How Do I Fulfil An Ecommerce Order
If you are thinking about starting your own e-commerce business or upscaling your already thriving e-commerce business you may be wondering how on earth you are going to fulfil all of your orders & how to go about getting your products to your customers in the shortest possible time.
In this article, we are going to discuss the main steps of e-commerce fulfilment order are and how to make sure that the experience is seamless for your customers.
Understanding The e-commerce Order Fulfilment Process
If this is your first venture into the e-commerce landscape, you may be unfamiliar with the order fulfilment process.
1. Receiving your products
Before you can even think about listing your products for the world to see it is crucial that you have the stock.
If you plan to fulfil orders in-house you will have to make sure that you keep a close eye on stock levels so your customers cannot order out of stock products.
If you are planning to outsource your order fulfilment to a fulfilment company such as ourselves, you will have to make sure the stock is sent to the provider, who will then handle the fulfilment process for you.
2. Inventory storage
Inventory storage is a key part of running any successful e-commerce business. This is where it would be recommended to implement a thorough end-to-end procedure as this will help give you visibility on which products are selling, how many products you have and when you will need to order more.
3. Order processing
Once an order has been submitted it will then have to be processed. This generally includes picking or retrieving the items from where they are stored, packing them & making sure they are ready to be shipped.
This step is where outsourcing your fulfilment comes into its own. Freeing up space at home and making the process simple without having to worry about all the work that goes into picking and packing individual items. Communication with the client is also taken care of with email notifications allowing the buyer to know where their order is in the process.
4. Shipping
Once the order has been processed and it is ready to send, it is vital the product gets shipped as soon as possible, ensuring your customers are not waiting for a long period of time. In many respects, Amazon has made life difficult for the rest of us with the same level of shipping times expected, even from smaller companies that don’t have the resources of Amazon.
Handling the shipping yourself may mean having to transport a large number of products to the post office, dealing with queues, sorting tracking and paying standard prices for shipping. Outsourcing, again, removes this pain point as we handle all the shipping details with reliable couriers where we can get priority pricing plans due to the amount of shipping that we handle that cannot be replicated by the public or smaller operations that require shipping.
5. Returns processing
Part of the trade descriptions act means that you have to accept returns and offer refunds within a certain time frame and if the item is faulty or damaged. Offering an address to send the item back to, processing the return & refund can be a frustrating use of your time, but has to be done.
Returns handling can also be fulfilled by a fulfilment company such as ourselves. Returns can be a real pain point for sellers, especially if they are a smaller operation, as time has to be taken to process the return, check the product and if a refund has to be issued, it is all for free.
Fulfilment companies such as ATL Fulfilment handle returns, check the item for re-stock purposes and keep you and the buyer in the loop with email notifications.
Ensuring The Optimum User Experience For Your Customers
Making sure the process is smooth, simple and secure is vital for a business to entice buyers to come again and buy more items. Underneath are some of the key areas to be aware of when building your e-commerce business.
Communication is key. If you want to make sure your customers are happy it is vital to make sure you communicate with them about their order and update them when applicable. It is always recommended to send customers order confirmation emails and a follow-up email to let them know that their order has been dispatched.
An added bonus is order tracking. Although, it isn’t needed it is a great feature to add in if possible. This gives your customers even more transparency & enables them to plan accordingly so that they will not miss the delivery.
Another key aspect is presentation. You want to make sure that your packages are neatly wrapped and handled with care to make sure nothing is broken or out of place by the time the customer receives their order. Since the packages you send to your customers are a representation of your business it is vital to make sure they are neat & tidy. Using a fulfilment provider can help to provide this by making sure your packages are neatly wrapped and shipped carefully so your customers receive the products how it was intended.
Making sure you are equipped to handle returns is another vital part of giving your users an optimum experience. Although you don’t want your customers to return products you will definitely run into customers having issues with their products. So it is crucial to make it as painless and easy to contact you as possible. You don’t want your customers to feel isolated. I would always recommend having the contact number and email address in a very easy to see location on your website as well as on the order confirmation and additional emails you may send to customers. This makes sure that your customers can easily get in touch with you in case anything is wrong with the product they have ordered.
You should now have a much better idea of how to successfully fulfil an e-commerce order and what to pay attention to when trying to enhance your customer’s experience. If you would like more information on outsourcing your order fulfilment please call us today on 0843 515 2222.