Wix is one of the most user-friendly website building platforms on the market that combines powerful technology and unparalleled design capabilities. Wix has gained popularity amongst digital native direct to consumer (D2C) brands as it helps online sellers to create beautiful, professional, and mobile-optimised online stores to manage and grow their eCommerce business. You can choose from over 500 store templates to suit your e-commerce business or fully customise anything precisely the way you want.
Wix is not a mere website builder but a complete e-commerce solution with a wide range of tools to help you grow your online business, like the Wix Logo Maker and Business Name Generator. In addition, Wix offers its own payment processing tool, Wix Payments, along with 50+ third-party secure payment gateways and a free 256-bit SSL certificate, which means that all of your site content, personal information, and payments are secured by advanced, end-to-end encryption.
So, you are ready to launch your e-commerce business. You have created an eye-catching Wix store, managed to drive customers to your site through sophisticated marketing campaigns, set up your payment options, and designed an exceptional shopping experience that directs buyers seamlessly to your checkout page (don’t forget to make sure your Wix e-commerce store is GDPR compliant, as well).
You are now (almost) ready to start selling your amazing products. The next big step to consider is your Wix e-commerce shipping and how to create an order fulfilment and shipping strategy before orders start coming in.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up shipping on your Wix store and streamline your e-commerce fulfilment process.
Setting up your Wix shipping
From selecting shipping regions to choosing the right shipping label printer, there are several things you need to take care of to create the correct fulfilment and shipping strategy for your online business. That might seem like an overwhelming task, especially for retailers that have just started building the e-commerce side of their business. But fear not. In the next section, we’ll present you in detail the key steps of how to set up shipping for your Wix store:
1. Choose your target market
2. Select shipping rates and delivery options
3. Find the correct shipping label printer
4. Set up a return policy
Choose your target market
One of the first things to consider is which markets you want to reach with your products. Everything from delivery times to shipping fees can change depending on your shipping range. You may decide to only ship your products domestically, for example, especially if you are just starting your e-commerce business.
In general, shipping domestically is way simpler than internationally - no taxes, tariffs, fees, or complicated customs documentation here. Also, when shipping domestically only, you can transport your goods via road, hence more easily offering your customers free or low-cost shipping. However, exposing your business to an international audience as soon as possible might be the key to help your company grow.
The trickiest part when shipping internationally is to have the correct commodity data in place to avoid your shipments being delayed, returned, or pay more tax during customs checks. Shiptheory offers a handy commodity data checking tool that automatically identifies and highlights any issues or omissions in your product data and helps you reduce friction when shipping internationally.
What shipping rates and delivery options should you offer?
Another crucial thing to consider is offering your customers a choice of shipping rates and delivery options tailored to their needs. Shipping is another opportunity to (literally) deliver another act of an amazing customer experience to your customers.
With Wix, you can set your own shipping rates for different products with specific delivery costs. You can determine your rates by region, category, weight, price range, and more or offer a flat shipping rate.
You can also consider offering free shipping, hands down the most attractive shipping rate for your customers. Nevertheless, before doing that, you need to determine whether you’ll be able to absorb the shipping costs. If you can’t afford free shipping, you can offer local pick up where customers collect orders in person from your brick-and-mortar store or warehouse instead.
Find the correct shipping label printer
After choosing your shipping rates and delivery options you are about to offer to your customers, the next obvious step is to invest in a good-quality shipping label printer. But why do you need a dedicated label printer for shipping, and what difference will it make compared to the printer set-up you already have in your office?
A shipping label printer is equipped with features designed to make your Wix shipping label printing a fast, easy, and cost-efficient process; unlike your current all-in-one printing set-up, they are designed to do one thing and to do it well. A shipping label printer prints durable, waterproof labels that are the right size, pre-cut, and ready to stick on your package. Furthermore, a label printer is much faster and more durable than your all-in-one printer and takes up less space on your desk.
But with so many options out there, how will you choose the correct shipping label printer for your Wix store? The answer to that question is simple: just read this comprehensive guide on shipping label printers that includes a list of the top shipping label printers in the market that will help you streamline your Wix shipping process.
Your return policy
Finally, you must always bear in mind that usually online buyers have to make a purchase without interacting with and experiencing the product in person. Therefore, it comes with no surprise that the majority of online shoppers review an e-commerce seller’s return policy before deciding to buy something.
