Shopping online has become incredibly common, especially over the last year of lockdowns, meaning that owning an eCommerce business can be more lucrative than ever. People who own eCommerce businesses need to make sure that their delivery offering is the best it can possibly be so you can best meet your customers’ needs. Here are some top tips to make sure your delivery impresses your clients and keeps your business as successful as possible.
DEVELOP A FULFILLMENT TEAM
When you start any eCommerce business, you probably know that you need to have a marketing team, a web design team, and a content development team to help you be successful. As well as all these teams, you will also need an order fulfillment team to keep things running smoothly as well.
Your fulfillment team is the one who will make sure that all your orders are picked correctly, packed securely, and shipped to customers on time. Decide if you’re going to use an outside delivery company or will be handling deliveries yourself. Make sure your fulfillment team up to speed on all your different shipping options. If you’re going to handle your own shipping, get the best delivery vehicles. Click here for a great option.
DEVELOP FLAWLESS CUSTOMER SUPPORT POLICIES
You’re also going to need a great customer support team. Your customer support team will handle any of your customers who have any questions, concerns, or complaints.
When you start fulfilling orders, you should be prepared for some issues to occur. Sometimes, no matter how careful you are, packages can go missing, get lost, get stolen, get damaged during shipping, or sometimes it might be that your customers just aren’t happy with their order after all.
In order to earn and maintain a trustworthy and reliable reputation for your business, you will need good customer support policies for these situations. If somebody has a bad experience with you, you need to fix the damage as soon as you possibly can. This could be by replacing a damaged or lost product or letting them return an unwanted product easily for an exchange or a refund.
FOCUS ON THE USERS
When you start your business, your focus will probably be on selling as many products as you can. This can be a mistake. Of course, you want to make a profit and sell products, but this should come as a side effect of meeting the needs of your customers.
Think about what your customers want. Some of the most common things people like in an eCommerce business include free shipping, sturdy packaging, and fast delivery. If you can offer these things in your shipping policy in a way that is cost-effective for your business, you’ll be on the right track to get more orders.
OFFER MULTIPLE DELIVER OPTIONS
Free delivery normally takes longer, but some people are perfectly happy to wait if it means that they get free delivery. Fast or next-day delivery will normally be more expensive, but some people are happy to pay for the convenience.
You have these two kinds of customers, so you should offer at least two delivery options to suit these kinds of people: fast delivery and free delivery. Offer these at different prices to make them cost-effective for you.
DON’T RELY ON JUST ONE COURIER OR DELIVERY SERVICE
Your current parcel delivery offering might be working well for you, but it’s always worth having some backup options ready to go too, just in case your usual courier company puts their prices up or changes their size limits on the parcels they will deliver.
It’s well worth doing some research into what delivery services your customers use the most often so you know what they like. Are your products things that most people will want to have the next day and are willing to pay more for fast delivery for. Is cost the most important factor to your customers, and would they be happy to wait longer for a more affordable delivery?
DROP OFF OR COLLECTION. WHICH WORKS BEST FOR YOU?
Do you spend hours queuing in the Post Office? Would it be simpler to have your parcels collected from your warehouse instead? Would it be easier if you could drop them off at different times?
A lot of courier companies have local drop-off points where you can leave your parcels for delivery. Once you have found a drop-off point near you, if you know you will be sending parcels out on a regular basis, it can be worth getting to know the staff who work there and find out what time parcels are usually collected by the courier.
In most cases, the earlier you are able to drop off your parcels, the quicker they will be collected and the faster they will be delivered. If you want to have your parcels collected from your premises instead, there’s a lot of choice for courier for this too. Collection times can be as early as 8 am or as late as 8 pm, so make sure you choose a collection address that is accessible during these hours.
CHECK IF YOU QUALIFY FOR DISCOUNTED BUSINESS PARCEL DELIVERY RATES
A lot of courier companies offer cheaper delivery rates for businesses that send out a lot of parcels, often by setting up a business account with the courier.
However, these discounted business parcel delivery rates are often only available to people who ship hundreds, if not thousands, of parcels a year, so a lot of startups or small businesses can’t meet these requirements and will have to continue to pay for standard shipping.
The good news for smaller businesses and sole traders who don’t qualify is that some parcel comparison websites have negotiated discounted shipping rates that anyone can use. Some of these have no minimum spend or sending volume. It’s well worth having a good look around for comparison sites that are able to do this to keep your shipping costs affordable while your business is still growing.
Photo Credit: Newspress
