The Best Practices Guide To Shipping Labels

A shipping label is a type of identifiable label that helps describe your shipment, with details including its point of origin, its destination, and so on. Without a clear shipping label, your shipment can be delayed in transit, delivered to the wrong address, or lost entirely.

If you’re unsure of the best practices when it comes to shipping labels, this article will help you better understand:

• Common Mistakes in Labelling
• Shipping Labels with Luwjistik
• Labelling Best Practices
• How Luwjistik Helps?

Common Mistakes in Labelling

Seagull Scientific has published a list of common mistakes in shipping labelling that we are reproducing here:

1. Poor labelling materials: misplaced or damaged barcodes, incorrect data and poor printing can lead to costly recalls, reprints and inefficiencies that affect the entire supply chain.
2. Localisation: meeting requirements and regulations in specific countries and regions is important to ensure proper information is communicated in the correct language and style.
3. Poor supply chain visibility: labelling processes are siloed between different stakeholders making for an inefficient and often redundant process.
4. Expanding business: when an organisation expands into new regions through manufacturing or distribution, it adds further labelling complexities.
5. Evolving regulations and requirements: each industry constantly evolves to include new labelling requirements to address regulatory standards or industry-specific nuances that need to be accommodated.

Shipping Labels with Luwjistik

With Luwjistik, we can avoid the common mistakes above by using a universal label for all our services, providing a standardised and seamless experience across our entire network of partners. A label must thus be properly placed on your shipments for our network partners to scan it successfully. If a label has not been correctly placed, the parcel status may show a delayed status resulting in a delayed shipment.

Here is a sample of a shipping label that you can generate on Marketplace once you have successfully uploaded your orders:

Labelling Best Practices

The following are some best practices to follow when creating your shipping label:

Do’s with shipping labels

1. Use thermal printing and paper for your shipping label. Benefits of using a thermal printer include higher-quality printing and resistance to UV rays, liquids/oils, and volatile weather conditions.

   If you do not have a thermal printer or paper, we highly recommend using dark printer ink to ensure the text and the barcode on the shipping label are readable.

2. Use a plastic packing slip to ensure further your shipping label is impervious in rainy weather.

3. If the contents of your shipment require special instruction, make a note of it on the package. This could mean labelling it ‘Fragile’, ‘Perishable’, or ‘Flammable’. You may also want to note if the shipment needs to be ‘This Side Up’.

4. Labels should be placed, fully visible, on the top of your shipment, especially if there is a ‘This Side Up’ instruction.

Don’ts with shipping labels

1. Ensure the shipping label is not creased or folded over any edges, which could obscure important information or make it unscannable for our network partners.

2. Do not write or cross out any sections using markers on Luwjistik’s shipping label.

3. If you use your own shipping label, ensure you do not cover or place it on top of Luwjistik’s shipping label.

4. Do not use a shipping label that is damaged in any way. In the event a shipping label has been placed improperly on your shipment, remove the label and paste a new label instead.