Ecommerce Shipping Options You Should Look Into

As programs like Amazon Prime reshaped consumer expectations, fast and flexible shipping has become a competitive necessity for ecommerce businesses. Customers expect a variety of shipping choices that balance speed, cost, and convenience. When faced with expensive options and long delivery estimates, many abandon their carts.

Your business needs to offer ecommerce shipping options that cater to customer needs — whether it’s urgency or affordability.

Key takeaways:

• The best 10 shipping options for ecommerce are same-day delivery, overnight shipping, 2-day shipping, economy services, flat-rate shipping, free shipping, local pickup, subscription shipping, freight shipping, and international shipping.
• To choose the right delivery methods for your shipping strategy, you need to balance speed, cost, and customer demand.
• By offering a mix of options, you can match each order (depending on package size, delivery urgency, and destination) with its ideal shipping method.

10 best shipping options for ecommerce businesses

There is no right formula for building a successful shipping strategy. According to the 2024 Green Mountain Benchmark Report, most retail customers now expect their purchases to arrive within three to five days.

But from an operational point of view, ensuring orders arrive within two business days might require a well-distributed warehouse network and an effective carrier management system. And there might also be cases where the customers themselves are willing to wait in exchange for reduced shipping costs.

Let’s look at the top 10 shipping options businesses can use to strategize and maintain delivery promises to customers:

   1. Same-day delivery

Same-day delivery requires your company to establish partnerships with fulfillment services or own warehouses strategically placed close to major buyer hubs to ensure rapid order processing and dispatch. This shipping option is particularly effective in large urban centers because of high population density and shorter delivery distances.

By leveraging machine learning (ML), you can better understand where your customers live — optimizing your inventory placement strategy. For example, the Shipium platform applies ML-powered insights to your shipping data to help you make more intelligent logistics decisions that streamline same-day deliveries.

    2. Overnight shipping

Expedited overnight shipping is commonly used for high-priority shipments, such as perishable goods or pharmaceuticals, which often require guaranteed next-day delivery. However, this method creates operational challenges, requiring you to negotiate carrier contracts and charge customers higher rates.

One strategy for lowering your shipping expenses and improving the efficiency of your deliveries is working with regional carriers that specialize in shorter, localized routes, helping you avoid premium overnight fees from national carriers and increasing logistics flexibility.

    3. 2-day shipping

While major carriers like FedEx, UPS, and USPS provide 2-day shipping options for ecommerce, relying solely on them can leave you with little to no room to adapt on the fly. If these carriers experience delays, for example, your business is directly impacted. Expanding your carrier network to include regional and specialized partners offers flexibility and cost control, particularly when navigating price fluctuations or busy seasons.

Learn how to add a 2-day shipping program to your ecommerce business.

    4. Economy options

Economy shipping options for ecommerce can boost conversions by providing customers with cheaper delivery. This method is commonly used for non-urgent orders, lightweight items, and international shipments, where cost savings outweigh fast delivery times.

While this shipping method offers longer timeframes, if you let customers choose between these and other options, you can accommodate groups with different needs — those who prefer to have their order arrive as quickly as possible and those who are more cost-conscious.

Read also: 10 Shopify Fulfillment Best Practices for Ecommerce Businesses

    5. Flat-rate shipping

Offering a flat-rate shipping option, like FedEx One Rate, allows you to ship items for a fixed cost, making your bottom-line expenses much more predictable. Most carriers define a size and weight limit, and as long as your items fit into the provided boxes, you’re good to go. This method is one of the best options for shipping ecommerce small items, such as books or minor electronic devices.

    6. Free shipping

While building a free shipping program can drive cart conversions for your business, you need to offset the costs strategically — because offering this option to your customers isn’t as simple as absorbing the expenses.

This shipping option:

• Provides a competitive advantage against marketplaces like Amazon, which grew due to free shipping programs.
• Can be used strategically with thresholds (e.g., “Free Shipping on Orders Over $50”) to increase average order value (AOV).

Explore the economics behind free shipping programs.

    7. Local pick-up

According to the Future Shopper Report, 61% of customers prefer retailers that offer both online and physical stores, indicating that today’s shoppers want flexibility in how they make and receive their purchases. This rising demand for omnichannel shopping experiences requires businesses to integrate their digital and physical operations — a strategy that can offer logistical challenges such as inventory management.

