Marmalead has tools to help you find the best course of action for figuring in your shipping costs. We’ll break those down for you here!

But first!

Shipping costs are always a conversation piece among Etsy sellers. There are varying viewpoints and opinions about how things should be done. So we’re going to start this article with the understanding that not everyone’s shipping policies will look the same. 

But we do know what Etsy like to see. And that is listings that have low cost or free shipping. If you’re wondering who we think should foot the bill for shipping…we believe it’s the customer.
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YOU shouldn’t be the one paying for shipping and even though the words “Free Shipping” get tossed around a lot, you are business owners and we know you already know that “free” isn’t “free”. 

So what do you do?

The customer is buying a product, so the customer should pay the cost of the product, including shipping. Essentially, shipping should be built into the price of an item. 

So again, free shipping isn’t free, it gets paid for, and hopefully it’s the customer paying for it. From a shopper’s perspective, it’s nice to deal with one price instead of a base price, plus shipping. With the base price plus shipping set up, it can often feel like you’re not going to be sure of the cost until just before you’re ready to purchase. As a shopper it’s generally better to know up front what the total bill is going to be for the product or service you want. There are exceptions, but generally, shoppers have trended towards showing more interest in listings that offer free or low cost shipping.
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How much should I build in for shipping? 

It’s all about the market landscape and what choices shoppers have. Use the Search Tool to search your target/focus keywords and check out the listing prices and shipping prices. This way you’ll get a good picture of what price options shoppers have for items like yours.
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The key here is “items like yours”. If you sell greeting cards, customers will have different shipping costs and time to ship expectations than if you sell custom bowling balls. 

So let’s break these shipping tools down (Hint: You'll find these tools in your search results in the Search Tool):

The first chart shows you the minimum, average, and maximum amount of shipping for the listings in the result set. To the right of that, you’ll see a chart that shows you the minimum, average, and maximum days to ship for listings in the result set.  

The next chart shows you the shipping price spread so you can better see exactly where the majority of items in the result set are at with their shipping costs. 

We’ve also done some mathematical analysis to show if other listings seem to be covering the cost of free shipping in their listing price and by how much. 

So for the sellers who are offering free shipping, how are they covering the cost? Are they building it into their listing prices or are they potentially covering those charges themselves? Maybe they're splitting it 50/50.

Whatever it is, the section below clearly shows how listings with free shipping compare to ones with paid shipping so you can see what the sellers with free shipping are doing in your market! 

And that's it! Those are Marmalead's shipping tools! 

Have more questions about the Shipping Tools? Reach out to us at: Success@Marmalead.com