Your USA Shipping Guide. Business Tips

How to ship your products to the USA? How much does it cost to ship your products to America? This depends on the volume, delivery time, and number of your parcels. What do you need to focus on in order to achieve success in the USA? Namely, fast and free delivery. What payment methods do you have to provide to appeal to the US customer preferences? Debit cards, credit cards, and PayPal (or equivalents). What products sell best in the States? Clothes, footwear, beauty products and electronics.

If you wish to learn more about the US market, read this guide. We will provide you with all the information you need and some tips on how to ship your products to the US.

How to Ship Your Products to America?

Let’s get start with our tips and tricks for shipping your products to the US. Let’s start with the shipping strategy.

Prepare Your US Shipping Strategy

First, you need to consider the basic components of a shipping strategy. This includes:

• Volume, speed, and distance – Understanding these aspects of your products and business will be crucial in shaping your shipping strategy.

• Shipping rates and methods – You need to determine what fees you’ll ask your customers to take on and what you’re willing to absorb.

• Calculating shipping costs – Offers slightly differ depending on the areas you want to ship, the size and weight of your packages, plus how quickly you want to get products to customers.

Most of these components can be calculated based on the data from previous shipments, but if you’re just about to enter the market, you might need to estimate them. Remember to take into account customer preferences – mainly the fact that customers strive for fast deliveries, want clear information about the delivery costs and prefer at-home deliveries.

Consider the Types of Parcels You Will Use

When shipping to the US, you have to think about your parcel size. Why? It is estimated that the last mile costs as much as 28% of the total transportation costs, so optimising the in-US delivery can reduce the overall shipping fees significantly. And, parcel size matters in this case.

Companies selling smaller items (under 10lbs), like consumer electronics, health & beauty supplies, or consumer packaged goods, can opt for tailored services. All these services include benefits that are in line with the customer expectations, such as:

• Saturday deliveries

• Limited residential surcharges

• Tracking .

• P.O box delivery.

• Insurance .

Diversify Your Shipping Processes

One of the key challenges in shipping products to the US is flight disruptions. If you use only one or two commercial airlines, it is possible that such disruptions will occur, hence affecting customer satisfaction, for whom in-time delivery is a priority. But, there is an option to avoid this as well – you need to diversify.

When working with a logistics partner, make sure that they work with different airlines, as only this will ensure that your routes are problem-free. Additionally, you should also diversify the airports to which your goods are transported – if you are using only one for the whole country, you’ll pay more for ground transportation (and shipment overall), and the average delivery time will be longer.

Plan Your Returns Management

As you will see in our market insights below, preparing a returns management system is crucial for the US market. But it is not simple – there’s much more to it than just logistics. What do you need to focus on?

• Customs clearance and related paperwork.

• Coordinating the logistics.

• Preparing simple, understandable rules for the customers.

• Following customer protection laws in the US.

• Calculating the return costs into your shipping strategy.

How to Sell into US Market: Calculating Shipping Costs & Discussing the Trends

Now, let’s talk about the US market. How much does it cost to ship or post goods to America? What trends are important when selling into this market? Below, you’ll find all the information you need.

How Much Does It Cost to Ship and Post Goods to America?

First of all, you need to consider your location in Europe and the availability of logistics services around you. Additionally, you have to consider the final destination. After all, air transit is just the beginning – you still need to have your goods delivered across the US. This is why at Landmark Global, we ship products to three different airports: Chicago (ORD), Los Angeles (LAX) and New York (JFK), hence reducing the ground coverage of the final mile carriers and decreasing the overall cost of shipping to the US.

Finally, the quantity and size of your parcel delivery also impact the price. Therefore, it is impossible to estimate how much it costs to ship products to the US without the exact data.

What Will Sell Best in the US?

Knowing what affects the post costs to America, we can proceed with discussing other important features of the market. Let’s start with the most popular products.

• Clothing and footwear: 46%

• Personal care and beauty products: 20%

• Consumer electronics and accessories: 19%

• Jewellery and watches: 18%

• Home and garden: 14%

• Toys: 14%

Delivery Trends and Driving Factors

When it comes to delivery, you have to think about two things: where and how. Let’s start with where.

84% of US online shoppers claim that they ordered products with an at-the-door delivery; 75% claimed they ordered products to their home mailbox; 37% say they ordered products to a safe place near their home; only 26% used post offices, and scarcely 14% opted for alternative addresses. What does it mean in practice? That you need to have a delivery option directly to your customer’s home but also to PO boxes.

What about the delivery speed and price? Well, fast delivery is the main factor driving US consumers for cross-border purchases. Therefore, you need to work with reliable logistic partners if you want to achieve success. How to ensure that the parcels are always delivered on time? At Landmark Global, we do this through diversification – we work with several airlines to avoid disruptions, hence cutting out any possibility of delays.

Finally, when discussing delivery, we have to mention its price. While it might not be the most critical factor for US consumers, free delivery and clear information about the delivery fees do matter for American online shoppers (52% and 71%, respectively).

Payment

What about the payment methods? Well, 40% of Americans choose debit cards, 35% credit cards, 20% PayPal, Alipay, or their equivalents, and only 5% other possible methods. Therefore, finding a reliable payment gateway supporting cards and their alternatives is a must.

Returns

Another key statistic that matters when entering the US market is the fact that 59% of consumers returned at least one product in 2021. This is also reflected in other data, as 60% of Americans claim that a simple and reliable return process is among the factors that are most important to them regarding delivery. So, coming up with an efficient returns management system is a must.

For that, you need to partner up with a company that will coordinate the whole logistics process and carry out all the procedures, including customs clearance. And it happens that we can do this for you at Landmark Global!

Optimising Parcel Delivery with Best-in-Class Carrier Mix

At Landmark Global, we can provide you with our services, making sending parcels to the USA as effective as possible. Why should you choose us? Here’s a couple of reasons!

• We send products by aircraft to three key geographical points in the US (Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles) daily.

• We use multiple commercial airlines to minimise disruption risks and ground delivery.

• We conduct daily handovers to Final Mile Carriers, thus ensuring optimum transit times.

• We achieve customs clearance before arrival to the US.

• We provide you with a dedicated customs clearance broker in all three airports using E-com manifest clearances for parcels under $800 value.

• We offer a fully tracked parcel solution from origin to proof of delivery.

What is more, if your e-commerce growth journey ultimately leads you to want a local market inventory, we can help with that, too. Landmark Global US and our sister company, Radial, will provide you with the full range of fulfilment and value-added services. So, do not hesitate – contact us and get ready to grow your business in the US market!

You might also read: Optimizing International Shipments: Teemill's Path to Sustained Growth

Sources:

• Statista

• Census.gov

• IPC Cross-border E-commerce Shopper Survey 2023 – US report