Unlike traditional delivery, local pick-up allows people to retrieve their orders from a physical store, warehouse, or third-party depot close to their location.

    8. Subscription shipping

Subscription shipping programs allow customers to set up recurring deliveries of products they regularly purchase, offering both convenience and often discounted rates. This option provides predictable, recurring revenue for businesses and helps build customer loyalty through regular engagement.

This specific shipping method requires precise demand forecasting and robust inventory management. This is especially true if subscription items are also available as one-off purchases both online and in stores, which can lead to stockouts.

Read also: 10 Ecommerce Shipping Best Practices Every Company Should Follow

   9. Freight shipping options

Freight shipping is essential for high-volume shipping operations businesses moving large or bulk orders, such as wholesalers, manufacturers, and furniture retailers. Freight services offered by nationwide carriers such as FedEx or UPS provide cost-effective solutions for transporting oversized or heavy goods that exceed standard carrier limits.

    10. International shipping

Shipping internationally can expand your reach to new customer bases and emerging markets, increasing your revenue potential. However, cross-border logistics also introduce new challenges for your operation, from managing carrier networks and compliance norms to tariffs, taxes, and complex customs requirements.

To avoid longer than expected delivery times, choose reliable global carriers, such as DHL, FedEx, and UPS, which offer extensive international shipping networks and customs support.

How to manage shipping options for your enterprise ecommerce business

To effectively manage and select the best shipping options for ecommerce, consider implementing a software solution that takes into account these four factors:

    1. Total parcel spend

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysis found that shipping costs fluctuate almost 22% higher than oil prices. Combined with the rise of inflation, this volatility has a direct impact on shipping rates. As a result, there is increased pressure on ecommerce businesses to find cost-efficient solutions​ to lower total parcel spend.

Strategies to minimize shipping costs without compromising quality of service include:

• Optimizing inventory placement, cutting down on costs and enabling competitive shipping options, such as same-day delivery.
• Improving your cartonization decision-making upstream, ensuring you select the right-sized packaging for your shipments.

Learn how retailers can win back leverage in the great carrier war.

    2. Consolidation opportunities

According to data by Frock Freight, 43% of freight truckloads moved partially empty in 2023. Strategic load consolidation, which helps operators avoid split shipments, is one effective way to minimize this typical shipping inefficiency.

Load consolidation work by:

• Combining multiple small orders going to the same region into a single, optimized cargo load to reduce per-unit shipping costs.
• Using ML and AI-powered tools to forecast demand and shipping patterns. This tactic allows operators to preemptively consolidate shipments for maximum efficiency.

Explore all the benefits of shipment consolidation.

    3. Carrier management

Relying too heavily on a single carrier can leave businesses vulnerable to rate hikes and capacity constraints due to macro-environmental changes. At the same time, using different shipping options can be expensive depending on carrier volume commitments, service levels, and regional coverage.

A multi-carrier strategy, combined with data-driven carrier selection with fully loaded rates, helps ecommerce businesses maintain delivery times efficiently and keep shipping costs in check. Equally important is to negotiate rates based on shipment volume to leverage carrier discounts.

Learn how to negotiate carrier rates.

    4. Shipping technology and integration

Choosing the right ecommerce shipping options is only part of the equation for an efficient fulfillment strategy — having the right shipping technology to support and optimize those delivery choices is what really drives your operation’s efficiency.

The success of your logistics depends on the seamless integration between your order management system (OMS), warehouse management system (WMS), and TMS. When these platforms don’t communicate effectively, businesses face data silos and limited visibility into inventory and shipping operations. A disconnected tech stack leads to delays, inefficiencies, and rising costs — so centralizing data and automating decision-making is crucial for scalable, high-performance logistics.

Optimize your ecommerce delivery options for cost and speed with Shipium

Choosing the right ecommerce delivery options requires smart decision-making at every stage of your fulfillment process to ensure orders remain cost-effective. With Shipium’s end-to-end enterprise shipping platform, you can integrate processes from your existing systems (including OMS, WMS, ERP, and TMS) to automate decisions like:

• Selecting the best carrier for each shipment
• Calculating delivery promises in real time
• Fulfilling orders from the most strategic locations

Book a demo today and see how Shipium streamlines the management of ecommerce shipping options.