E-commerce delivery is the process of making a product reach right at the doorsteps of a buyer. The process is the most important aspect of the entire e-commerce business and requires the highest amount of attention, assurance and effectiveness.
Right from the moment a customer hits the ‘Buy’ button, the process of delivering the goods begins. eCommerce businesses, employee shipping providers to enable the delivery of products up to the last miles.
E-commerce deliveries are done by enabling shipping companies to pick up goods from the warehouses or storage spaces of a business and then transporting it all the way via road, rail or air to the destination. With the growing popularity of online shopping, online delivery and shipping too, have seen a rapid rise.
In order to make the shopping experience of consumers faster and better, e-commerce businesses are always looking for the best shipping and delivery providers at the best prices possible. Even though you might just be starting out, having the option to ship in bulk helps your business grow and attract more customers due to the mere quality of providing them with efficient and quick deliveries.
Why is it Important to Choose the Best Shipping Partner?
For your business to thrive and not just survive, your immediate focus should be on the customer satisfaction factor and nothing satisfies a customer more than fast and easy deliveries.
And the key to doing that is by collaborating your business with a top-notch shipping provider that allows you a real-time analysis of the complete process right from order processing to the package in the hands of the customers.
The purpose behind choosing a right shipping partner is to restrict any kinds of late deliveries, bad deliveries or the worst ones, no deliveries!
Apart from making the delivery process full proof, onboarding a courier partner significantly reduces your overall cost of shipping which in turn is the next big thing to do.
To ensure that your business is reliable, efficient and cost-effective, you need to have a shipping provider that is well on board with your shipping strategies, which not only helps you run smooth operations, keeps your customers happy but also increases your overall profit.
Shipping strategies need dedicated teams from your organization to communicate regularly with the shipping providers and the other teams involved in the process.
How to Choose the Right Delivery Partner?
With the understanding of hiring a good and reliable shipping partner, having the knowledge of the parameters on which you need to measure them is also necessary.
Here are the top 5 deliverables you must look out for in a delivery partner.
1. Affordability
If your shipping costs more than what you are selling, there is no point of having such a shipping provider with you. An ideal delivery partner should be able to provide you with affordable pricing and package volume depending upon the type of products and services to be delivered.
The signing agreement should clearly talk about each and every packaging requirement you may have right from shipping volume, price points and delivery assistance you may possess.
Brands like Shiprocket, Delhivery, Shyplite can help you find out a well-balanced shipping plan which is neither too expensive nor too cheap and help you establish a smooth relation with your customer.
2. Speed of Delivery
The faster the delivery, the happier the customer!
This can be the biggest rule for any company to follow in order to scale up their eCommerce business and to achieve that, you need to make sure the delivery partners you have selected can do that for you
With the rapid increase in consumers all around the world in the eCommerce industry, making sure that the delivery and shipping process is hassle-free guarantees you a loyal customer base.
Be it essential or non-essential services, most consumers expect their products to be delivered either on the same day or the next, making businesses rely on hyper-local delivery and the assurance of last-mile deliveries which is becoming the biggest differentiating factor for delivery providers. Shadowfax is such a brand that enables all the above mentioned pointers to the greatest extent.
If you want to make a name for your brand faster than others, you need to onboard such shipping providers
3. Options of Payments
Your customers prefer various options available for them to make hassle-free payments and this is one of the pillars of customer experience, so ensuring that your e-commerce delivery partner has multiple payment options available is a must.
Although with the changing reality of things, people prefer to make advance payments, the majority of consumers still go for Cash on Deliveries or CODs because of the plain skepticism of whether their products will actually be delivered or not.
And so, having a COD option can do more good than you can think of, as it establishes the much-needed trust of your customers and also increases the order count due to easy payments.
Apart from CODs, having other payment options such as credit cards, debit cards, wallet and more are the basic requirements in the ever-growing e-commerce world today.
4. Geographical Extend
Not just hyperlocal but, national and international shipping should also be a part of your metrics when choosing a delivery partner.
