With an ever-increasing number of shoppers leveraging the power of online purchasing, shipping is one factor that is often neglected until the shopper takes their cart to the cashier in their virtual shopping experience. While this is regarded as the end of the transaction for the purchaser, it is generally viewed as the most important transaction for the seller. It is at this point where many shoppers abandon their online cart and leave the merchandise on the online shelf.
The cause? Shipping prices. While many potential buyers see the pre-shipped price as a bargain, they are reminded that the costs of delivery can drastically reduce their savings at check-out.
In order to increase the convenience of the shopping experience and to avoid the number of abandoned purchases online, Google Merchant Center added a feature known as “dimensional weight pricing” on February 4 so that in addition to weight, merchants can add length, width, and height when using selected carriers; these carriers have also added this feature onto their web portals as well. An item such as an acoustic guitar might not weigh much, but dimensions in the neighborhood of 38” tall x 20” wide by 8” deep can significantly raise the shipping, and ultimately, the purchase price. Google will use this seller-provided data to calculate far more accurate costs.
With this new feature, shoppers will be able to more accurately compare the costs from one merchant to another to determine the best value, and hopefully reduce the number of virtual abandoned carts.
