How to Scale Your Shopify Order Fulfillment Strategy
Every business needs a scaling strategy, especially when it comes to satisfying the needs of their customers. Here’s our guide on how to scale your shipments and automate your Shopify order fulfillment.
Entrepreneurs from just about any industry use Shopify for a long list of good reasons, to start:
- it’s plug and play,
- works as a POS software, and
- can help you better manage your inventory.
What’s not to like?
In a previous post, we looked at how you can improve your Shopify store’s revenue-generating potential and save time in the process by integrating add-ons to your e-commerce store.
This time around, we will show you how to scale your Shopify order fulfillment strategy and how to boost your store’s revenue with a few tweaks.
The 5 Minute Guide to Scaling Your Shopify Shipping Strategy
Automate Your Fulfillment & Shipping
Partner With A Warehouse To Automate Fulfillment And Shipping
Fulfilling orders from your store or home-office works when you’re starting out. But as your business grows and orders start pouring in, do-it-yourself fulfillment becomes a big challenge.
Worse, dealing with logistics can take time away from important biz-building activities like acquiring more customers, developing new products, or networking with the right people in your industry.
Fortunately, you can turn to fulfillment warehouses for help.
A fulfillment warehouse can automate the entire process for you:
From picking up the items in the order (picking), packing everything properly (packing), to shipping the order to the correct address (shipping)–the fundamentals of any shipping operation pick and pack, storage and shipping–these are the key roles a fulfillment warehouse takes care of for you.
But, with online commerce, there is the added ability to automate the whole workflow, leaving you a essentially plug and play online ebusiness.
Just make sure you watch your inventory and don’t forget about customer service.
Fulfillment warehouses ship orders in bulk for other sellers like you, which means they receive heavily discounted shipping rates and pass the savings to you.
Plus, most fulfillment warehouses have partnered with major logistics companies, giving you a wide range of options to get that order to its destination.
Find out how to Automate your Shopify Order Fulfillment process with the Shopify + Floship Integration here!
This is a God-send if you want to take on more customers and orders but only have a small team to assist you.
And, the best part, if you’re a Shopify customer? Shopify integrates with Floship’s Global E-Fulfillment service.
With warehouses located in the world’s largest air freight hub that is Hong Kong, Floship can deliver orders to your customers wherever they are – fast!
Moreover, having Floship’s headquarters in Hong Kong means sellers get the lowest rates possible. And you only get charged for 3 things in the fulfillment process:
- storage of your products,
- piece-picking, and
- shipping.
No hidden fees or unpleasant surprises.
With the robust e-commerce platform that is Shopify, combined with Floship’s strategic location and top-notch fulfillment services, you have everything you need to take your business to the international level.
Print Shipping Labels Straight From Shopify To Save Time And Money
Printing shipping labels may not seem like a time- and productivity-sucker at first: you print out the labels, slap em’ on the package, and off you it goes. But when you have to print dozens of shipping labels in a day, your already tight schedule becomes impossible to manage.
How to work around this?
It’s simple (if you’re in the US): print USPS shipping labels directly through Shopify.
Just click “Buy Shipping Label,” select the correct package size and shipping method, and that’s it. No third-party apps or complicated installations needed.
When you’re ready to ship the order, just put the label on the package as usual, and take the order to the nearest USPS location. You can skip the line as you’ve prepaid for the shipping label.
Or even better, you can even schedule a free home pick up through the USPS website to save even more time for things that grow your business (not logistics).
Lower The Free Shipping Threshold
Fact: 67.45% of online shoppers don’t complete their purchase.
Yes, 67 out of 100 people who are ready to order products will abandon their cart and leave disappointed.
And who’s the culprit? High shipping and handling fees!
That’s a lot of money left on the table.
But should you offer free shipping on every order?
Probably not, as that’s a surefire way to skyrocket your costs. Instead, start by identifying the bottlenecks in your checkout process to see if shipping costs turn off potential buyers.
For many sellers, the checkout process is fairly straightforward:
- Customers have to enter their name and contact info
- Following that, they need to choose the shipping method
- Enter a payment method or credit card details
- And once the payment has been made, the customer is taken to a “Thank You” page
If shipping rates are truly the culprit, you should see a large difference between the number of people that reach the shipping stage and those who complete their purchase.
When that’s the case, take a look at your free shipping threshold and the number of abandoned carts that didn’t make it past the mark.
Let’s say your free shipping threshold is $80 but over 90% of the abandoned carts have an average of $45 worth of items. Would lowering the threshold to $45 encourage more purchases?
For Shopify customer and business owner Winnie Tonou, the move proved to be a huge business boost. Reducing her free shipping threshold translated to 118% more revenue and 173% more sales!
To make up for the added shipping expenses, however, Winnie slightly raised the flat rate shipping fee for orders that don’t make the cut.
The key point to take away: don’t mindlessly cut shipping rates or indiscriminately offer free shipping to boost sales. Instead, use data and analysis to find the sweet spot like Winnie did.
If you’re a Shopify user, however, the analysis is automated by the system and it will tell you if you’re losing a lot of potential customers at the shipping method page.
Just keep your eyes peeled for cards or notifications in your Shopify store’s Home Feed.
Are You Ready To Take Your Ecommerce Business To The Next Level?
Not all business and e-commerce store owners are created equal.
Some simply want to get by, satisfied to keep the business running, and bring home the bacon. A different breed of business people, however, don’t stop when they get by. They’re always hungry and on the hunt for opportunities to grow their business.
The fact that you’re reading this means you belong to the second breed of business owners.
And we’ve taken a look at three ways to eliminate inefficiencies and boost profits:
- Partner with a global e-fulfillment warehouse so you spend less time on logistics.
- shipping labels straight from Shopify and schedule for a free home pick up.
- Analyze your checkout process to find bottlenecks and lower the free shipping threshold (as long as you stay profitable)
You have the tools, and now, you have the know-how to excel at Shopify order fulfillment.
So, are you ready to take your business to the next level?
Find out how to Automate your Shopify Order Fulfillment process with the Shopify + Floship Integration here!
E-commerce Service is the Floship Destiny, Get More Insight:
- Scaling Shopify – 3 Winning Tools to Skyrocket Your Store
- Can an Order Fulfillment Warehouse Reduce Your Overhead?
- Awesome! – Using a Kickstarter Campaign to Launch Your Brand
- Packaging Alternatives to Protect Your Product
Ready To Upgrade Your Logistic Solution?
Speak to Floship ecommerce logistic consultant about improving your global support chain today
