If you’re launching your first ecommerce site and looking to sell across a distance, you need to understand the order fulfillment process. Third-party solutions, like dropshipping or fulfillment by Amazon, can make things easier on your end.

However, they just move the complexity to places you don’t control. You need a clear business process to run your order fulfillment. What is a business process, and how does it help?

A business process is any sequence of steps you need to take to achieve an outcome. David Allen writes in Getting Things Done that a “project” is any outcome that requires two or more actions to complete. “Business processes” may sound complicated, but it’s just the principle – i.e., mapping out the steps needed to accomplish a goal – that’s applied to teams and whole companies.

By documenting and clarifying your business processes you can begin optimizing them. After all, what isn’t measured can’t be improved. If your returns process isn’t optimized, you’ll find your staff’s time being taken up by proactive customer care when things go wrong.

The order fulfillment process has lots of moving parts where a lot can go wrong, but the customer sees none of that. They just expect their product to arrive quickly and easily. If they don’t get that, because your order fulfillment process wasn’t well-run, they’ll take their business elsewhere.

With that in mind, let’s look at six basic steps of the order fulfillment process and see some of the challenges your business might face with them.

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1. Receive your goods

Whatever the size of your business, you’ll be receiving inventory in bulk to be stored in the warehouse. Above a certain scale, boxes will be sent on shrink-wrapped pallets to be slotted directly into the warehouse shelves either on pallet trucks or a forklift.

Shipping in so much bulk requires investing in machinery and the skills to use it. But such big shipments mean warehouse staff can pick from the same pallet for a longer time before you have to ship another one over.

One of the most reliable small business management tips, in any case, is to automate processes wherever you can. Processes like inventory management and ordering, the generation of pick lists, and the management of returns can all be automated along with countless other steps in the process. Some of these jobs, like pick lists, might seem small, but the sum of many little efficiency gains can add up to big changes.

Not only will automation save the staff time and the company money, but it also reduces the chance of human error. This results in a more consistent and high-quality experience for your customers, and they’re one way you can turn your order fulfillment process from a necessary job into an asset to the company.

2. Store your stock in the warehouse

Once the stock is received in bulk and staff have checked the shipment is accurate, the goods are stored throughout the warehouse. Deciding how the goods should be stored is one challenge, but getting it right can benefit your bottom line.

The difference between sales operations and revenue operations is while sales operations looks at the sales process from end to end – from marketing to purchase – revenue operations run across the whole business.

In practice, this means RevOps will be looking at the whole order fulfillment process to increase profit margins. For example, the layout of goods in your warehouse should be updated periodically to reflect your sales data. If you have a product range that sells better for one season every year, you should place that close to the loading bay to save workers time and energy.

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3. Pick your orders

Your order to cash optimization process runs in tandem with the entire order fulfillment. This ties back into your revenue operations and it’s about running your administration, warehouse, and shipping processes in the most cost-efficient way possible.

When the order comes in and it’s confirmed everything is in stock, a pick list is generated and sent to the warehouse. The list includes product names, SKU numbers, and their exact locations in the warehouse. 

The work that goes into creating this list should be automated. Not only does this save time, but having all the information on the sheet coming from one database keeps everything in a single source of truth.

4. Pack your deliveries

When the picked items are all assembled at the loading bay, they have to be packed to ensure they arrive to customers in perfect condition. Depending on the product and the “unboxing” experience you want to create, this might require bubble wrap or packing peanuts.

If you’re shipping packages that can be carried by hand, your shipping might be complicated by local shipping regulations that dictate how much it costs to ship. A RevOps team might try to optimize your order fulfillment process around these to increase profit margins. The savings here would be extremely small, but, at a scale, that adds up to a lot of money over time.

If you’re shipping pallets full of stock, you’ll be dealing with haulers and trucking companies. This would dictate the pace of your order fulfillment process because the truck is expensive to drive. It has to operate on a strict schedule in order to be cost-efficient. In order to make any deliveries, you have to get all of your orders packed up for a certain time that’s determined by what’s best for the trucking company.

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5. Your products are shipped

After your package leaves the warehouse, it’s on its way to being shipped to your customers.

Shipping costs are a crucial business decision in ecommerce. Are you going to pay for those at all, or will you add them to the customer’s bill? Should you offer different tiers of shipping so customers can get products faster?

This depends on the kind of service you want to deliver and what you can afford to deliver. You can maybe kill two birds with one stone and offer free shipping to your customers on orders above a certain total. This will keep your order fulfillment operation profitable while increasing total sales along the way.

Your packages will move from your warehouse to your courier’s own warehouse. From there, they’ll divide all the packages based on their destinations and send them out for “last-mile” delivery.

Last-mile delivery is a whole article in and of itself. It’s why Amazon hires economists to help them figure this kind of problem out, and it’s why you should leave last-mile delivery to a third-party courier service. It’s why the global ecommerce fulfillment industry has grown to over $77 billion in value.

