’re running an online business, it is important to understand how shipping can cause an effect on your business. You’re selling physical products and shipping is one of the things that becomes an inseparable part of the business. Therefore, it is important to know what kind of shipping suits you and your customers the best.
Remember that shipping can play a huge role in determining the success or failure of businesses. Every customer has unique demands in the market. This means that you cannot consider that everyone will always want just one thing.
Similarly, the same customer can have different demands over a period of time. For this reason, it becomes important to give consideration to both standard shipping vs express shipping options.
At some point some of your customers might be happy with the pace at which their products are getting delivered. In other words, it would mean that they want the products but are not too specific about the delivery times. One the other hand, like every other business, you will have customers that need something urgently. In a physical business environment this is possible to address this situation because the customer comes in, purchases the product and then walks away.
In other words, in the retail scenario, customers are responsible for talking away their product as per their needs. But, in the online scenario, the entire burden shifts over the seller. As much as the convenience of shopping from home might seem, it becomes difficult to manage shipping and delivery times.
Consider a scenario where your customer wants a product urgently. It might be a big order for a wedding that comes at last minute. However, the delivery location is not in your city. You have no idea about standard shipping vs express shipping. So, as you receive the order you simply fulfil it with the current pace of shipping that you provide on your store. You ship the items that reach a week later. The customer refuses the delivery and your products are marked as return to origin. The shipment finally comes back to yoru warehouse and your efforts are wasted.
Not only did you lose money not knowing about standard shipping vs express shipping but also lost a customer that could have otherwise been loyal to you. But this would have been when you helped them with expedited shipping.
Therefore the two variants of shipping known as standard shipping vs express shipping are important to know for all online sellers. But don’t worry, if you don’t know where to get started with the information. We’re here to help you at every step of the way. Read on to find out more about standard shipping vs express shipping.
Standard Shipping vs Express Shipping: What is Standard Shipping?
When it comes to ecommerce shipping, sellers often find themselves under the dilemma of two variants of shipping. These are popularly standard shipping vs express shipping. They are entirely different from one another and fulfill the requirements of different customers.
Standard shipping is the kind of shipping that takes a fixed number of business days to get the product delivered. It mostly depends on the pincode of the delivery destination of the customer. When you are shopping online, you must have come across this option of delivery. This means that whenever a website lists the default option of delivery, it is mostly standard delivery.
Therefore, in standard delivery, you are shipping your products at standard pace and the delivery usually happens between 5 – 7 business days. But, that might also depend upon different sellers and the delivery pin code.
If you look at it more broadly, this kind of delivery is for customers that want the product but are not too specific about the delivery ties. In other words, it is for the customers in whose life the necessity of the product exists, but is not very immediate.
Standard shipping is also low cost shipping, because it gives you time to pick, pack, dispatch and ship the parcel at your own pace. Moreover, as you hand it over to the courier company, they take it forward at their ordinary fixed service level agreements. There is no rush involved.
However, standard delivery doesn’t mean that you will take months to get a product delivered that could have been possible in a week. No doubt that your customer doesn’t want the product urgently, but that also means that they appreciate a respectable and practical delivery time.
Having said that, you also need to ensure that you deliver will in time to the customer. So, if you’ve committed a time frame of 3-5 days on your website, make sure that you deliver the product within the timeframe. Not only is this valuable for maintaining a healthy relationship with the customer but also for making your brand come across as reliable.
In a different instance, standard shipping might take a month or 45 days. This is the case when you’re shipping internationally. So, if you have got a parcel that needs to be shipped to the USA and you are shipping from India, it is natural that your shipping time will increase. You can still worry about standard shipping vs express shipping in this case. But, since express shipping turns out to be more expensive, most sellers prefer standard shipping.
Standard Shipping vs Express Shipping: What is Express Shipping?
The next type of shipping that comes into the picture of standard shipping vs express shipping is express shipping. Express shipping is the type of ecommerce shipping where the delivery of the product takes place at a faster pace than usual.
It means that you make an extra effort to deliver the shipment at an expedited pace. In addition to this, express shipping means that your product can get delivered with the timeframe decided by you, which is faster than usual.
Now, it might sound confusing at this moment, but it is perfectly fine. Take a look at the example below to understand.
Suppose that you sell gift items, groceries, and furniture on your online store. When a customer comes to shop on your website, they find two shipping options for each category of products. One is standard shipping, which is 5-7 days, while the other is standard shipping vs express shipping. But, the case of express shipping will vary for each kind of product. So, for groceries your express shipping might mean 2 hour delivery. SImilarly, for gift items it might mean overnight delivery and for furniture it might mean 2 days.
No doubt that it will surely depend on the nature of products, but when it comes to standard shipping vs express shipping, express shipping can mean more than one thing. And it usually depends on the underlying customer expectations about the delivery of the product.
What is the difference between Standard Shipping vs Express Shipping?
So, then what is the precise difference between standard shipping vs express shipping. You might also have questions like which of the shipping types is more important and what should you do. Some of the common questions that sellers come across are-
- Should I charge for shipping? Will my customers drift away because of this?
- Should I offer free shipping and bear the costs all by myself?
- Do I really need to provide express shipping? Moreover, which out of standard shipping vs express shipping is right for my business.
Delivery Time
It might be already clear to you now that the delivery time of express shipping is far more than that of standard shipping. So when it comes to standard shipping vs express shipping, express shipping wins the battle of being the fastest.
Shipping Expense
Shipping costs of express shipping is naturally greater than standard shipping. It is because the courier company has to make an extra effort to ship the parcels with priority. The courier companies charge more for express shipping.
Dispatch Duration
The dispatch duration of express parcels from standard shipping vs express shipping is lesser. Because it is upto the seller to dispatch the parcels as soon as possible for faster shipping.
Overall Costs
If we talk about the overall costs of standard shipping vs express shipping, standard shipping is more cost effective. Sellers can offer free shipping because the margins are covered in the product. But, this is not possible for express shipping.
Standard Shipping vs Express Shipping: Conclusion
The battle of Standard Shipping vs Express Shipping is never ending in the eCommerce industry. Sellers will always prefer standard whipping, while customers tend to enjoy express shipping options. Therefore, as a business, you must opt for a reliable logistics platform like Dash101 that can help you take off with your business. In other words, it will help you provide a delivery experience to your customers with your shipping options. You can ship at rates starting Rs 23/500 gms and reach out to 26000+ pin codes. With Dash101, you can scale your business like never before with quality shipping.
