Being an online seller affords the opportunity to run your own business, set your own schedule, and pretty much determine your own financial future. How you run your business influences everything from customer satisfaction to annual profits. And at the heart of it all for online sellers is order fulfillment.
Setting up a website to sell products is one thing. Getting those products into the hands of your customers is an entirely different matter. For a lot of online sellers, the fulfillment portion is the harder of the two. That is understandable.
Whether you choose to refer to it as ‘inventory fulfillment’, ‘centralized fulfillment’, or some other term entirely, the fulfillment process is actually a multi-step process that has to account for five different aspects of e-commerce.
1. Payment Verification
Payment verification is the obvious first step in e-commerce fulfillment. Before an item is packaged and shipped, the online seller needs to verify that payment has been completed. This isn’t too difficult in the modern digital era. Credit cards are processed nearly instantly for domestic purchases.
Where payment verification becomes tricky is when you are dealing with cross-border sales. Domestic e-commerce fulfillment involves a straightforward payment system. But cross-border payments are a bit more difficult. Online sellers need to have checks in place to make sure cross-border payments are legit.
2. Inventory Management
The second step is packaging the item and preparing it for shipping. We’ve used the heading ‘Inventory Management’ here in order to denote a broader view. Packaging products for shipping is just one aspect of inventory management. The broader practice involves tracking all inventory as it comes in and goes out. All inventory in storage has to be accounted for as well.
3. Shipping/Distribution
Next up is shipping. In a retail environment, products are shipped directly to retail customers from the fulfillment center. In a wholesale environment, you are looking more at a distribution model that involves shipping larger quantities of products to retail outlets.
E-commerce fulfillment is not usually discussed in terms of wholesale distribution. Yet there are wholesalers who sell bulk products online. They need an easy and reliable distribution platform just as much as the online seller operating in the retail space.
4. Last Mile Delivery
The fourth stage of e-commerce fulfillment is last mile delivery. Again, this is something that generally does not constitute a big deal for retailers. They ship with a single company that offers door-to-door service. Wholesale distribution is another matter.
In either case, last mile delivery is critical because it creates direct contact with the customer. How the customer feels about the delivery experience partially determines future purchases. Online sellers need to make sure they nail this part of the fulfillment process every time.
5. Returns and Processing
Rounding out e-commerce fulfillment is the uncomfortable stage of accepting and processing returns. No online seller appreciates returned merchandise. Nonetheless, it is part of the game. It can be an expensive part of the game if it’s not handled efficiently.
Who pays the shipping costs when merchandise is returned? Does the consumer use the same shipping service that delivered the product? Within a wholesale distribution scenario, does the customer return the entire lot or just that portion that is damaged, unwanted, etc.?
As one of the leading ecommerce fulfillment providers in Texas, we can attest to the fact that order fulfillment for online sellers has its challenges. Getting it right isn’t terribly difficult if you know what you’re doing. Unfortunately, a lot of online sellers do not. But that’s why companies like ours exist. We can handle everything from fulfillment to shipping and accepting returns. It is what we do.