As today’s technology continually improves, many people are using the internet to do various daily tasks. For example, if you have a Wi-Fi or data connection in your house, you can easily shop and sell goods in a few easy steps. It is now already known as E-commerce (electric commerce), commerce – the buying and selling of goods – through the internet. That’s why nowadays, various online shopping businesses have been introduced to people. These online E-commerce businesses allow you to order a lot of goods from website stores. However, while many orders are received daily, the fulfillment which includes the receiving, packaging, and shipping; of the ordered goods is mostly the tricky part in online commerce.
Since E-commerce is widely considered by most people who want to start an online business, it is good to know the various ways to fulfill your online orders.
Here are 3 helpful ways to fulfill your orders
First is ‘Self-Fulfillment’, or also known as the ‘in-house order fulfillment’. Merchants typically do the fulfillment of online orders at home, which is the easiest place to start an online business. However, if the volume of orders increases, the merchants will face the cons of spending a huge amount of time packaging and shipping goods, which is a terrible way to start a business. This is because when you focus more on fulfillment, you tend to lose focus on more important things such as sales monitoring and advertising. Additional staff or manpower is needed, and the revenue also may be affected. Notice that self-fulfillment is practical only for those small online businesses.
The second option is ‘Third-Party fulfillment’. As the name implies, here, a third party is involved in the fulfillment of the ordered goods, such as packaging, controlling the quality of the goods, and shipping. As a result, profit will increase dramatically since the increasing volume of orders can be properly assessed. However, since the 3rd party fulfillment centers will be the one to deliver the product to the costumers, the satisfaction level of the costumers will depend on the delivery performance of the third party. (get more info)
The third way to fulfill the online order is called ‘Drop Shipping’. In this case, the manufacturer is the one who does most of the fulfillment process including the delivery of the ordered goods to the costumers. All the merchants need to do is to sync the products of the manufacturer to the store, which will help the merchant to focus on monitoring the sales. However, the quality of the product of the merchant’s store depends on what the manufacturer can offer.
Final Thoughts
After carefully considering the 3 ways to fulfill online orders – if you intend starting an online e-commerce business, it is important to choose fulfillment methods that are more practical.
Establishing an online business takes a huge amount of effort and careful planning. Also carefully consider that whatever method you choose, your costumers will always depend on the quality of the products, the speed of delivery, and easy access when there is a problem. If you achieved these steps to the fullest, the success of your business is just a click away!