Global e-commerce sales are predicted to double in less than five years, accounting for 25% of total sector income. This prediction is a major source of concern for established traditional retailers. In most cases, the fastest-growing channel is also the least lucrative, because its features are popularised by marketplaces and digital natives such as same-day delivery, long-tail product selection, and hassle-free returns that tend to take away their increasingly thin margin amounts. Nonetheless, an opportunity remains.
AWL India enables businesses to change from one channel to another and understand market share, growth projections, and consumer loyalties. AWL India offers retailers a chance to win over new customers and grow their share of the market with existing customers when consumers decide to re-evaluate their purchasing alternatives. Opportunities exist for high-growth e-commerce firms, but determining how to expand for profitability can be challenging at times. Having difficulty in e-commerce fulfilment is usually due to the use of improved fulfilment operations and real-time, data-driven insights to offset logistical costs.
Key Points For E-commerce Fulfilment
Here are four critical points that can help you to optimise your e-commerce business and achieve scaled profitability. The four major key points that you should know for e-commerce fulfilment are as follows:
1. Balancing The Fulfilment Cost
Balancing the fulfilment cost is the most crucial factor in any e-commerce business. In any business, the fulfilment costs are proportional to the average order value (AOV). These expenses include every cent that is spent to fulfil an order. These expenses include choosing, packaging, managing, and shipping goods. Out of all these expenses transporting or shipping goods from one place to another is the most expensive. In fact, for every $100 purchased online, firms spend $20 on fulfilment and logistics, the majority of which is spent on shipping. Therefore, fulfilment expenses can make up to 20% of an e-commerce brand's income.
AWL India enables your e-commerce business to maintain the ideal ratio between fulfilment costs and AOV to be no more than 20%. Anything more is unsustainable in the long run since it reduces margins. AWL India is also the leading third party logistics provider which optimises fulfilment processes, storing and transporting of goods closer to the consumer to decrease both shipping costs and time to delivery, to strike the ideal balance. Moreover, a linked distributed fulfilment network that provides inventory allocation and network optimization data helps in balancing the fulfilment cost. This in turn helps in creating a balanced ratio between AOV and fulfilment costs that is beneficial for your business.
2. Ensure Customer Satisfaction
Ensuring the utmost customer satisfaction can depend on a number of factors. How long it takes for an item to arrive at a client's door once they click purchase, can be one of those factors. Similarly, it is important to know how you can assure optimal and cost-effective deliveries when your client base increases. According to research, more than 90% of consumers consider two or three days to be the standard delivery time for an order. However, having a long delivery window that might be inadequately communicated to the customer, results in the loss of customers and income levels.
AWL India enables the business to have multiple warehousing locations which ensures smooth deliveries across the globe, resulting in higher customer satisfaction levels. With AWL India’s flexible, dispersed fulfilment network you can optimise inventory depending on regional demand, determining the shortest, cheapest shipping distance and communicating the expected time in transit to consumers more precisely. This helps in having a better relationship and communication with the customer which leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction.
3. Understanding SKU Affinity For Better Fulfillment
Being in the e-commerce industry, it can be crucial to understand which products sell together to make appropriate allocations. Having difficulties with SKU management is a common phenomenon today and to overcome this challenge AWL India provides SKU optimisation for better ecommerce fulfillment services. Companies can benefit from SKU affinity and determine which goods are performing well and which are not. Moreover, companies can also have an idea of which products usually sell together and other customer buying patterns that can assist in making inventory management decisions accordingly.
This can also help in reducing storage expenses and maximising the brand's profit ratios at the same time. AWL India uses IoT and provides a thorough examination of product-level performance parameters across sales channels. It contains product-level information on SKU activity, typical fulfilment and shipping costs, and transit times. Companies can further use this information to determine methods to reach profitability. These methods include allocating inventory for quick fulfillment services and optimising transportation and fulfilment costs. Similarly, not being able to allocate inventory or having an idea of your inventory levels can be extremely harmful to your business. AWL India bridges this gap for your business by understanding the SKU affinity enables you to conduct your business operations efficiently for better fulfilment.
4. Increasing Customer Retention & Repurchases
Customer retention is one of the most crucial aspects of the e-commerce business. If you are planning to expand your e-commerce business then Client Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) are the most important factors that you should consider. Understanding customer behaviors and trends help decide product offers across channels and anticipate LTV more accurately. Loyal customers, on the other hand, are a brand's most genuine supporters. However, having a terrible fulfilment experience can turn a consumer off before they have ever opened the goods.
Regardless of where an order was made, AWL India ensures the same level of quality and dedication throughout the checkout, communication, and delivery processes. Companies must find a way to deliver products to customers' doorstep as fast and effectively as possible in order to retain their customers. AWL India ensures consistent e-commerce fulfilment offerings across sales channels which is critical for delivering on customer expectations. Also, customer retention can be extremely beneficial for your business enterprise and can help in maximizing the profits of your business. However, you need to make sure that you are able to provide customer satisfaction with your business operation to increase your customer retention ratio and simultaneously increase your profit levels.
Conclusion
These are some of the key points for e-commerce fulfilment. Moreover, outsourcing to an external e-commerce fulfilment company can enable your business to have time for branding, product designing, customer support, and carrying out other business operations. In case you are considering outsourcing your e-commerce fulfilment to a 3PL, it is important that you stay firm with your decision to keep a long-term business relationship with your fulfilment company. Also, it is important for effective order processing that these key points should be kept in mind.
Moreover, AWL India can be an extremely beneficial e-commerce fulfilment provider for your business. Apart from that, these are some of the important key points for e-commerce fulfilment that every business should be aware of to overcome the challenges in business operations. AWL India takes care of all of these key points in their business operations to ensure successful e-commerce fulfilment for your customers. Moreover, we at AWL India ensure smooth business operations that help in providing optimum customer satisfaction levels and increasing profit margins.
Lovely Mehra
Corporate Communications Specialist