How to show delivered prices on a car export website

Almost every buyer who contacts a Japanese car exporter asks the same first question: how much to my port? An FOB price alone forces them to message you, wait, and compare. A delivered price answers the question before they ask it, and that is often the difference between an inquiry and a closed tab.

What a delivered price is made of

A delivered price (usually CIF, sometimes called landed price to port) is the vehicle price plus everything needed to get it to the buyer’s port. Most exporters already know these numbers. The problem is that they live in different places.

• Vehicle price in Japan (FOB): purchase cost, auction fees, recycling fee, inland transport and your margin.
• Freight: depends on the destination port, the shipping method (RoRo or container) and often the vehicle size.
• Inspection: some countries require a pre-shipment inspection, which adds a fixed cost.
• Marine insurance: usually a small percentage of the value.
• Currency: the buyer thinks in their own currency, so the total should be shown in it.

Calculate it once, show it everywhere

The reliable way to do this is to stop calculating by hand. Keep your freight rates in a table by port and shipping method, keep inspection and insurance as simple rules, and pull the exchange rate from a daily source. The website then calculates the delivered price for every car automatically.

When a buyer picks their country or port, the whole stock list updates. When freight rates or the yen change, you update one table instead of hundreds of listings.

Filter by what the buyer is allowed to import

Many destination countries have import rules, most often an age limit on vehicles. If your site knows the rule for each country, it can hide cars the buyer cannot import and label the rest as eligible. That saves your sales team from answering inquiries that can never become sales.

Mistakes to avoid

• Showing a delivered price without saying what it includes. Always list freight, inspection and insurance next to it.
• Stale exchange rates. A price in cedi or shillings that is weeks old creates arguments later.
• Hiding the FOB price completely. Experienced buyers still want to see it.
• Making the buyer register before they can see any price. Most will leave.

How we did it for Afridi Trading Japan

On afriditrading.com, a buyer selects their destination once. Every car then shows a price delivered to that port, in local currency, with freight, inspection and insurance included, and cars that country cannot import are filtered out. The prices come from the same system the team uses to manage stock, so they are always current.

If you want the same for your stock, the first step is simply collecting your freight rates by port in one place. We can help with everything after that.