Jake Rheude — August 30, 2018 — August 30, 2018
If you run an eCommerce business, you’re probably busy right now running down your checklist to be prepared for holiday sales. While you double check your production schedule and line up your holiday ad buys, it’s important to remember one of the most overlooked opportunities to increase your sales: fulfillment.
Order fulfillment is the last part of the transaction to touch the customer, but it is one of the most crucial. Shipping cost and speed are two of the most important factors affecting eCommerce purchase decisions. And the package that arrives at the door can make a good (or bad) impression that affects your future sales.
The holiday season is a great time to jump on cutting-edge fulfillment trends. During this period, as new customers visit your eCommerce store, great fulfillment can give your business the “wow” factor that turns casual shoppers into loyal customers and supporters.
Fulfillment – the packing, shipping, and delivery of orders, plus returns, customer service, kitting, and more – is one of the fastest-evolving areas of service in eCommerce. Advances in order processing, warehouse management, and delivery service have combined to make eCommerce shops ever more competitive with brick-and-mortar retailers.
Here are four order fulfillment trends to watch for the 2018 holiday season, as you stay ahead of the logistics curve.
1. Fulfillment Cost Drivers
Keeping your fulfillment costs down is crucial. Free shipping is the gold standard of eCommerce, but you can’t offer free or low-cost shipping at the expense of your profit margin.
Among the business factors to watch that could affect shipping this holiday season is a shortage of truck drivers. The high demand for deliveries during peak holiday shopping could put a crunch on a dwindling pool of drivers, leading to delays. An upward trend in gas prices in 2018 could increase delivery costs as well.
While you can’t control these factors, it is more important than ever to find ways to save time and costs in your fulfillment operations. You can find those savings with a 3PL provider that offers same-day order fulfillment as well as strategically located fulfillment warehouses to reduce shipping time and costs.
2. Fast Delivery Matters More than Ever
Every year, the time that customers expect to wait for order delivery gets shorter. Amazon, as always, has pushed the envelope with expanded offers of same-day and one-day delivery. Walmart offers same-day pickup, with the option to schedule a pickup time, so groceries are freshly packed and ready to go.
While online shoppers won’t expect small and niche retailers to turn around orders this quickly, speedy delivery will endear you to your customers.
Plan ahead to make sure your inventory is warehoused and ready to ship when holiday orders flood in. Analyze the geographic distribution of your customers based on past sales data to choose warehouse locations that put your inventory in two-day shipping zones (or closer) and consider dividing your stock between two or more fulfillment center locations for maximum speed of distribution. Smaller shipping distances will save on freight costs as well.
3. Think Inside the Box
The box you use to ship your customer orders is more than just a cube of corrugated cardboard. It’s an opportunity for branding and savings.
First, the branding. It’s never been easier to get custom shipping boxes. The design, look, and feel of the box that arrives on your customer’s doorstep is the closest you can come to a personal touch in eCommerce. Express your brand voice through graphics on the outside and consider including a personal note inside. A package that makes your customer smile even before it’s opened will make your business stand out in a sea of plain brown boxes.
Custom boxes can also mean big savings on shipping. Box-making machines that create custom boxes to precisely fit each order are now being deployed at some fulfillment warehouses. By avoiding oversize boxes, you can reduce the size factor in the dimensional weight calculation that shippers use to determine your shipping costs, which could mean big savings.
4. The Drones Are Coming
Despite a spate of predictions earlier this year of the imminent start of drone delivery, you probably haven’t seen the skies above your city fill with flying delivery machines ready to carry everything from pizza boxes to prescriptions. While the FAA allowed drone pilot programs to take off, the US still hasn’t overcome the regulatory hurdles to take flying robot deliveries from the realm of science fiction and into the service of eCommerce delivery.
However, drone delivery has already begun to be deployed in other countries. When you buy from Japanese retailer Rakuten, you can get your order dropped off by drone. The UK is creating an air control system to keep drones from crossing paths with other drones and commercial aircraft, though it won’t be fully operational until 2019 or 2020. DHL has begun to deliver packages in Germany with its custom-designed parcelcopter drone.
While you might not be able to employ drones to solve your logistics puzzle in the US yet, they will certainly be a factor in speeding up the pace of eCommerce fulfillment in the very near future.
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