Every eCommerce manager knows that optimizing the shipping management of their eCommerce is key to reducing costs, increasing conversions, and-above all-increasing customer loyalty.
In fact, it happens more often than you might think that a logistics problem causes a loss of customer trust in the brand. Why does it happen? Because the only moment of physical contact between an eShopper and the brand from which he or she made an online purchase is when the package is delivered.
Therefore, the logistics service you choose to rely on will be the one with which your customer will associate your image, reliability, and level of service. In other words, your brand reputation has a lot to do with your shipping management.
Why optimize shipment management
1. Seventy percent of online shopping cart checkout abandonments are related to logistical reasons. This means the logistics service you entrust your online store to directs consumers’ shopping choices in a major way. A good logistics service can earn you an extra customer. A bad logistics service will definitely cost you one less customer.
Interested in all the reasons why users abandon at checkout? Read this article.
2. Optimizing shipping management allows you to reduce costs for your eCommerce, a factor that also has a direct impact on sales prices and thus can guide consumer choices. In addition, by reducing the operational burdens associated with logistics, you can invest in your business development and further improve your competitiveness in the market.
3. On average, European consumers expect to receive their goods within an estimated maximum time of 16, 11 hours. Optimizing shipping management also means making one’s deliveries faster thus meeting the increasingly demanding demands of eShoppers. In fact, 55 percent of consumers say they are ready to switch brands for faster delivery services.
4. Managing your shipping processes allows you to reduce the likelihood of errors that could jeopardize your brand’s reputation; not to mention that errors and emergencies also have an impact in economic and reputational terms. Knowing that your logistics is optimally managed gives you peace of mind that you can focus on other aspects critical to your business, and your customers confidence in your brand.
Here’s why optimizing shipping management can make a real difference for your online store.
But what are some ways to achieve more efficient shipments by reducing delivery times?
Here are five practical tips for optimizing your online store’s shipping management by making it faster.
How to optimize shipment management
1. Ensure that the shipment master file contains complete and correct information
The first good practice for managing shipments in the most efficient way is to verify that all information about the package to be delivered and the delivery address is clear and accurate.
To avoid problems during delivery, and therefore that the shipment fails, the information entered by the customer in the shipment master must therefore be complete and correct.
In fact, imagine what would happen if due to a simple typo or error in the delivery address the courier could not find your customer’s address and the package was not delivered. In addition to extending the delivery time, this situation represents a cost to your eCommerce.
The solution may be to integrate software to your online store that allows you to verify and validate the information entered by the customer during checkout, preventing you from proceeding with order confirmation if any of this information is inaccurate or incorrect.
Here are some of the solutions you can choose from:
- Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding. These tools allow coordinates to be converted into an accurate address, thereby avoiding misspellings and ensuring the validity of addresses. In this way, addresses entered by users can be verified and standardized, reducing the margin of error.
- Postal Services API. Many mailing service providers provide APIs that allow users to verify the validity of entered addresses and obtain accurate rates based on location and real-time delivery times.
- Address verification software. There are several third-party services that offer software that can verify the validity and existence of an address, sometimes automatically correcting any errors and providing users with suggestions to improve the completeness and accuracy of the information.
All of these tools will enable you to reduce errors, improve efficiency, and ensure that shipments arrive at their destination.
Here are also some of the main providers of such services: Google Maps API, UPS Adress Validation, FedEx Address Validation, Here Location Services, SmartySreeets.
2. Be prepared for the Peak season
In order to optimize shipments by making them faster and more efficient, it is essential to get organized and not to be found unprepared, especially during peak sales periods, such as Christmas, sales or Black Friday, when the number of orders increases and order fulfillment must be organized as best as possible to avoid delays.
To avoid finding yourself without your most in-demand products, thus having to deal with customers dissatisfied with the waiting time for goods, analyze your eCommerce’s historical data to understand how best to manage inventory and prepare for peak periods.
