Having a smooth Shopify order fulfillment process is essential to running your eCommerce website. This is the process that happens after a customer places an order. It involves preparing the items and getting them delivered efficiently.
Knowing how to improve your order processing method can be challenging. So,we have gathered for you, the top 6 tips to help you improve your Shopify order fulfillment cycle. From processing orders to managing inventory. We even show you how, EasyScan, can streamline this process for you, to make it easy, fast and efficient.
Read on to find out more about how to fulfill orders on Shopify successfully!
How to Improve Your Shopify Order Fulfillment Cycle?
If you’re thinking about how to improve the way you process orders, knowing what you’re working with is important. You need insights into how it currently works to figure out how it can be made better.
1. Track The Metrics Of Your Order Completion Process
One way to understand your Shopify order processing is to track metrics. Collecting data on your orders and overall website’s performance gives you a lot of insights. This gives you an overview of the trends, audience type, possible delays from your warehouse and mistakes which might be happening.
It is important to be aware of the data related to your online store. This will help you make decisions that are more accurate, efficient, and impactful for your eCommerce.
What is the cost of your order processing workflow? And how many errors are typically made per month?
Monitor Your Order Fulfillment Time
The most important metric for your eCommerce business is the order fulfillment cycle time. It’s not unheard of for the cycle to take more than a week from order to delivery.
You might not be able to process orders as quickly as the likes of Amazon. However, getting the cycle time down is important.
The best way to do so is to analyze how your business handles everything from the moment the order is placed to when it is delivered.
Think about things such as: what delivery window time do you promise to customers? How many orders arrive on time, do you experience delays? How long does it take to get the order ready to be shipped?
Look at How Your Orders are Being Picked
Realistically, how long does it take from the moment the customer orders to the moment he receives the product?
Take into consideration the time it takes your employees to gather all the products and pack the parcel before sending. Is it the most efficient process? Do you have a clear view of your stock and how it is organized in the warehouse?
We must examine these questions. The outcome could cause extra expenses, poor customer service, a bad reputation, and fewer customers for your business.
2. Organize Your Warehouse To Speed Up Fulfillment
It is essential to have a well-stocked, neat, and easy-to-navigate warehouse for your stock. Having an organized warehouse can make all the difference when figuring out how to improve your order fulfillment process.
Manage Your Shopify Inventory Accurately
Part of having an organized warehouse is accurately managing your inventory. Poor stock management can lead to customers receiving the wrong stock.
This is very frustrating for the customer. Additionally, they may have to wait for the stock to arrive. Which does not provide the best customer experience.
Knowing what you have in stock when and synchronizing stock levels is a fundamental part of the Shopify order fulfillment.
This is where EasyScan comes in, with its order processing software. Our app takes a lot of the hard work of inventory, checking out of the process for you.
By using EasyScan to generate barcodes or SKUs for your products, you can check and update your inventory. Simply use a barcode scanner or smart device and the click of a button.
This allows you to manage all of your inventory easily, whether at one warehouse or across multiple locations. EasyScan is a great way to manage your stock automatically and streamline your Shopify order processing cycle.
Display your warehouse stock efficiently
EasyScan is here to help you manage your inventory and keep track of your stock. It is also paramount to have a warehouse where each product has their place.
Make sure that the items of your stock are organized by categories, sub categories etc. This will help your employees to be sure to find the products to fulfill the orders as fast as possible. And as a result to be more productive.
3. Automate Your Order Process
Automate your order process with technology.
EasyScan is like an inventory management software, it can help manage your stock. Another way to improve Shopify's order processing system is to automate the process. Processing orders manually can slow down your order fulfillment cycle massively. By taking out some or all of this manual decision-making, you can smooth out the whole process.
EasyScan can assist with the switch to a more automated order process. Through our app, you can automatically generate and fulfill orders using a barcode scanner, tablet, or smartphone. This can be integrated into in-person sales or warehouse operations to instantly add products to your orders.
Through this, and our EasyGift app too, you can simply add discounts, payment, and any other information seamlessly. This small change can go a big way when working out how to optimize the way you manage order completions!
4. Stop Errors To Improve Order Fulfillment
With processing orders entirely manually, comes a lot of human errors. Decreasing the amount of mistakes is essential if you want your Shopify order fulfillment cycle to be efficient. By using EasyScan to generate barcodes, check inventory, create and process orders, you can minimize errors in your warehouse.
Organizing the warehouse is key to reducing errors. Knowing the duration, how long it takes you to process orders, helps too. Lastly, being able to track and update stock quickly also helps to eliminate mistakes.
Mistakes in the order processing cycle can be costly, especially to smaller businesses. This is why EasyScan is a great tool to eliminate errors and make your eCommerce business more efficient!
To help with managing your orders and stock efficiently, you can try our Shopify App, EasyScan, for free.
5. Build A Good Relationship With Suppliers
Technological improvements when thinking about how to make your order fulfillment process more effective, is very important. And so are relationships with your supplier.
This can again make a huge difference to your order processing cycle and impact your delivery times substantially. If you build a good relationship with your product suppliers, you are more likely to get the high-quality stock you need on time. This will help you fulfill orders quickly, and build a good relationship with your customers too.
When building a good relationship with your suppliers, there are a few important things to do. You must communicate with them consistently, be transparent about your business, and take responsibility equally when things go wrong.
EasyScan can also help make your communication more transparent. This tool can provide you with the latest information about your inventory and orders. This ensures that you have the correct data to present to your suppliers. Never underestimate the value of building strong and reliable business relationships in eCommerce!
6. Be Customer-Focused
Finally, being customer-focused is essential when improving your Shopify order fulfillment process.
It is important to think about your customer experience when optimizing your order processing system. Customer experience is key in gaining and retaining customers plus it plays a big part in your brand reputation.
So it is essential to look at ways to make the cycle more efficient. This is beneficial for both your business, and your customers who expect high-quality and reliable service.
Making sure that orders are filled as quickly and accurately as possible is a paramount to make your eCommerce website successful. Knowing why mistakes are being made, addressing the situation in house and changing processes is very important.
Something that can make a big difference is having a customer service team. Mistakes will happen, customers will change their mind etc. It is necessary to have a team in hand, able to listen to customer queries and to know how to quickly handle any mistakes, delays and complaints.
On top of this, ensuring you have an attractive returns policy in place will incentivize customers to purchase with the peace of mind that they can return items easily.
Now that you know how to master the order fulfillment cycle, have a look at our article where we tell you what the best promotions on Shopify are.
Note: You can also check out our amazing EasyGift app for solutions to offering automated promotions, discounts etc. to your customers on our Shopify Store.