June 2016 App of the Month: Shippo for Shopify June 8, 2016 19:00

As your Shopify store and inventory grow, managing shipments can become more and more complex. Many times, merchants may use different shipping providers, and use each provider’s online portal to manage shipping for that provider. This can become cumbersome as your shipping information is spread out in different places. This is where the Shippo for Shopify app can help.

In this post, we will look at how you can use Shippo to manage all aspects of shipping in one place, and the different options provided by the app.

Shippo for Shopify: Overview and installation

The app is free to install and get started. Shippo charges 5 cents for each shipping label you create. Other than that, there is no cost to signing up and using the service.

To get started, go to Shippo on the App Store and click “Get”. You will then be asked to create a free Shippo account for the Shippo web service. Once you create your profile, connect your store to the service.

You will now have access to Shippo, and can start using it by syncing your Shopify orders, importing from a CSV, or creating orders manually.

Get started by syncing orders

Once your orders sync, you will be able to create shipping labels for each order, or create shipping labels in bulk. You will also see order information and status for each order.

Overview of all orders (Source)

As you create labels, you will also have the option to create return labels, and purchase shipping insurance for each order from within the app.

Shippo for Shopify: Manage shipments

You can connect your accounts from different carriers with Shippo. If you already have preferred pricing with certain carriers, Shippo imports this information through your account so that it gets reflected in the shipping labels.

Add different shipping carriers in Shippo (Source)

Once you create a shipping label with a specific carrier, you can see an overview of the shipment within Shippo. This includes automatically updating the status based on the tracking number. This allows you to track all your shipments in one place, and see if there are issues with any of them.

Automatically track shipment status (Source)

You can also download and print labels for each order on this screen.

Shippo for Shopify: Settings

Within the Settings section, you can set whether the labels are printed for a standard printer sheet, for thermal laser printers, or as image files. You can also personalize the labels by adding default text on each. This will help make your labels unique and signals extra care put into the shipping.

Customize Shippo settings

You can sync order labels with your Shopify store so that the status of your orders is also updated on Shopify. In addition, you can choose to have an email notification sent to your customers through Shopify when an order is fulfilled.

If there are package sizes you use often, you can add them as templates to easily select from when creating labels for each order.

There may be different storefronts other than Shopify that you use to sell your products. If you run into the hassle of managing shipping for each separately, you can connect these stores to one Shippo account. This gives you the ability to sync and manage shipping for all your stores from one place.

Connect different eCommerce platforms

You can also use the Shippo API to connect the service with other applications and devices. Learn more in the Shippo API documentation.

Shippo for Shopify: Summary

Shippo is a free-to-install app that puts your shipping management in one place. Once you install and connect the app to your store, you can create shipping labels for each order, or in bulk. You can add different shipping carriers to your profile, and track packages from various carriers on one page.

Shippo provides preferred pricing for USPS and DHL Express shipping labels. Shippo charges 5 cents for each shipping label you create as the fee. If you run storefronts on multiple platforms, you can use one Shippo account to manage shipping for all these platforms.

Check out the overview video by Shippo about the service:

Which solution do you use to create shipping labels and manage shipping? Please tell us in the comments below.

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