Australia Post And How a Simple Api Can Transform Shipping

With the shift to online, we no longer need to buy things by going to brick and mortar stores. Estores have taken over. From last eCommerce enterprises to small niche stores, we have all our needs covered. You can easily order an item from anywhere in the world and have it reach somewhere else. It's just you and your phone against the world!

Stats show that over 20% of people shop online and they prefer this because of the sheer logistical ease. Just check out any store you want, at any time of the day, add items to a wish list if you want and order away! Home delivery is just the cherry on top of the very sweet cake that is online shopping.

Additionally, with the competition among stores both online and offline, the number of sales they have has gone up. And everyone offers competent pricing.

The flow of an online transaction is browsing (based on need or want), finding the right product, ordering, and paying, ending in delivery.

Delivery almost seems like an insignificant aspect when put last on that list. But it is hardly insignificant.

Product delivery determines customer satisfaction: how, when, how much access and control they have in the matter, etc.

When customers place their orders, they often abandon their carts because they suddenly see a huge shipping cost or a high tax rate. If they see this, it often leads to them abandoning the cart. No one likes unexpected costs. If you want to make sure your customer actually goes through with the purchase, you have to give them a detailed shipping rate from your shipping partner.

If your store is on Magento 2 and you ship to Australia, the easiest way is to use Australia Post as your shipping partner. They offer top of the class services like live rates, tracking, delivery date choice, parcel packaging choice, etc.

You can partner with them and have them manage all your shipping.

Though, you might face certain challenges:

• You'll have to keep switching from your CRM to the AusPost database.

• You will have to cross-check that you add the right address, and contact details in the AusPost database when you receive an order in your CRM. Every single time.

• You will have to add tracking data of parcels to your CRM from the Australia Post dashboard so your customers can track their parcels.

But not everything is over. You can use a simple solution. A convenient little integration between your Magento store and Australia Post gives you the Magento 2 Australia Post extension.

Let's look at the advantages of this integration:

• Business owners can print labels, and get all the shipping and customer information, with this Magento 2 Australia Post integration.

• Customers will get to see live shipping rates so they will always have the right information.

• Australia Post tracking app allows them to easily track their parcels directly from the estore.

This works because Australia Post has an API that you can integrate with your Magento store. It fetches the required data from Australia Post tracking app to the Magento store. Therefore, your customers see the shipping data that they would see on the Australia Post website, live. They can also use this to track every step of their parcel's journey with the Australia Post tracking app. All this, right from within your estore.

You can get this extension from any extension store that is the official partner of Australia Post. This guarantees you a quality product and security of your client's data, which is definitely more important than the shipping quality your clients have come to you for.

Lastly, we can end on the note that shipping is one of the most important stages of the buying cycle that a customer has on your estore. If you miss taking care of this step, you will lose out on them. But attend to this, and you will have customers that come back and some loyal ones as well.

Take care of everything that comes to mind regarding the customers. They may not always notice the convenience they get while shopping, but they will most certainly notice the inconvenience if any.