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Shipping a truck full of goods from a warehouse for hundreds of miles is cheaper and faster per mile than delivering a few packages across one town. This is because there are so many complications along the way, such as different buildings to navigate, dealing with packages for people who aren’t at home, and making all the deliveries on one tank of petrol.

For you, all you need to worry about at this stage is tracking. If you track your packages and you ask for the customer’s email upon order, you can enhance your customer service and support by sending them an email as soon as your product has arrived. If your product is technology or a home appliance you could email your customers some setup instructions along with the contact information for your support channels.

6. Process returns

A good returns process is about customer interaction management. You should make your returns process clear on your site and use it as a selling point.

Returns are inevitable no matter how good your product is, but you can turn the returns experience into an asset if you use the recovery paradox. This is a well-documented phenomenon in which customers think better of a company for recovering well from an error – such as a faulty product or a service outage – than if they’d performed flawlessly the whole time.

Nevertheless, a good returns policy will see you eating the cost of shipping the product back to your warehouse, and that means you want to reduce them as much as you can. Innovations like augmented reality ecommerce allow users to see products like furniture in their homes before they buy. This helps reduce the number of pricey returns in total, which streamlines your operations and helps your order-to-cash optimization.

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Turning your order fulfillment process into an asset

At every stage of the order fulfillment process, from receiving your goods to the courier handing over your product, there’s room for you to optimize your business or improve your customer service. Using the data you generate already and feeding it into automated software can speed up your internal processes. And tracked shipping can help you make a great first impression when it arrives at the customer’s door.

Jessica Day – Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad
Jessica Day is the Senior Director for Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern business communications platform that takes every kind of conversation to the next level—turning conversations into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts, for both company and client campaigns. She has also written for domains such as DesignLike and Unstack. Check out her LinkedIn profile

Shopping cart abandonment is one of the most frustrating problems in ecommerce. It means you’re doing almost everything right. But at the last minute, you’ve missed out on an interested customer. With around 76% of carts in the Middle East being abandoned before checkout, what could be going wrong?

Online shopping cart abandonment can be caused by a range of things, but luckily there are plenty of ways to tackle the problem. Let’s look at ten practical tips you can employ very quickly.

1. Improve shipping

According to the Baymard Institute, the number one cause of cart abandonment is extra costs (and that often means shipping!). 

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Many retailers avoid being upfront about shipping costs, hoping to slip them in at the checkout stage as if they’re an afterthought. Unfortunately, this tends to have the opposite effect to it’s intent – customers notice, and often leave.

One way to avoid this is to make your shipping costs clear earlier in the purchase journey. However, this alone may not increase successful conversions. Price-sensitive customers who would have abandoned their cart are instead likely to abandon the purchase at the browsing stage.

Getting your customer the most attractive shipping cost should be central to your ecommerce pricing strategies. Negotiate with your carriers and see if you can provide a flat cost. Alternatively, use tiered pricing or provide free shipping above a certain order value.

2. Use your returns policy as a selling point

One reason your customers abandon their cart is that they’re almost sure they want the product but they’re not sure about your returns policy.

Luckily, this is an easy fix. Make sure your returns policy is easy to find, and easy to understand. It should be so good that it becomes a selling point, and your customers should know about it at the start of the checkout procedure – maybe even during their initial browsing. Display it prominently across your site, from the product page to the confirmation email.

If a customer has any doubt in their mind about buying, a clear returns policy removes it as an obstacle to purchasing.

3. Tell them your USP

Often, people abandon their shopping carts to compare your competitors’ offerings to your own. You can prevent this by emphasizing your unique selling point (USP) at every stage of the purchase journey.

Review your product photography/imagery, A/B test your product page’s layout or optimize product feed text ads to make your USP as prominent as you can. You might be emphasizing what makes your product unique. Alternatively, if you’re selling a similar product to your competitors, emphasize what makes your service unique. Maybe you offer very good shipping rates, or a uniquely good returns policy.

Your USP shouldn’t just be prominent on your website. Make sure everyone in your sales, marketing, and customer support teams know your USP by heart. By making it prominent across the whole purchase journey, you can make your competition irrelevant in the mind of the customer long before they’ve reached the checkout.

4. Employ live chat

Your customers might abandon their shopping carts because there’s an aspect of the product, shipping, or return policy they’re not sure about. If the customer has a question like this, it could prevent them from ordering. You want to be able to answer those questions in an instant.

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Providing a live chat service on your site is a great way to address these questions. This could be a text chat window, voice chat, or free video calls. If you can’t have someone online 24/7, implement a chatbot that can answer questions or refer customers to your email.

Talking directly to your customers is also a great way to gather data on their concerns. If you keep hearing the same issues, make the answers to those questions clear on the product page or add them to your FAQ page. You could even add that information to your chatbot so it can answer the customer directly.

