How Smart Packaging Can Help You Increase Real-Time Rates Accuracy

How many times did you receive your order in a package that is much bigger than the product itself? E-commerce businesses continue to ship packages wrapped in packaging materials that take 80% of the whole package. Carriers, on the other hand, deliver packages that are too big and thus take too much space in their vehicles. Not only is this unprofitable, but it is also dangerous to the environment and increases garbage pollution. Plus, why would you want to pay for shipping an air?

Smart Packaging is an algorithm that “pre-packs” an order into given packages in an optimal way in real-time. Afterward, carrier shipping rates are requested using the package dimensions. Smart Packaging system increases the accuracy of shipping rates and therefore makes shipping cost-effective.

Imagine you want to ship two different products of different sizes but the same weight. The larger product will have higher shipping costs because, both weight and volume matter. Thus, carriers came up with volumetric weight calculation in ecommerce (DIM weight) that are based on product height, length, and width. The dimensional weight formula is:

DIM Weight = (L x W x H) / SF

If you use the DIM weight with large but light-weighted products, it will cost more than shipping based on the weight only. However, if you ship a small but heavy product, use DIM weight as it will be cheaper. Why? Because the DIM weight is less than the actual weight of the product. The advanced algorithm from DiM Weight is the type of Smart Packaging which uses dimensional weight optimization to match products and package dimensions more precisely.

Smart Packaging is often called dimensional packaging or dimensional shipping. It is more precise than the dimensional weight calculation approach, as besides product dimensions it considers the package's dimensions as well.

The process of Smart Packaging is really simple and easy to comprehend. See the steps below to see how Smart Packaging solution works:

1. Set Product Dimensions
Set the product dimensions (its length, height, and width) in your Magento e-commerce or WooCommerce store.

2. Add Custom-made Packages

Add the package dimensions; tare weight, and weight capacity to all the packages to enable custom box size selection for orders in Calcurates.

3. Activate Smart Packaging
The Smart product Packaging algorithm will choose the best packaging configuration for carrier pricing for each order in real-time.

4. Get Real-Time Rates
Get the most accurate real-time shipping rates from carriers for all your smartly packed shipments. All the information is sent to the carriers automatically.