Consequently, implementing a comprehensive, transparent, and customer-centric return policy is a must-have for every e-commerce retailer nowadays. It also provides an excellent opportunity for your e-commerce brand to build loyalty and turn one-time buyers into loyal returning customers.
Wix shipping options
After you have set up shipping on your Wix store, it is time to investigate your shipping options, i.e., how will you ship those orders of yours?
There are several different ways to ship your orders that come through your Wix store. Below we will discuss these options in detail and evaluate the pros and cons of each one.
Ship your orders yourself
If you are just starting your e-commerce business, you might want to ship your orders yourself. That’s a great way to keep logistics costs low until your orders begin to increase in volume. While shipping your orders yourself gives you complete control over the process, typing down your shipping labels, sending tracking numbers back to your customers manually, and waiting in line at the post office can be a tremendous waste of time. The time you could definitely use to grow your business instead.
Now let’s say you decide to create an account with a carrier instead of carrying boxes yourself to the post office every day. Wix integrates directly with USPS (the United States Post Office) and allows you to print shipping labels right from your Wix dashboard without the need to create a USPS account.
That can be a very convenient solution for small businesses based in the US, as USPS delivers to every address in the States, six days a week. But, unfortunately, you cannot negotiate prices since shipping rates are provided automatically by USPS and return shipping labels are not currently supported.
Also, your company might be based outside the US, or you would like to use different carriers for different destinations, product sizes, shipping methods, etc. Deciding which carriers to work with is another crucial aspect of your shipping strategy.
Globally, there are hundreds of local and international carriers to choose from, so selecting the right one(s) can be pretty overwhelming (this is where having a shipping management platform like Shiptheory can come in handy, but more on that later).
Moreover, as your e-commerce business grows, keeping track of all the different ways you ship your orders (ensuring that the correct carrier or service is selected for a specific type of product or destination country, for example) can become complex and highly time-consuming. Keeping all those rules in your head or even on a spreadsheet will eventually get complicated, make your shipping process unnecessarily stressful, and even lead to shipment mistakes that will ruin your customer’s experience.
Use a shipping software solution
Wix offers online retailers the ability to set up basic shipping rules for their store, which can be pretty convenient if you are just starting your e-commerce business or your order volume is still relatively low. But if you’re looking for a more advanced solution, various third-party shipping apps in the market will help you automate your Wix shipping process and save you time and money.
Ideally, you are looking for a shipping solution that will help you with the following tasks:
1. Connect your Wix store with the carriers of your choosing.
2. Automatically import your Wix orders.
3. Create shipping automation rules.
4. Generate your Wix shipping labels and customs documentation (if you are shipping internationally).
5. Send tracking information back to your customers.
6. Provide real-time shipping data.
A shipping management platform like Shiptheory will allow you to streamline and automate several shipping-related tasks and enable a more efficient shipping process for your Wix orders by saving you money and time while eliminating manual data-entry errors.
Shiptheory is a cloud-based shipping management platform that connects your Wix store with more than 40 of the world’s best carriers, like Royal Mail, UPS, DPD, FedEx, USPS, and more, to automate shipping labels, manifests, customs documentation, and tracking.
With Shiptheory, you can import orders automatically from your Wix store into a single, easy-to-use platform that offers various shipping label printing options, multiple-user support, advanced reporting features, and an excellent customer support team.
Connect your Wix store to Shiptheory and gain access to powerful shipping automation! Shiptheory’s intelligent shipping rules engine allows you to automate every step of your shipping process based on a combination of shipping destination, order weight, value, product SKU’s, and more. In addition, your Wix shipping labels are automatically printed, and shipment tracking information is sent back to your Wix store and customers moments after an order is complete.
If you want to start right away shipping your online orders, connecting your Wix store to Shiptheory and creating your first shipping label is a matter of minutes, as you can see on this guide.
Conclusion
While it may seem like a challenging task at first, setting up your Wix shipping should hopefully be quite straightforward after reading our comprehensive guide. But remember, creating an e-commerce shipping strategy is definitely not a one-time job. You should always keep developing and adjusting your e-commerce shipping process as your business evolves to better fit your brand growth and your customers’ ever-changing needs. Using a shipping solution such as Shiptheory for your Wix store will allow you to easily scale as your business grows.
If you have any queries regarding our Wix integration, please do not hesitate to reach out to support. We are more than happy to answer your questions and give you a hand to get it up and running.
Otherwise, create a free Shiptheory account and start shipping smarter and faster today!
