The ecommerce order fulfillment process is the backbone of your business; here is how you can improve it to achieve your business goals!
Fulfilling orders is tough, especially if you’re handling your ecommerce order fulfillment process in-house. If you have been wondering how to improve order fulfillment process, you have come to the right place!
One of the most critical and important aspects of your online business is your ecommerce order fulfillment process. You might have the best products, a brilliant marketing strategy, but if your order fulfillment is not up to par then it can affect the entire business.
A well-oiled ecommerce fulfillment process is the backbone of any ecommerce company. A great ecommerce process will reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of your business. No business can survive online if it does not have a strategy to receive and deliver orders in the most efficient way. It is crucial to be aware of the key steps in the order fulfillment process and understand all the aspects.
Let’s dive right in and find out everything you need to know about the ecommerce order fulfillment process.
Why Your Ecommerce Order Fulfillment Process Is Important
Order fulfillment is an essential process in ecommerce. It is the process where orders are shipped to customers. The order fulfillment process can include warehousing, packing the items, printing labels, shipping the items to customers, and much more. If done right, the order fulfillment process can be a great way to improve your customer experience. If done wrong, it can be disastrous.
Your ecommerce order fulfillment process is the backbone of your entire business. After all, you’re selling something online and your customers are relying on you to fulfill their order. If they don’t receive the product they ordered, they will not be happy. If they receive the product they ordered, but it’s damaged, they will not be happy. If it’s delivered on time and in the correct condition, but it’s the wrong product, they will not be happy.
If the product is delivered on time, the correct product, and in good condition, but the courier damaged your front door, they will not be happy. If you’re thinking “wow, this is a lot of problems to be causing my customers” you’re right. There is a lot you can do to improve your order fulfillment and make sure your customers are happy and you’re making sales.
As a business owner, you need to make sure you follow all the key steps in the order fulfillment process and provide your customers with the best possible experience. You There are various steps you can take to improve your ecommerce order fulfillment process, from outsourcing to experts to incorporating a warehouse management software into your operations.
Before we get into how to improve order fulfillment process for your business, let’s take a look at what the key steps in the order fulfillment process are.
The Key Steps In The Order Fulfillment Process
1. Receiving The Order
The first step of the ecommerce order fulfillment process is receiving the order. When you receive an order, you want to be able to fulfill it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Depending on the size of your business, you may want to hire a fulfillment company to help you with this process — or you can do it all in house. If you decide to handle it in house, you will need a receiving area and a shipping area, as well as a place to store all of your products. Once you have a place to store your products, you can start the fulfillment process.
2. Picking Items
Picking items accurately for the ecommerce order fulfillment process can help reduce costs, improve customer service, and increase profits. There are two main approaches to picking items for fulfillment: picking out of a box or pallet, or picking from a shelf. With box or pallet picking, the picker reaches into a box to retrieve the item. This type of picking is ideal when items are similar in size and weight, and have a uniform shape. Picking from a box or pallet is commonly used in assembly lines, warehouses, and distribution centers. With shelf picking, the picker reaches onto a shelf to retrieve the item. Shelves are often used for items that are small, fragile, heavy, or irregularly shaped.
3. Packing Orders
Packing the order is one of the final key steps in the order fulfillment process for an ecommerce store. It is a process of packing products in a manner that ensures that the products reach the customer safely. Packaging is the wrapping of a product for protection, shipping and display purposes. The packaging is done in such a manner that it ensures that the product reaches the consumer without damage. It is an important part of the order fulfillment process, as a damaged product is not only a financial loss for it reduces the value of the product, but it also affects the consumer’s perception about the brand. The packaging also ensures that the consumer receives the product in a short span of time.
