Rate Shopping for E-commerce - how to configure Rate Shopping shipping in 2024

How Rate Shopping Enhances Shipping With Carriers for E-commerce

Nikolay Pasholok

Product Owner, Calcurates

What Is the Purpose of Rate Shopping Shipping?

Rate shopping is an automatic comparison of carriers’ shipping services and their corresponding shipping rates in real-time in order to find the most optimal rate. Comparing shipping rates using the automated rate shopping feature saves time, makes shipping cost-effective. Additionally, it creates a simplified checkout experience for the customer because you only display the best shipping rates instead of displaying them all.

How Does Rate Shopping Work?

Carriers offer different rates for different services, depending on various factors. It can happen that shipping to the neighborhood country might be cheaper with one carrier than the other. Each carrier has its own algorithm how to calculate its shipping costs based on destinations, product dimensions, delivery speed, and profit margins. It is almost impossible to keep up with all of their services on horizontal and vertical levels and compare them among each other manually.

That is why it is important for any e-commerce business to make shipping as easy for your customers as possible and automate the whole rate shopping process.

What Does Rate Shopping Shipping by Calcurates Offer?

Shipping Services: Compare the same services between 2 carriers (UPS Ground vs FedEx Ground)
Carrier and Service: Compare 2 carriers and their international services
Cheapest Service: Display the cheapest services from various carriers
Customize Settings: Set and display custom name for the cheapest service

Looking at these functions above, we can already see how much easier rate shopping is with professional shipping software.

Top Reasons Why Rate Shopping Shipping is Good for Your E-commerce in 2024

Simplified Check-out Experience: More than 86% of cart abandonment is due to high shipping costs according to eMarketer. This is a really high abandonment rate, and it needs to be fixed immediately. Shipping software helps you to simplify the checkout experience for your customers by displaying the best and the cheapest shipping rates.
Improves Conversion Rate: Having simplified checkout leads to a higher conversion rate and less cart abandonment. The customers can easily understand what needs to be paid at the checkout, with all the shipping costs displayed correctly.
Removes Unnecessary Shipping Options: This is a great advantage for businesses that cooperate with multiple carriers and have a diverse product portfolio. Rate shopping allows businesses to remove those shipping options that are not convenient for them and instead display the cheapest real-time rates for each level of delivery service. It saves time and prevents the retailer from picking their rates manually.
Increases Cost-efficiency of Shipping: Having increased conversion rate, decreased cart abandonment, removed unnecessary shipping options, all these steps lead to increased shipping cost efficiency. Rate shopping takes only real-time rates from the carriers and displays only the most cost-effective options for your customers.
Saves Money for your Customers: Once, the shipping costs decrease for the business they should also decrease for the customer. And this is an advantage for your customers that sets you apart from your competitors.

What are the Benefits of Rate Shopping?

To summarize the advantages of rate shopping, here's a look at this list:

Lower abandonment rate
Higher conversion rate
Lower shipping costs
Increased shipping cost-efficiency
Display of only relevant shipping options

What are the Best Tips for Rate Shopping?

Negotiate lower rate when shipping in higher volumes: Try to negotiate a lower shipping rate from your preferred carrier when shipping in bulk. This is a common practice between carriers and e-commerce businesses as it is beneficial for both parties. Carriers acquire a new client who ships often and frequently in higher volumes and in return, they offer a small discount to them.
Compare service to service carrier rates in real-time: To get the most accurate real-time rates always compare the same service from different carriers using Rate Shopping. For example, FedEx Ground with USPS Ground service.
Rate shopping in combination with other features: Use rate shopping in combination with other features like Smart Packaging to compare the most accurate real-time rates based on package dimensions and carriers. Additionally, you can use the delivery dates feature to give your customers more information and boost conversion rates and sales.

How to Configure Rate Shopping Shipping With Calcurates?

Rate Shopping Shipping for WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento 2 stores.

To configure Rate Shopping follow these simple steps:

Add the Rate Shopping feature to your account from our internal Marketplace
Create a Rate Shopping shipping option
Select carriers that you want to compare (FedEx, UPS, for example)
Enable certain carrier services you want to compare (UPS Ground and FedEx Ground, for example)
Enable Delivery Dates, assign shipping services to specific Shipping Zones or apply Shipping Rules and Restrictions if needed.