Your business should not be restricted to only a certain extent and should always have the option to expand beyond borders.
Make sure to put this up front and have an e-commerce shipping provider that guarantees international shipping with proper warehousing, customs clearance support at the lowest possible prices along with no delays in the delivery.
5. Returns Management
The biggest pain area for all businesses in the management of returns. As returns are an integral part of every e-commerce business and at some point or the other you will have to deal with returns.
Returns happen due to a number of reasons some of which include size issues, quality issues, product resemblance to images shown online, defective or broken items being delivered, etc.
And when returns are in question, you cannot avoid the other factors involved such as refund, readjustments, repackaging, and re-delivery.
But on the bright side, if your business can manage these, the amount of customer satisfaction you will have will be unmatched and so hire a delivery partner who can help you manage the pickup, exchange and re-delivery of products with efficiency.
How Can It Help Improve Customer Satisfaction & Increase Your Profits?
Being confused whether to develop an in-house team to carry on the logistics operations or involve a drop shipment facility to do so or just hire a third-party logistics company to do all the work, is quite common and the one thing that can help you make the right choice is the experience you want your end customers to have.
And to converse that your customers have a satisfactory experience, hiring a third party logistics provider may be the best thing to do. Even if you are a growing business, handing over your shipping requirement to a third party logistics company can prove to be more fruitful.
Some of the biggest benefits of outsourcing to third parties include:
1. Saves extra cost and time
Hiring a third-party eCommerce shipping provider who picks, packs and delivers to your customers can cut back on storage and handling costs and increase delivery speed as taking care of logistics is their sole job, helping you establish a better reputation and worry about one thing less.
2. Ensures efficiency of shipping processes
Third-party shipping providers that allow integrations with warehouse management system providers should be on top of your list as they not only take care of your shipping but eliminate the cost of maintaining warehouses and enable complete efficiency right from picking the product at the warehouse to delivering it at your customers’ doorsteps.
3. Reduces dependency on manpower
When you do not have to set up a dedicated team to take care of your delivery operations, the cost to employees along with dependency on manpower decreases significantly.
All of these become the responsibilities of third party shipping providers post you onboard them. Getting people in on the team, maintaining their payrolls and cutting on jobs in times of difficulties are all to be managed by your shipping provider and not by you.
Read how businesses are growing with Unicommerce – How Unicommerce Enabled A Leading Fashion Brand to reduce order cancellations and returns?
4. Enables choices of short term tenures
A lot of third-party shipping providers work on a month-to-month basis which gives you the ease to not worry about paying a fixed amount even during the off or low seasons.
You can easily terminate the contract with a shipping provider in cases of lower sales and rehire them when things start to pick up.
This can be a huge factor when it comes to saving your earnings for longer periods of time.
5. Provides quicker business growth
When you have fewer things to worry about on a day to day basis, you can shift focus to other major areas of your eCommerce business.
With lower costs and saved time, you can build new strategies to promote your business, try and provide customers with a wider range of products, and enhance your customer engagement processes.
You can easily give time to developing and churning out relevant content that can keep your customers well informed, in turn exponentiating your growth.
Choose the Right Strategies by Onboarding an Integrated Solution Offers all the Services from a Single Platform
Making sure that every aspect of your eCommerce business is tackled with the best possible solutions is the biggest task for you and integrating with a solution that allows all the support right from a single panel can help you find the efficiency, profitability, and dependability required for your business to thrive.
Unicommerce has been serving over 20,000+ e-commerce businesses that integrate and manage their e-commerce deliveries with ease.
Brands, retailers, and sellers have found the perfect delivery partners and solutions with the help of Unicommerce to take care of the 360-degree process involved while being able to focus on growth and unit economics.
With 200+ global integrations & 30+ global logistics providers, including FedEx, DHL, Blue Dart, DTDC, Ecom Express, First Flight, Delhivery, Shyplite, Shiprocket, and more, the plug and play feature of Unicommerce enables quick, easy and hassle-free delivery services for your eCommerce business journey.