Comment la gratuité des frais de port peut-elle influencer les décisions d'achat en matière de commerce électronique ?

As the e-commerce marketing is witnessing exponential growth for quite some time now, the main strategy that works in their favor is the free shipping service extended to their clients, who get influenced to order more and more products online.Free shipping plays a pivotal role in influencing the buying decisions of the consumers. In fact, free shipping is the second top influence of online purchasing decisions. A whopping 90% of consumers agreed that the free shipping option offered by the e-commerce companies is the biggest incentive to shop online.Another notable observation is that when it came to free shipping offer of a particular product with a savings of $5 is more welcome for the customers in contrast with discounted and slashed price of the product sold at $9.99 at the store! Thus, it is imperative that free shipping has become quintessential for the e-commerce players.

Price & Time

The twin aspects, online shoppers love are low priced products delivered in lesser time. The online customers neither want more time taken to be delivered at their doorsteps nor do they accept a rise in the final cost of the items they have ordered.The small online marketers are now able to offer free shipping with the promise of delivering the products the very next day. Suffice it to say, free shipping service offered by the e-commerce have become a key marketing strategy that is taking the industry by storm. Though there is a limited impact of sales getting affected by inline stores, nevertheless, there is scope for both the players to grow.Increased Sales

With the introduction of free shipping services, there is a humungous increase in the number of online shoppers buying items through these e-commerce players. For instance, when Amazon, the e-commerce giant offered free shipping for its patrons, on the secondhand book segment, the company witnessed a phenomenal increase in online buying. This is a classic example of how the concept of free shipping work wonders among online retailers as well as the consumers when there were instances where the shipping costs almost exceeded the cost of the product. When the consumer orders a product outside his country, then the shipping costs are prohibitory expensive.

Now with the advent of free shipping service introduced by the online retailers, it has become a win-win situation for both. As the volume of business increases the online retailers are able to pass on the benefit to their patrons through free shipping service.

Another noticeable aspect found in the research conducted by Accent revealed that the online shoppers did elaborately look for those firms which offered free shipping through the search engines. According to the study, an estimated 88% of the online shoppers preferred to buy online, if the retailer offered free shipping. Yet another research conducted by Compete learned that around 62% of the online buyers would have changed their minds if the retailers were not promised of free shipping. This has impacted the sales growth of the inline retailers, even if they offer free shipping service, they cannot compete with the e-commerce firms.

The online marketers can offer rock bottom price for their products as they are big volume players, whereas the inline stores have their own limitations in terms of offering discounts. So, even if they offer free shipping service, people still prefer ordering the items they wanted, online.

Free Shipping Influence

When you look at the enormous influence free shipping has on the decision making of online buying, nine out of ten online shoppers agreed that free shipping is the top most motivating factor to make online purchase increase. Interestingly, the value of the orders with free shipping showed 30% upward tick. Around 61% of the online buyers were instructed not to share whether they would still be going ahead of buying merchandise if the retailer is not promising free shipping service. In other words, these segments of consumers are most likely to cancel their orders, if they find that the online marketer is not assuring free shipping service. The study found that around 93% of e-commerce shoppers are motivated to buy more items if they get the free shipping option available.