4. Shipping
Shipping is the last key step in the ecommerce order fulfillment process. This is an important step because you want to get your customer’s products to them in a timely manner. It’s also important because you want to make sure that the products are shipped properly. It’s important to know that not all products should be shipped the same way. It’s also important to know which carrier is a good fit for your products. For example, fragile items should not be shipped with a carrier that has strict weight limitations. Another example of a carrier that wouldn’t be a good fit would be if you were shipping a product that isn’t allowed to be shipped with a particular carrier. The best way to know which carrier is the best fit is to speak to your order fulfillment company and let them know what you’re shipping and how you want to ship it.
How To Improve Order Fulfillment Process For Your Ecommerce Business
If you have been thinking of how to improve order fulfillment process for your business, you have landed on the right page. Here are some important steps you can take to improve order fulfillment process for your business!
Establish Your Receiving Process
If you have an ecommerce business — you will face the challenge of fulfilling orders. So it’s important that you establish a receiving process as part of your ecommerce order fulfillment process for your business. For example,
- If you are selling products on Amazon, you will need to establish a receiving process for your Amazon business.
- If you are doing dropshipping, you will need to establish a receiving process for your dropshipping business.
- If you are running an eCommerce store — you will need to establish a receiving process for your eCommerce store.
The receiving process is the process by which you receive the products that you sell and then store them in your warehouse or store them with the fulfillment center you team up with. It is crucial that all items that are received are checked properly and organized. The receiving process is one of the most critical part of warehousing and inventory storage. It’s very important that you establish a receiving process as soon as possible.
Automate Your Ecommerce Order Fulfillment Process
The order fulfillment process is a key part of your business and the part that will often come under fire, if it is not properly managed. An order fulfillment process is, basically, where your buyers’ orders are tracked and managed. This is the point where your product is shipped to the buyer and where the buyer can use the products.
Automating order processes will save you a lot of time and effort, and it will also make your service much more efficient. Automating your order processes will improve your shipping processes and save money in the long run. With the help of an outstanding warehouse management system, like Canary7, you can control and automate your ecommerce order fulfillment process.
Canary7 is one of the most advanced WMS, helping you communicate with employees, track orders, receive orders, generate picking lists, keep
a check on inventory and stock levels, generate accurate inventory forecasts, streamline your multichannel order fulfllment, and much more.
Once you connect your business to Canary7, you can forget about all your worries related to your ecommerce order fulfillment process. It is a bespoke, comprehensive management system, helping you take care of all the key steps in the order fulfillment process.
Keep Safety Stock
One of the biggest and most important part of improving your ecommerce order fulfillment process is through the use of safety stock. The concept is simple: you always need to have the right amount of extra stock available to ensure that you can fulfill your orders without having to go to your suppliers for additional product.
The general rule of thumb is to have the amount of inventory that you would have sold in the last 30 days in your storage facilities. For example, if you would have sold 5,000 units in the last 30 days, you need to have at least 5,000 units in your warehouse.
A safety stock is a controlled buffer of inventory to protect against stockouts. This stock is held in the warehouse and is intended to protect the company from having to purchase from the vendor at a higher price or delay the delivery of a product to a customer.
The purpose of a safety stock is to maintain a minimum acceptable level of inventory for all products in case of demand fluctuations. The goal is to avoid stockouts and this can be achieved by using a safety stock.
Know The Time It Takes For Your Ecommerce Order Fulfillment Process
Understanding your order fulfillment cycle time is the first step to knowing what’s going on in your ecommerce business. The order fulfillment measurement system is one that can be a bit complicated. Businesses that sell products through multiple channels like ecommerce and retail or sell a large variety of products in a single channel often find themselves needing multiple fulfillment systems.
The main point of this measurement system is to help you understand how long it takes for a customer to receive their product after the order is placed. You need to be aware of how long it is taking you to fulfill orders. If the time for your ecommerce order fulfillment process is too long, you need to come up with strategies to reduce the time.
Businesses that sell on their ecommerce sites are always looking for ways to improve their conversion rates. One way to increase your conversion rate is to reduce the time it takes to fulfill an order. Reducing the time it takes to fulfill an order will also help to increase your customer satisfaction.
