What Is Multi-Carrier eCommerce Shipping?
If you’ve only used shipping for personal or low volume shipments, it may seem pretty straight forward. You select a carrier and you pay the necessary postage to ship an item based on weight, distance, or speed. You drop the package off at one of the carrier’s brick and mortar locations or at a mailbox, and then they do the rest.
However, when you’ve got a budding eCommerce business that is growing its sales from weekly to daily orders, you’ll quickly find that shipping isn’t quite so cut and dry. Shipping can have a big effect on your bottom line, and so it’s imperative that you optimize your shipping operations.
eCommerce shipping has become progressively more competitive, with many consumers choosing to do a lot of their shopping online and industry giants like Amazon making it faster and the cheapest way to ship a package. If you want your cut of the eCommerce pie, you’re going to be going up against Amazon and others in order to compete for your customer’s time, money, and attention.
Save On Shipping Costs By Choosing Multiple Carrier To Ship Your Goods
In order to make faster shipping possible at these incredibly low prices, eCommerce companies need to optimize their shipping costs through a practice called multicarrier eCommerce, or using multiple carriers to ship their goods to different locations. Choosing to use different carriers on a package-by-package basis can vastly reduce your shipping costs by optimizing different pricing schemes based on weight, origin, destination, and travel speed.
Having a multi-carrier shipping system helps you cater to your customer’s specific requests in a way that single carrier just can’t, some customer may want a low cost solution to save money, others may want the fastest option available and willing to be pay more for that speed of service, up to and including local same day delivery.
There are a lot of small business delivery options available so, as you can imagine, choosing different carriers on a per package basis and then tracking each and every package across carriers can get a little overwhelming and confusing for business owners big and small. That’s why many companies outsource this service to a company that specializes in eCommerce shipping and knows all the ins and outs.
What FirstMile Can Do to Help
FirstMIle is just that company. We’ve been helping companies of every size and market optimize their shipping in order to reduce costs, save time, and provide the best possible experience for every company. Our multi-carrier system makes it easy and fast for you to access the best carrier for the job, selecting from a range of local, domestic, and international carriers, including USPS First Class and Priority Mail solutions.
FirstMile is a multi-carrier e-commerce parcel solution. Our unique approach allows small, medium and even large ecommerce shippers to get the best combination of price and service across a wide network of United States Post Office workshare partners–including our own.
We do this all with one API connection, one pickup via our FirstMile owned and operated vehicles, one invoice and one point of contact. Simple.
Our algorithm drives the right label to you for each and every package, every day, across multiple USPS workshare options; that include first class, priority mail, express, ground and hybrid options.
The FirstMile shipping algorithm works by first shopping each package for price and service. It then returns the right label for each unique package, which assures the best combination of price and service for that package within the prescribed service limits you set. Need 5 day or less service? No Problem.
Need 2-4 day service? No Problem.
Just want the lowest priced service possible for every package? No Problem.
If you are tired of the headaches from trying to navigate the ecommerce shipping labyrinth, let FirstMile help.
Oh, and our systems integrate seamlessly into common shipping platforms like ShipStation, ShipRush, Ship Hero, Order Cup and many more.
Click the link below fill out a short survey to get a quote and learn more about what we can do for your business.