In today’s world of sophisticated digital commerce, buying online can seem like magic: You click a button, your credit card is charged, and an item shows up on your doorstep a few days later. But the process of getting a product to shoppers—known as “ecommerce fulfillment”—is a complex part of ecommerce.
What is e-commerce fulfillment?
Ecommerce fulfillment refers to the process of picking, packing, and delivering your products to customers. This includes maintaining accurate inventory, locating products where they are stored (either in a warehouse or a brick-and-mortar store), saudi arabia email list packing the products, and managing logistics for timely delivery.
How does e-commerce fulfillment work?
Ecommerce fulfillment is one of the most logistically complex aspects of running your online store, and large companies invest millions to make their fulfillment more efficient. There are many moving parts involved in fulfillment, users per month if billed but the six main processes are:
- Inventory management. This is the process by which your ecommerce business orders and stores raw materials, china phone numbers components of a product, or finished products. Most ecommerce businesses don’t manufacture their own products, so inventory management is a critical part of fulfillment. You need to know what products you have in stock before you can fulfill a customer’s order.
- Warehousing. This is the process of storing products ready for sale for later shipment. You can store the products yourself if you have the capacity to do so, or outsource this to a third-party warehousing service provider.
- Accepting orders. In this phase, your business receives orders from customers.
- Packaging. This is the process of preparing products for shipment. This may include wrapping products in brand-specific packaging as well as packing the products in protective material to ensure they are not damaged during transit to customers.
- Shipping. Shipping involves selecting and paying for the appropriate postage or a private shipping service to transport products from the warehouse to your end customers. Customers expect to receive an estimate of shipping times before making a purchase, and that those timeframes will be met. One of the biggest disruptions to the customer experience is unforeseen delays in deliveries. If you can offer two-day shipping, great! If not, make sure you communicate a realistic timeframe to your buyers from the start.
- Returns. Returns are the process of sending unsatisfactory items from customers back to the warehouse for processing, cataloging, and possibly re-sale and reshipment.
Three strategies for your e-commerce fulfillment
As an e-commerce merchant, you have several options for fulfillment: you can do it yourself, forward orders to others for fulfillment, or outsource it entirely to a third party. Each path can be customized depending on the specifics of your own e-commerce business’s needs.
in-house fulfillment
Whether in-house e-commerce fulfillment is right for your business depends largely on your inventory levels. If your operation is lean and processes fewer than 100 orders per month, in-house fulfillment could be an efficient option for you.
The advantages of in-house ecommerce fulfillment are ease of implementation, low startup costs, control over packaging style and branding, and control over fulfillment processes and customer service. You can also benefit from lower shipping costs by signing up for bulk mail services like Stamps.com. Disadvantages include difficulty scaling, distracted labor and time, limitations on warehouse space and labor, and reliance on full-price shipments.