Keep Your Inventory Organized
The ecommerce industry is growing in leaps and bounds, which means that more and more people are looking to take advantage of this growing industry. As you try to understand the key steps in the order fulfillment process for your ecommerce business, you need to remember that there are a lot of running parts, and you can’t just throw something together. As you set up your ecommerce order fulfillment process, you need to remember that in order to maintain a successful business, you need to keep your inventory organized.
If you’re new to the ecommerce industry, you might be wondering what it means to keep your inventory organized. Essentially, it means that you need to be able to find what you’re looking for when you need it. This means that you need to be able to not just keep track of your inventory, but that you need to be able to keep track of individual items within your inventory.
Every business owner wants to make sure they have enough stock to fulfill orders and stay competitive. Keeping your inventory organized is more than just a good idea, it’s a requirement if you want to be able to fulfill your orders efficiently and successfully. Even if you’re not a retailer, keeping your inventory organized will help you stay on top of your business.
From a business owner’s standpoint, organization is essential because it helps you manage your inventory and make sure you have the right amount of product to meet demand. For example, if you’re a store owner and you find that you’re running low on a certain type of product, you’ll be able to quickly restock and avoid running out of stock.
Analyze And Understand Your Metrics
Last week you were enjoying a long weekend and now that you’ve returned to work, you’re probably struggling to catch up with the pile of orders that came during those two days. That’s the thing with ecommerce: no matter how much you prepare and plan, you can’t predict the volume of orders you’ll receive on a particular day.
As you know, the success of your online business depends on how well you manage your ecommerce order fulfillment process, and this is where metrics come in. Metrics is one of the most important parts of an online retail business. But it’s also one of the most challenging parts, because it requires you to look at the bigger picture, across a time span.
It’s difficult for many ecommerce owners to look at metrics and make sense of it all. It’s even more difficult to find some time to work on improving metrics, but it’s something you can’t afford to ignore. A good way to start improving your metrics is to set goals for the coming month. Make sure you take a look at your sales stats for the past month and try to find a pattern.
For example, if you notice that up to two thirds of your sales come from a particular product, you may want to spend some time trying to improve it and keep more in stock as compared to other items that are not doing that well.
Some of the metrics you should be tracking include:
- On-time shipments percentage
- Cost of fulfillment per order
- Average delivery time
- Supply chain scalability
- Inventory turnover
- Rate of order errors
- Customer satisfaction level
- Customer retention rates
- Returns rate
Establish A Suitable Returns Policy
One of the key steps in the order fulfillment process is delivering the product to the customer. But the fulfillment process doesn’t end when the product is delivered. Many ecommerce businesses struggle with return policies, and coming up with a strategy for returns is essential for building trust and retaining customers.
The best customer support is a happy customer. If a customer has a bad experience with their purchase, their experience with your business could be ruined for life. A lenient returns policy as part of your ecommerce order fulfillment process can be a great way to ensure this doesn’t happen, because it shows you’re confident in what you’re selling.
People like to be able to try something out and then return it if they don’t like it. You can do this in a number of ways, but the most obvious way is to offer a money back guarantee. However, this is only as successful as the effort you put into it. People want to get their money back quickly and easily.
This means you need to be able to let them do this, and spend time and resources making sure they get it. If you can do that, you can turn a bad experience into a good one and a one-time customer into a repeat customer.
Make Your Ecommerce Order Fulfillment Process More Efficient With Meteor Space
Do you want to know how to improve order fulfillment process for your business? Perhaps you are looking to cut down on the time it takes to process and fulfill orders?
If you are in need of a solution that can help you cut down on the time and labor it takes to process and fulfill orders, Meteor Space’s end-to-end order fulfillment services can help! We can help you unlock the full potential of your business, making sure you never have to worry about your ecommerce order fulfillment process again.
With our help, you can spend your valuable time developing better sales and marketing strategies for your business while we complete all the key steps in the order fulfillment process for your business!
Want to take a look at the platform and how it can help you improve your ecommerce order fulfillment process? Get in touch with us today!
