Shipping Guide to France

What do you need to know about shipping your products to France? First, you need to partner with reliable shipping companies – dependability is a critical factor for French e-consumers. What is more, you need to be able to deliver your products to a variety of pick-up points. Finally, your website must be adjusted for both mobile and PC users.

Apart from the above market trends, you must prepare your shipping strategy and complete all the legal requirements (including getting an e-commerce packaging license). If you want to learn more, read this shipping guide to France – we will answer all your questions!

Shipping Parcels to France: Key Market Insights in a Nutshell

Let’s begin with the most crucial information about the French market. What are the trends in this country, and how can you shape them to your advantage?

Delivery

When it comes to delivery, there are two key factors that you need to consider. First, let’s look at the last-mile delivery services:

• Trust – French online shoppers’s decisions are often driven by their trust in the available last-mile delivery companies. Therefore, you need to work with recognisable, reputable couriers and postal operators.

• Returns – Returns are crucial for French consumers. The whole process needs to be simple and intuitive if you want to attract customers from this country.

Secondly, there are the general trends regarding the service as a whole. What key features should your delivery have?

• Reliability – When French online shoppers order a product, they expect it to arrive within the given time frame. This means that you must ensure that your logistics partner is dependable at all times.

• Pick-up points – 73% of French online shoppers order products to their PO boxes, 63% use at-home delivery, 63% choose courier pick-up points, 20% opt for post-office pick-ups… there’s a wide variety of options chosen by the consumers in this country. Thus, you need to ensure that your services cover all of them.

Other Key Trends

Having discussed the delivery, we may proceed with other trends that you need to know about before entering this market. What are they?

• 54% of online purchases are made via personal computers, while 46% via mobile devices – you need to adjust your site to both.

• 54% of online purchases are made with credit cards, while 30% are made with digital wallets. Ensure that such payment methods are available in your store.

Our Shipping Guide to France

Knowing the market inside out, we may proceed to the basics of entering the French market – our shipping guide. What should you start with?

Plan Your Shipping Strategy

First, consider the number, price and volume of the parcels that you will be shipping to France. This will help you calculate the costs and choose the perfect logistics solution. How much does shipping to France cost per parcel? This depends on the following factors:

• the number of parcels in one shipment,

• the size of the parcels (weight + dimensions),

• the final destination (since last-mile delivery usually costs the most).

Ensure Compliance with the Law

One cannot simply ship their products to France – there are some legal requirements regarding the process. The most important one is the restrictions regarding e-commerce packaging.

To ship your parcels to France, you need to register with a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) and get your Unique Identification Number (UIN). This, naturally, generates additional obligations:

• you need to pay a yearly fee,

• you need to keep track of the packaging used.

How big is the fee? If you send fewer than 10,000 packages per year, it’s a fixed 50 EUR. When you will start shipping more, the fee will be set individually.

The legal aspects include customs, in addition to the packaging. Nevertheless, this is not that big of a problem – when working with Landmark Global, our agents will help you achieve customs clearance.

Choose Your Logistics Partner

Knowing how important it is for French online shoppers to use reputable and reliable delivery services, you need to make a crucial decision regarding your logistics partner. The decision itself will also depend on the volume of parcels you are going to ship.

For example, at Landmark Global, we handle mostly large businesses, so the rates and options might not be fit for smaller e-commerce stores. In such cases, you need to pick a tailor-made service for small business owners, such as our daughter company, Happy-Post.

What else is important when considering your logistics partnership? The number of commercial final-mile delivery companies your partner works with and their infrastructure in France. These two factors are key for ensuring that you can send your parcels to every customer in the country at the most convenient pick-up point for them.

The Takeaway

We hope that we’ve dispelled any doubts you had regarding shipping parcels to France in this guide. After all, France is a rich market with a lot of potential – it’s the direction you want to pursue with your international expansion.

You might also read: Latest Trends in E-commerce: What You Should Know?