Yet another free shipping post

Firstly to start out, I have been a little behind on posting here due to travel and holiday shopping and celebrations :-). Continuing with the holiday season discussion and how a shift has been happening in buyer behavior to shop more online, as a follow up to my previous post on free shipping, I found an interesting article on how different online retailers have determined their online free shipping strategy. All the 3 online retailers that were interviewed in this article emphasized on knowing their shipping cost structures and its effect on their margins to decide whether to offer unconditional free shipping or not. Some of the key observations cited in the article are,

1. How do you view your free shipping charges?: As one retailer put it, "It's simply the cost of doing business, like having a state of the art distribution center and a world-class team of highly trained sales engineers"
2. How do you time your free shipping offers?: Depending on the nature of your business, you can either use it to drive your holiday season volumes high or as one retailer quoted in the article put it "We concentrate our free shipping or shipping discount offers to our off-peak season which helps generate revenue during the slower summer months."
3. How do you estimate your free shipping chares? As one of the spokeswomen from UPS quoted in the article said "If your product falls into a larger-load category, or does not conveniently fit into a box, shipping charges can go beyond the cost of the actual product. If you do not know the dimensions of your final package, the total shipping charges can show up on your bill after the customer has already received the order, leaving you responsible for the additional charges, so it's critical to know your products shipping dimensions and weight — and use a carrier that offers a variety of shipping options"