Shipping costs: to charge or not? This has been a discussion in the e-commerce world for years, especially now that costs are rising. But it is smarter to organize the process of delivery (and collection) more efficiently and to reduce returns.

For many years, free shipping has been the norm in the e-commerce world. For larger webshops, offering free shipping has long been an important way to attract consumers to their online store. In short, it is a clever marketing ploy. Over the years, Dutch consumers have become accustomed to free shipping. Consumers often do not realize that webshops compensate the shipping costs with a higher product price. It therefore feels better for buyers to pay a little more for a product than just for shipping.

Recently, the discussion about shipping costs has become increasingly loud, partly due to the increasing costs that the retailer has to bear. Shipping costs therefore seem to be finding their way back to the Dutch consumer. Web shops therefore face an important choice: do they include the shipping costs in the sales price, do they offer free shipping as a promotional tool or do they always charge shipping costs? And what if they want to compensate for the rising shipping costs in some other way? As a retailer, you can also save costs by organizing your shipping process as efficiently as possible, so that you may not even need to calculate shipping costs.