5. Remove distractions

In the world of online shopping, attention spans are short. According to CrazyEgg, a one-second delay in loading means 7% less conversions (not to mention the 16% decrease in customer satisfaction). It’s not just load speed that counts, however.

If your site is cluttered or asks too much of the customer, they might get distracted and abandon their cart.

Test your purchase journey from browsing to purchase and look for distractions. If you’re offering a lot of special offers, pop-ups, or upselling in your purchase journey, consider removing one of them in an A/B test. You want the journey from browsing to purchase to be as fast and easy as possible.

Consider the example of Stripe, the global payments provider who arrived in the Middle East in 2021. When Stripe asks for a customer’s credit card information, they don’t ask for their address. They only ask for a postcode, which they can use to work out the address. They don’t ask the customer to select their credit card provider, because this information is encoded in the credit card number.

Each step automated by Stripe is a step less for the customer to do – and the easier a purchase is, the more likely it is to happen.

Consider how much effort you ask of your customer in the purchase journey, and think creatively about how much of that you can remove. Many Shopify themes are built with simplicity in mind, but you can customize them to improve your customer journey.

6. Use reviews or testimonials

If your customer is having second thoughts about your product and abandoning their cart, it might be because they don’t have enough social proof. In a B2C context, you might encourage customer reviews on your site. This allows browsers to see how other customers have liked your products after purchase.

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If you’re selling a B2B product or service, like work force management solutions or cloud storage, then your customers will be making more considered decisions about purchasing from your site. This gives you the opportunity to provide more in-depth social proof such as case studies and testimonials. Make a habit of collecting these from your clients,and keep track of this in a CRM or project management system such as Salesforce, a Bitrix24 alternative, or Asana.

7. Make it easy to change orders

One common point of frustration for online shoppers is changing their orders at the last minute. If your customer decides they want another item, just before they’re about to click “Buy”, sites often aren’t designed to make it easy to change this order. This isn’t good for your customer experience, and it leads to cart abandonment.

If your customer has to cancel their current purchase or go back to your main site to amend their order, they’ve just abandoned their cart. Whether they come back is out of your control.

Can your customers change their order within the checkout procedure? At the very least, they should be able to change the number of items they’re ordering. If your product comes with accessories or optional add-ons, make it easy for the customer to add these deep into the checkout process.

If your customer is in the checkout they’re obviously ready to buy, so this is a good time to make a last-minute sale on top of what they’re already ordering.

8. Offer payment options

It’s become more and more common for online retailers to provide flexible payment offers. In late 2021, “buy now, pay later” solutions are almost standard for high-ticket items where price might put a customer off.

You should also offer as many payment methods as you can, from bank transfer, to credit card, to speedy solutions like Apple Pay, Union Pay International or mada. If your customer doesn’t have their credit card to hand, the delay this causes could lead to them abandoning their shopping cart.

9. Make it urgent

Give your customers a reason to buy here and now. If you’re selling a similar product as your competitors, you only have outstanding service to compete on. As we’ve mentioned, price-sensitive customers will think of comparing your offering to competitors. Make sure your product pages highlight the benefits of shopping from you.

That could be anything from your excellent returns policy, your low shipping costs, or your flexible payment options. It’s also worth considering limited-time offers. These can either happen via a pop-up at checkout or in a follow-up email (more of those in a moment).

10. Use marketing tactics

There are lots of marketing tips to reduce shopping cart abandonment outside of your website. Three key tactics are:

Retargeting

Platforms like Facebook and Google make it easy for you to deliver ads to people who have visited your site already. Consider delivering adverts to customers who have abandoned their shopping carts. This is a proven tactic for bringing customers back to finish the purchase.

This can have a great return on ad spend (ROAS) if you employ performance marketing. What is performance marketing? It’s when your advertising partners or affiliates get paid when an agreed-upon action is taken. This could be a clickthrough or a successful conversion. This allows you to cast a wide net without breaking the bank.

Exit pop-up

If your customer is at the checkout and about to click to another page on your site – or another window entirely! – an exit-intent pop-up can help. Your pop-up could do anything from offering a limited-time discount to asking for the customer’s email. This could convince the customer to complete the purchase then and there, or give you a chance to send a follow-up email.

Follow-up emails

A personalized follow-up email can help get customers back to complete their purchases. Include the customer’s name if you have it, and make sure it’s based on their browsing history.

If you’re not just emailing to remind them of their abandoned purchase, tailor the email to the product category they abandoned. Offer your customer a clear method to contact you directly. This allows you to answer any questions that might have prevented them from buying.

Try new things

One or all of these ten tips could drastically reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate. A lot of these tips will benefit all of your customers as an additional benefit, so it’s worth taking the time to A/B test anything that looks like it would suit your business. Who knows – the results may surprise you!

-Jessica Day is the Senior Director for Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern business communications platform with A2P SMS that takes every kind of conversation to the next level—turning conversations into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts, for both company and client campaigns. Here is her LinkedIn