Shipping options for small teams

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Most advice about shipping options assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What to keep

Clear delivery estimates reduce support enquiries. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions.

What good looks like

Show the options before checkout, not inside it. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

The short version

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. Three things worth confirming about shipping options before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Show the options before checkout, not inside it — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.