Having a smooth Shopify order fulfillment process is essential to running your eCommerce website. This is the process that happens after a customer places an order. It involves preparing the items and getting them delivered efficiently. Knowing how to improve your order fulfillment process can be challenging. Luckily, 506.io is here to help.
This article takes you through our top 6 tips for how to improve your order fulfillment process. We even let you in on how our app, EasyScan, can streamline this process for you. Read on to find out more about how to fulfill orders on Shopify successfully!
1. Manage Your Shopify Order Fulfillment Time
If you’re thinking about how to improve your order fulfillment process, knowing what you’re working with is important. You need insight into how your order fulfillment currently works to figure out how it can be made better.
Track The Metrics Of Your Shopify Order Fulfillment
One way to understand your Shopify order fulfillment is to track metrics. Collecting data on your website’s performance and orders gives you a picture over time of the trends, delays, and mistakes which might be happening.
The most important metric for your eCommerce businessis the order fulfillment cycle time. It’s not unheard of for the cycle to take more than a week from order to delivery. You might not be able to fulfill orders as quickly as the likes of Amazon. However, getting the cycle time down is important. There are plenty of ways to work out how long this cycle is. Think about things such as: what fulfillment time do you promise to customers? How long are average delays? How many orders arrive on time? What is the cost of order fulfillment? And how many errors are typically made?
2. Organize Your Warehouse To Speed Up Fulfillment
Next, it’s essential to have a well-stocked, neat, and easy-to-navigate warehouse for your stock. Having an organized warehouse can make all the difference when figuring out how to improve your order fulfillment process.
Manage Your Shopify Inventory Accurately
Part of having an organized warehouse is accurately managing your inventory. There’s nothing worse than customers receiving the wrong stock due to poor stock management, or finding out they have to wait for the stock to come in. Knowing what you have in stock when and synchronizing stock levels is a fundamental part of Shopify order fulfillment.
This is where EasyScan comes in. Our app takes a lot of the hard work of inventory checking out of the process for you. By usingEasyScan to generate barcodes or SKUs for your products, you can check and update your inventory. Simply use a barcode scanner or smart device and the click of a button. This allows you to manage all of your inventory easily, whether at one warehouse or across multiple locations. EasyScan is a great way to manage your stock automatically and streamline your Shopify order fulfillment.
3. Automate Your Order Process
Following on from using EasyScan to manage your inventory, another tip for improving Shopify order fulfillment is to automate the process more. Processing orders manually can slow down your order fulfillment cycle massively. By taking out some or all of this manual decision-making, you can smooth out the whole process.
EasyScan can assist with the switch to a more automated order process. Through our app, you can automatically generate and fulfill orders using a barcode scanner, tablet, or smartphone. This can be integrated into in-person sales or warehouse operations to instantly add products to your orders. Through this, and our EasyGift app too, you can simply add discounts, payment, and any other information seamlessly. This small change can go a big way when working out how to improve your order fulfillment process!
4. Stop Errors To Improve Order Fulfillment
With an entirely manual fulfillment process comes a lot of human error. Stopping errors is essential if you want your Shopify order fulfillment cycle to be efficient. By using EasyScan to generate barcodes, check inventory, and create and process orders, you can stop errors in your warehouse.
Having an organized warehouse, knowing how long your fulfillment process takes, and being able to track and update your stock quickly is the best way to eliminate errors. Mistakes in the Shopify order fulfillment cycle can be costly, especially to smaller businesses. This is whyEasyScan is a great tool to eliminate errors and make your eCommerce business more efficient!
5. Build A Good Relationship With Suppliers
Besides technological improvements when thinking about how to improve your order fulfillment process, you want to think about your supplier relationships. This can again make a huge difference to your order processing cycle and impact your delivery times substantially. If you build a good relationship with your product suppliers, you’re more likely to get the high-quality stock you need on time. This will help you fulfill orders quickly, and build a good relationship with your customers too.
When building a good relationship with your suppliers, there are a few important things to do. You must communicate with them consistently, be transparent about your business, and take responsibility equally when things go wrong. EasyScan can also help make your communication more transparent. It can give you up-to-date information on your inventory and orders, making sure you have the right data to show to your suppliers. Never underestimate the value of building strong and reliable business relationships in eCommerce!
6. Be Customer-Focused
Finally, being customer-focused is essential when improving your Shopify order fulfillment process. Thinking about how to make the cycle more efficient for not only your business but for your customers who want a high-quality and reliable service is essential.
Ensuring you have an attractive returns policy in place and knowing how to quickly deal with mistakes or complaints is key. On top of this, ensuring orders are filled quickly and accurately is a component of a successful eCommerce website.
As we’ve said already, EasyScan can help with efficiency and error elimination. You can also check out EasyGift for solutions to offering the best promotions, discounts, and shipping to your customers. Importantly, keeping in mind your customer service when working out how to improve your order fulfillment process is the key to getting it right.