Once you have identified your best sellers, or the products you expect to sell the most, increase your inventory for each.
For example, if you sold 30 percent more of a product on your online store last year during Black Friday, already increase your inventory of the same product by 30 percent.
Ex. 500 pcs in stock + 30% (150 pcs) = 650 pcs in stock for the Peak season
In addition, you can start packing some products in advance, perhaps the very products you expect to sell the most and the fastest, so that they are ready when you need them, so that you can optimize your order handling and reduce your customers’ waiting time.
3. Diversify your logistics partners
The courier to whom you entrust your shipments is not only the operator who allows your goods to arrive at their destination, but is also the person your customers will come into contact with when picking up their order in the case of a home delivery. In other words, if something goes wrong at the delivery stage it will primarily affect your brand.
Your brand reputation therefore depends on the choice of your logistics partners.
For this reason, it is a good idea not to rely on just one courier company to handle your shipments, because should any problem occur with that one logistics provider, you would end up with an eCommerce that is unable to fulfill orders. The consequences, needless to say, could be catastrophic.
Here are some of the couriers that operate throughout Italy that you can rely on for your shipments:
- Poste Italiane
- DHL Express
- BRT
- SDA
- GLS
- TNT (ora parte di FedEx)
Activating multiple couriers or local couriers on specific locations will then allow you to manage your logistics more efficiently and with greater peace of mind.
4. Offer an alternative to your customers
Traditional Home Delivery has several disadvantages that are difficult to solve.
First of all, delivering millions of packages to millions of different addresses is definitely not the fastest and most efficient method. As a result, home delivery is generally more costly and slower.
Second, home delivery inevitably depends on the customers’ willingness to be at home for package delivery. A customer might then choose to still purchase a product despite knowing that he or she may not be at home at the time of delivery (consequently, a non-delivery and related delivery management problems are generated) or, even worse, you might lose a sale because the customer chooses not to risk not being able to pick up the order.
There is only one solution: offer your customers a more flexible, cheaper, faster and, why not, more sustainable alternative to choose from.
With GEL Proximity, you can offer your customers, free of charge, the ability to pick up their orders online at more than 125,000 Pickup Points and Lockers already operating throughout the country and internationally.
Your customers can then choose where and when to pick up their order with maximum freedom and flexibility.
For your part, in addition to improving your customers’ shopping experience, you can forget about all the problems related to missed deliveries and the return of orders that were not delivered to the recipient, since Out Of Home deliveries are always 100% guaranteed on the first attempt (which is why OOH deliveries are also more sustainable than traditional Home delivery).
Scroll more about our services.
5. Generate value through returns
It sounds unbelievable but it’s true: even returns can be a value to your eCommerce. How? By offering a reverse logistics service that lives up to your customers’ expectations.
Here are some useful tips to follow:
- Make sure your return policy is clear. When making an online purchase, customers need to know from before the purchase that if there is any problem they can easily return the order. A clear and precise return policy protects your online store and reassures your customers, consequently increasing conversions.
- Offer all relevant directions for making returns. Your customers should be able to easily find all the directions they need to make a return-as-needed-quickly and conveniently. For example, you can create a special returns section on your website, or a faq section where they can find all the answers to doubts about returns; or you can include the necessary return label and an instruction sheet within the order. In this way your store will win the trust of consumers, generating a higher probability of a new conversion, that is, a new purchase, in the future.
- Automate and centralize return requests. GEL Proximity’s dedicated returns portal Proximity is a no-brand portal that is activated without eCommerce integration, is autonomous and multichannel. The customer auto-fills in the necessary data to proceed with the return, and from this point on you choose whether to automatically accept all return requests, or with a single click choose which ones to accept or not. The return label will be generated automatically and sent to the customer who can proceed with the return. Thanks to this no-cost solution you will thus be able to optimize your return handling time while simplifying the whole process for your customers as well.
Activate GEL Proximity’s dedicated returns portal now. Book a demo with us.
