Several criteria should be taken into account when determining the prices of your delivery methods:

• Your total delivery costs.
• What your competitors offer.

From this data, you will have the keys to determine the elements of your delivery pricing policy:

• Rates as close as possible to the actual cost.
• Free delivery.
• Free delivery from a certain basket amount.
• Free returns or not.
• ...

Estimating total delivery costs

The total delivery cost of a package can be broken down as follows:

• Cost of packaging.
• Cost of one-way transport (or one-way transports in the case of a multi-package shipment).
• Cost of insurance if you choose to insure your shipments.
• Cost of order preparation (possible labor cost).
• Return rate (if you don't have an idea yet, start from 10%) x cost of return transport if you do not charge the return costs.

If you have items that vary wildly in size/weight, it may be desirable to define relevant package categories based on your shipping statistics, for example:

• "Small package" category whose dimensions are less than 15x15x15 and weight less than 2 kg.
• "Medium package" category whose dimensions are greater than 15x15x15 and weight 2 kg but less than 50x50x50 and 20 kg.
• ...

If you offer several delivery methods, you must redo these calculations for each method. For example :

• "Small package" category, "Parcel point" delivery method, average cost = €5.
• "Small package" category, "Express" delivery method, average cost = €13.
• ...

Monitoring the competition

It is important to take into account the alternatives available to your potential customers and to keep an eye on the delivery rates offered by your competitors.