Effective Shipping Management for Your Online Store
It is clear now that most of the business that is happening now in terms of buying and selling is happening online, with e-commerce being on the up and up, especially given the benefits that are there to be had as far as it is concerned. This is why we are seeing more businesses setting up online stores, a trend that as far as the experts over at mtglion.com are concerned is set to continue. One of the most important things as far as online stores are concerned has to do with shipping management, something which can make or break your business depending on how it is handled. If you handle it badly, it may end up having the effect of making your customers extremely unhappy which will spell doom for your online store. It is therefore important to know how to effectively handle shipping management for your online store, whether you are running basic or more advanced shipping management. This is done with the help of software that are available to handle shipping more effectively, accurately and in a cost saving manner. This article will look to delve into the matter of effective shipping management, with the aim of helping you get it right for your online store.
We will first take a look at the customer facing end as far as shipping management for your online store is concerned. One of the key things here you need to get right is when it comes to the charging process as far as your customers are concerned. For effective shipping management, you should ensure that all the shipping options for your online store are clearly and accurately displayed and that there are no surprise fees that one doesn’t know of. It is also advisable as far as front-end shipping is concerned that you offer free shipping if you can and cover the cost by either slightly raising the prices or getting less profit, as is discussed over at mtglion.com. You should also ensure that the shipping doesn’t take too long and you can even offer a paying option whereby customers can be able to get their goods much quicker by paying for the service as compared to those taking up the free shipping option. If you decide to do this then you will need to make use of front-end software such as ShipperHQ that will enable to configure the various options as far as shipping is concerned, which will definitely help you in your quest for effective shipping management for your online store.
Moving away from the front-end, the next area as far as shipping goes that needs to be taken care of for effective shipping management is the one that has to do with order fulfilment and returns. This involves better handling the costs that come with shipping as well as ensuring that you make better use of time for you and your team, so that you don’t end up losing money and reducing profitability. This, as is covered over at mtglion.com, involves better logistics management which involves the effective and timely handling of shipping order fulfilment and returns. One of the strategies recommended here is ensuring you have a system for processing returns with a software such as ShipStation coming highly recommended as it will also help in the creating and printing of packing sheets, invoices, emails, box inserts which serve as marketing materials among others. For those using big commerce carts, they can make use of the built-in return processing systems and as such may not have to make us of software. For effective shipping management it is recommended that you have a system in place that will not only give immediate instructions as far as returns are concerned, it will also print labels such as return labels.
Another thing that you need to ensure you do when looking to effectively manage shipping for your online store is ensuring that you have a system in place that manages shipping for all your sales channels, encompassing all your website stores as well as all marketplace stores such as eBay, Amazon, Walmart among others. Bringing all of them under one roof as it were will enable you be able to fulfil orders easily as well as helping with tracking, as is discussed over at mtglion.com. This will also help you in saving money and as such increasing profitability for your store. For effective shipping management, it is also important that you incorporate systems that have features that will provide a great customer service experience. Such features include such things as barcode scanning which all not only help in shipping management, but also helps build trust with customers as well as giving them an excellent user experience.
It is our hope that this article will help you in more effective shipping management for your online store, with more on this and other topics to be found over at mtglion.com.