Why is Smart Packaging Functionality Vital for Your E-commerce Shipping? 

How many times did you receive your online order in a package that is much bigger than the product itself?

We believe that a lot of people will agree that in most cases the package could have been smaller. Instead, online shoppers as well as store owners continue to pay more, simply because the packaging process has not been optimized.

Working on Calcurates multi-carrier shipping software, we strive to give our customers much needed convenience and optimization. For that reason, we initially decided to develop the service on a cloud-based platform, as some CMSs that were built around 10 years ago lack much in this perspective.

Our main idea was to help make medium and small shop owners free of the headache related to shipping configuration and we could not close our eyes to the fact that, as you read this, aircrafts, trucks, and trains deliver products in packages that contain filling for 80% of their space. Not only is this unprofitable for both the interested parties, but it also damages the environment and increases garbage pollution.

We know it is hard to do real improvements in this area, but we try to do our part. In our multi-carrier shipping software, we have implemented an algorithm that will help find the optimal box for any given order and fit the order items in an appropriate package to minimize cost and load space.

Having worked with carrier giants such as UPS, FedEx, and DPD you might know that they offer a number of packages that a requested order may be packed in. We in turn offer you to have your own custom packaging. The feature allows you to add an unlimited number of packages that are used for your business and “pre-pack” the order items in them before a rate is requested from the carrier.

This allows us to get the most accurate rates for your e-commerce, as not only the vital attributes of a product such as Weight and Volume are used to get the rate, but also the package, its parameters, and capacity are. Hence, the rate returned from the carrier on the fly is the closest to the rate that you will actually have to pay for shipping.

It is common knowledge that rate accuracy depends on the number of order parameters that are passed to the carrier, such as Weight, LxWxH, and destination address. Smart Packaging will allow you to go even further by giving the precise package parameter and requesting a rate for an already virtually packed order.

We can admit that this functionality has been developed on many requests that we received while our SaaS was still working in Beta version as shop owners really look for a solution to help optimize the shipping and packaging.

You are welcome to give the functionality a try as with a promo code “45_FIREBEAR” we offer a free 45-day trial and configuration assistance for Firebear readers, so do not miss out on a chance to turn on cost-effective shipping and improve the flow that your customers go through, purchasing goods in your online store.

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Author

Alexey Kolyada, customer success manager at Calcurates.