There’s one thing successful eCommerce giants share in common: functional and effective order fulfillment system. You might have the most visited store, the best quality products, terrific marketing techniques and great pre-sales support, your online business will slide if your China eCommerce fulfillment service provider doesn’t cooperate well.
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Though order fulfillment might not be the delighted part of online sales, it’s essentially crucial to your online success. A study in 2018 found that free shipping was the greatest stimulation for online purchase. Besides, the study unveiled that 54% of respondents cancelled the orders due to high costs of shipping, and another 25% stopped paying as the delivery time was too long. Well-run and zero-error fulfillment is crucial to retain happy, regular customers and get positive reviews, which will eventually help scale your business.
What’s eCommerce fulfillment?
Ecommerce fulfillment refers to the process of delivering products to customers who place orders on your eCommerce store. It’s an integral part of online business from start to finish. At the beginning you might just fulfill the orders in house, as business grows, most people tend to outsource to third party fulfillment center.
A typical eCommerce fulfillment involves a few processes: sending the products to your fulfillment warehouse, picking, packing and shipping orders, handling returns, etc.
What are involved in eCommerce fulfillment service?
Fulfillment is not just about picking, packing and shipping the orders. A good eCommerce fulfillment service provider can help your business run seamlessly, and usually it consists of four parts.
* Integration of eCommerce store and fulfillment center
Your online store should be integrated seamlessly with the fulfillment center. As soon as the customers place orders online, the fulfillment center also receives the orders simultaneously so they can prepare the fulfillment without delay. Every process of order fulfillment is automatically recorded in real time in eCommerce store.
* Management of inventory
Your fulfillment center should have an effective inventory management system that upon receiving the goods your stock would be organized into inventory, and you can check real-time data while logging into the inventory management system. Besides, they should have a policy for items broken or lost while storing on the shelves.
* Fulfillment of orders
As soon as you get sales online, your fulfillment service provider will pick the right products from the shelves, pack, and ship to the end customers. Same day fulfillment is vital to the successful flow of online orders, or you would lose advantages on short time delivery. Besides, check their error rates.
* Handling of returns
Returns are unavoidable in any eCommerce business, and it can be a big factor to drive sales. The quicker your fulfillment service provider processes returns, the quicker your customer get a refund. It’s vital to create a management system for handling return goods like quality inspection. The items in perfect condition would be put on the shelves again, and those with minor damages can be sold at a discount.
eCommerce fulfillment center vs Drop shipping
The terms eCommerce fulfillment center and drop shipping are easily confusing as both are dedicated to get products to the end customers, with the former shipped by fulfillment service provider and the latter by drop shipping supplier.
What’s eCommerce fulfillment service?
Also known as third party logistic provider (3PL fulfillment), here’s how a typical eCommerce fulfillment works:
1. You purchase the products to be sold online.
2. You ship the stocks to a 3PL provider, they receive and put into inventory.
3. When you get sales online, your fulfillment center picks, packs, and ships to the end customers on your behalf.
What’s drop shipping?
Drop shipping is the second to none choice for start up with small starting capital. Here’s how it works:
1. You find a supplier who provides drop shipping service.
2. You list all the products with stocks from the drop shipping provider.
3. When you get orders online, you forward them to the supplier.
4. The supplier ships orders directly to the end customer on your behalf, and you split the profits.
Do you need a China eCommerce fulfillment service provider?
If the quantity of your daily order is small, and you have an in house consolidating team, a third party fulfillment service provider is not necessary. As your business grows into certain scale, outsourcing your fulfillment to a 3PL provider is a more cost effective way for scaling.
Advantages of outsourcing fulfillment to 3PL provider
1. Less costs of warehousing rentals and staffs.
2. Cheaper shipping rates as China eCommerce fulfillment service providers ship a whopping number of orders each day, and tend to get better deals from carriers.
3. Your orders will be picked, packed, and shipped by professionals who are experts in order fulfillment.
4. You have more time to focus on strategic tasks like marketing, improving product quality, customer support, etc.
How to choose the best China eCommerce fulfillment service provider for your business?
A few factors come into play when it comes to choosing a suitable China eCommerce fulfillment service provider for your online business as 3PL isn’t one-size-fits-all.
Location
Your online business can be based in any corner of the world, however, a fulfillment center should be ideally located, preferably within 2-3 or no more than 5 business days shipping to the end customers. Apart from fast delivery, another perk of strategically located fulfillment center is lower shipping costs. Analyze your sales trends, and find out a central location to most customers. However, some eCommerce sellers tend to base their fulfillment centers near the manufacturers like to choose China eCommerce fulfillment service providers depending on how the supply-chain works.
Expertise
Choose a China eCommerce fulfillment service provider with expertise fulfilling products similar to the ones you sell especially if your products pose some shipping challenges. For example, if you’re selling large, heavy, and fragile items, you wouldn’t want to go with a service provider that specializes in shipping small stuffs.
Turnaround time
Go with a fulfillment center that offers same day shipping.
Customer support
Look for 3PL provider with customer support not only responding fast to your questions and requests, but also to the end customers’.
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