Time-Saving Methods You Can Use to Decrease Order Fulfillment Hours at Your Ecommerce Store


If you run an online store and you are experiencing growth, it is a very exciting prospect. Watching your hard work and efforts pay off with sweet dividends is always a rewarding experience. The one downside is that your online store is only going to be able to grow so long as you are able to manage your order and fulfillment expeditiously. Many store owners realize this after the fact, when they are already getting so many orders each day that they struggle to fulfill them all in a timely manner, thus delaying the shipments, much to their frustration of their customers. Fortunately, there are some methods that you can use to decrease the amount of time that your order and fulfillment and pack and ship process takes you, so you can get more orders out the door and shipped, and so you can grow your business successfully.

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Identify Weaknesses in Your Current System
The very first step that you are going to want to take is by analyzing your current strategy. Start off with assessing your pack and ship workstation. How effective is it for fulfilling orders? Are you using a two-system method for your packing lists and labels? Many shopkeepers fail to realize that they can use an integrated label printing system for shipments that can reduce the two-system method to one system instead. Imagine if your shipping labels, packing lists and slide-in comment cards were all printed together, so you could pull and pack orders faster and more accurately. You can imagine how this would save you time and help you avoid costly shipping errors.

Organize Your Pack & Ship Station
How organized is your pack and ship station? If you don’t have things neatly arranged and in a synchronous order, you could be spending too much time fulfilling your outbound shipments. Make sure you assess how easy things are to use in your workstation. Assure that you keep a handy inventory list for when the reordering of key packaging materials is necessary. Doing so is a progressive measure that will allow you to be certain that you are never without the tools and materials that you need to ship out packages efficiently to your customers.

Manage Your Inventory More Efficiently
Your inventory is your lifeblood as an online store. How you manage that inventory will be essential in you avoiding posting “out-of-stocks” and with you attracting new customers to your online store. Consider integrating a software solution for order management such as that which is offered by OrderMotion and others. These solutions can work across multiple ecommerce channels, updating your stocks in real-time as the units are sold, so you can avoid losing sales ever again. What’s more is that they will alert you when key inventory items are low, so you can reorder before your stock is fully depleted.

Rely Upon Fulfillment Software to Create Better Logistics
Newer software solutions are designed to streamline your pack and ship process. They can drastically reduce the necessary man hours required to get your orders out the door efficiently and accurately. Look into software solutions that offer enterprise-grade level shipping options, ones that don’t mandate that you use only an expensive thermal printer to get your shipping labels printed (newer solutions utilize all-in-one label printing systems that can enable you to print inkjet shipping labels from most standard printers). Using innovative software such as this, you can speed up your fulfillment process and be able to send out more orders each day, enabling you to match your growth and enjoy your hard earned successes.