How to Combine Shipping on eBay?
When you're a seller on a marketplace platform such as eBay, you have to put in a lot of work to ensure a good customer experience. One of the common issues online resellers face is shipping, but eBay has a simple solution. Learn how to combine shipping on eBay, and you will have one less thing to worry about when it comes to your e-commerce business.
Why You Should Combine Shipping When Selling on eBay
Shipping can often cause headaches for online resellers. Mistakes can cost you a lot of money, not to mention the damage to your brand name. The cost of shipping can often discourage buyers from going through with their intended purchase - about 48% of them will simply cancel their orders if they find the shipping costs to be too high. The good news here is that you can do something about this problem if you're selling on eBay.
As one of the best online selling platforms, eBay offers its sellers the opportunity to combine shipping when a buyer purchases more than one item from one seller. The main benefit of this eBay feature is obvious - you will save your time and resources. Instead of packing up several packages and sending them at different times, you now only have to pack one.
If you're offering free shipping on eBay, you will save some money. Combining shipping increases efficiency and makes the entire process smoother. Plus, using the combined shipping option will boost your visibility and search rankings on the platform.
What Is the Benefit for a Buyer?
If your buyer is paying for shipping, you will be able to charge them less for that part of the purchase, leading to higher customer satisfaction. The shipping discount that you will be able to offer thanks to the combined shipping feature will make the buyers want to return to your eBay store. Plus, when you send all their items at the same time, they won't have to wait for multiple deliveries.
How to Combine Shipping on eBay Before Payment?
If you wish to combine shipping before your buyer pays for the items they've purchased from you, you have two options: combine it manually or set automatic combined shipping on your account. The manual method means more work for you, but it allows you better control over the shipping fees.
On the other hand, the automatic method means less hustle for you, but it also means that you won't be able to customize your shipping fees. So, let's take a look at both options. First, we will explain how to combine shipping manually before the buyer pays for their purchase. Here are the steps you need to follow:
- When you open eBay, go to your account, then to Seller Hub,
- Scroll down until you see Order, then click on that,
- Next up, click on Awaiting Payment,
- Click on Send invoice under the item in question,
- Now you can enter the new shipping cost manually for combined items,
- Click on Send invoice again, and you're all done.
It can get tedious to do this every time you want to offer a buyer combined shipping. That's why many users who sell on eBay opt to automatically set up shipping preferences. Here's how you can do that in your settings:
- Go to Seller Hub,
- Find the Shipping preferences page and click on that,
- Look for Allow combined payments and shipping,
- Click on Edit next to it,
- Choose a period during which you will allow combined shipping,
- Click on Save, and that's it.
How to Combine Shipping on eBay After Payment?
In some cases, a buyer will pay for items separately before you find time to reach out to them and send an updated invoice with the combined shipping cost. Worry not; this doesn't mean you can't implement the combined shipping feature and reduce the amount they have to pay. In a few simple steps, you can set up combined shipping after payment and issue the buyer a partial refund. Here are instructions on how to do that:
- Go to Seller Hub,
- Find the items you want to combine shipping for,
- Check the boxes next to these items,
- eBay will give you the option to Combine orders per buyer for selected items - click on that to confirm you want to combine shipping,
- When you print the label, go to the Sold items page,
- In the dropdown menu, click on Send refund under one of the items you combined shipping for,
- Enter the amount that you want to send back to the buyer,
- Click on Send refund, and it's all done.
We must mention that you have the option to add a note to the buyer before you click on Send refund - you can use this to explain why you are sending part of the money back and avoid confusion. If you want to see the step-by-step tutorial on how to combine shipping after the buyer has already paid, here is a video that explains it all in detail.
Looking for Other Ideas on How to Improve Your E-commerce Business? Try Using a Crossposting Tool
Combined shipping is just one of many things you can do to make your eBay store more successful. There are plenty of other ways to improve your e-commerce business - and one of them is expanding your offer to more than one online marketplace platform. Don't just stick to eBay - try a few other online selling platforms with the help of good crosslisting software such as Zipsale.
The idea behind multichannel listing software is to help you manage multiple online stores across different platforms and make your work simpler. If you wish to give it a try, Zipsale is a reliable and efficient crossposting tool that will help your reselling business bloom. Sign up today and see how helpful it can be!
