As cross-border e-commerce sales continue to grow, US brands have great potential to reach customers worldwide. However, some aspects that brands must consider to handle international shipping in the best way to avoid headaches for the business and consumers. These include shipping costs, tax and Duty fees, and delivery times. If these aspects are not handled properly, the customer experience may suffer, and the brand may have consequences, such as higher shopping cart abandonment rates, higher shipping costs and lower conversion rates.
Offering a DDP shipping solution addresses the top consumer concerns. However, for brands, it can be overwhelming, as every country has import taxes, duties fees, and requirements. Therefore, it is essential to have a solution that provides the best user experience, cost-effective operation and practicality for the business to expand internationally successfully.
For this reason, we will explain what DDP is, how your company can benefit from it, and how we can help your business offer and handle DDP so your business can provide the best shipping experience for your customers.
What is DDP?
Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) shipping is when a merchant takes responsibility for all landed costs (taxes & duties) and charges them to the end customer without paying additional fees or dealing with customs delays.
This means that the merchant is responsible for the entire shipping process, from delivery of the package to payment of taxes and fees to the delivery to the end customer at the final destination. This helps build trust and improve the customer experience, as they have paid for everything up front; there will be no surprise fees when it arrives at the final destination.
What is the difference between DDP and DDU?
DDU is when the merchant is responsible for the entire shipping process, from sending to ensuring that the goods arrive safely at a destination. However, once the package is in the final country destination, the buyer is responsible for paying all the necessary import fees.
The difference between DDP and DDU is that in DDU, the customer may have to pay import taxes without knowing the exact amount until the package arrives. As fees often come as a surprise, it creates a poor customer experience and can lead customers not to accept the goods, financially impacting the merchant.
What are the benefits of offering DDP?
The benefits of offering DDP are the following:
- Be transparent with taxes and duties fees
- Custom clear orders
- Avoid delivery delays
- Avoid extra costs
- Build trust
- Enhance customer service
- Lower cart abandonment
- Increase website conversion rates
How can BorderGuru help your business handle and offer DDP on your Shopify store?
Offering a DDP solution benefits both the brand and the end customer. Brands need to research tax and duty fees and import laws per country and calculate each product that will sell cross-border. If done on your own, this can become very overwhelming and might discourage you as a brand top opening your cross-border channel.
With BorderGuru, you have a strategic partner that can help your Shopify store offer DDP and handle all import requirements for each country. Our solution takes everything from product mapping to tax filling. You don’t have to worry about import requirements, as we’ll have everything ready for you to ship your products as if it were local shipping.
Our cross-border solution is a free plug-and-play app that can is integrated into your Shopify store within 10 minutes. It automatically and accurately calculates taxes and duties at checkout and offers your customers competitive shipping rates.
BorderGuru is, as can be seen, a one-shop-stop solution for international shipping. It allows you to reach your customers regardless of location, as you can choose up to 200 countries to ship to.
Our solution helps your brand to provide the best possible customer shop experience to increase trust, loyalty and sales.
Contact us to learn more about how your brand can expand quickly internationally!