According to a March 2024 forecast by EMarketer, the global eCommerce industry is expected to reach $6.334 trillion in sales in 2024, which is an 8.8% increase from the previous year and accounts for 20.1% of total retail sales. If you’re an online business, this means you must be prepared to meet growing demand and find a way to optimize your eCommerce fulfillment processes.
A strong eCommerce fulfillment strategy will help you efficiently get products into the hands of your customers. This, in turn, will improve your business’s overall reputation and help drive business growth. Fulfillment speed continues to be a major challenge for eCommerce businesses. One way you can address and solve this challenge is by implementing mobile solutions.
How eCommerce Fulfillment Works
eCommerce fulfillment is the process of getting ordered products from a store or warehouse to your customer’s front door. An important part of the order fulfillment process is inventory management, which ensures you have the products on your shelves and they are easy to find when you need them.
Once a customer places an order, your team needs to pick it from the shelves, pack it, and ship it to the customer without any delays or errors. Finally, a certain percentage of customers will likely return their orders, so how a business handles its returns is also critical.
Why Fulfillment Speed Has Become So Important
Today’s consumers increasingly expect orders to be delivered accurately and quickly. Studies show that 65% of consumers are willing to switch to another brand if an online shopping experience doesn’t meet their expectations. And a company’s failure to deliver an order on time is the number one reason customers look elsewhere the next time they make a purchase.
While it’s true that meeting today’s consumer delivery demands can be challenging. After all, Amazon has set the bar incredibly high. Here are some of the ways fulfillment speed impacts your business:
1. Hurts or Boosts Your Brand
What consumer wouldn’t like to have their online orders land on their doorsteps as quickly as possible? Some online retailers are now offering same-day delivery, which is tough to beat. With the bar set so high, few consumers will be forgiving if you promise one thing and deliver something else. Delays or errors in order fulfillment can seriously damage your brand’s reputation.
On the other hand, ensuring your customers get what they expect is essential. Most will understand if you can’t offer same-day or even next-day delivery. What’s important is that you keep your promises. If you can do this, those customers will offer you repeat business and even recommend your brand to others.
2. Improves Conversion Rates
One problem many eCommerce stores have is called “cart abandonment.” Customers find something they want to buy and add it to their shopping cart. Yet, something during the checkout process prompts them to leave the website without completing the transaction.
A few of the top reasons for cart abandonment are expected costs at checkout, such as shipping costs and longer-than-expected shipping times. If you’re surprising your customers at the point of checkout, it’s going to impact your conversion rates.
3. Helps Increase Average Order Value
If your brand builds its reputation on the speedy delivery of products, customers will know you can be trusted to keep your promises. Knowing you will receive products on time from an eCommerce retailer makes it tempting to add additional products to a shopping cart. This can increase the average order value for your business.
How to Optimize eCommerce Fulfillment Speed with Mobile Solutions
When it comes to running a successful eCommerce business, order fulfillment is one of the most critical factors to consider. Although it may seem like a simple process, fast and efficient order fulfillment remains elusive for many businesses. Yet, this is one of the top recipes for success. Here are some of the ways you can optimize your eCommerce order fulfillment speed using mobile solutions.
1. Maintain Accurate Inventory
You can’t achieve fast order fulfillment if you don’t have the products on your shelves. At the same time, those products need to be where your workers expect them so they don’t have to search the warehouse and waste time. Maintaining accurate inventory is the foundation of having an efficient order fulfillment process.
2. Streamline Processes
In eCommerce warehouses, workers spend a lot of time walking from one place to another. Whether it’s for inventory management, picking, or packing, you can reduce the amount of walking your workers have to do and boost productivity by implementing mobile-powered carts, which bring everything your workers need right to the point of production.
3. Implement Scanning Technology
Most warehouses are adopting mobile solutions for inventory management and order fulfillment. Using RFID tags or barcode scanning in combination with mobile carts and a robust warehouse management system enables real-time order confirmation and the fast fulfillment of new orders.
4. Optimize Warehouse Layout
Optimizing your warehouse layout is another way to speed up the order fulfillment process. By implementing well-planning picking and packing routes combined with mobile-powered carts, your warehouse can reduce the space it needs to run efficiently and inject real-time visibility into the process.
5. Reduce Fulfillment Errors
Many eCommerce warehouses batch-print labels for inventory management and shipping. This can lead to human error when workers apply the wrong label to a package or pallet, causing slowdowns and customer dissatisfaction. With mobile carts and technology, employees can print labels on the spot, which drastically reduces errors.
6. Minimize Transit Delays
Mobile fulfillment solutions also provide real-time connectivity and improve visibility throughout the supply chain. This can help supply chain partners make more informed decisions on the fly with respect to transportation challenges that could delay packages. With this real-time data, partners can quickly adjust to things like weather, traffic, and other delays.
eCommerce fulfillment in today’s environment requires that your business operate at peak performance. Consumers demand fast and accurate fulfillment and reward the businesses that can fulfill their needs. Using mobile solutions, such as mobile powered carts, can eliminate costly errors and offer eCommerce brands the big productivity gains they need to stay competitive and maximize profitability.
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