E-commerce exploded into a nine trillion-dollar global industry in 2019. And with the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are shopping online than ever before. This rise in e-commerce provides businesses with a huge opportunity to grow.
Growing e-commerce means more orders for your e-commerce company. If you don’t have a sound system in place to fulfill those orders, you could be missing out on business.
One way to manage your e-commerce sales as your business expands is to use a fulfillment center. A fulfillment center can help you manage inventory and ship faster at a lower cost.
Read on to learn how a fulfillment center works and how it can help grow your e-commerce business.
What Is a Fulfillment Center?
A fulfillment center is a large facility that stores the inventory for a business. The products in fulfillment centers aren’t there long. Most fulfillment centers ship products to customers or companies that buy them online.
You might hear a fulfillment center called a fulfillment warehouse because its functions are like warehouses. But, a fulfillment center has several advantages over a warehouse. They can provide more services specifically for an e-commerce company.
Receive and Store Inventory
Your e-commerce company can make or order products from your manufacturer and ship them right to the fulfillment center. The fulfillment center will then organize and shelf these products to make them accessible and easy to find when customers order.
The fulfillment center will also help keep track of how much inventory you have in stock. So, you’ll know when to order more so your customers won’t get that dreaded out-of-stock notification. And, you don’t have to buy your own warehouse to hold inventory.
Integrate With Your E-Commerce Software
Your e-commerce company probably has e-commerce software set up to process online orders. Fulfillment centers can often integrate their systems with your company’s software. This minimizing the delay in shipping orders to customers will boost your customer satisfaction.
Pick and Pack Orders
Fulfillment centers are organized and to help you ensure customers are getting the right product on time. Once an order is placed on your e-commerce site, their shipping professionals will check the order and package it safely. As a result, you will receive fewer claims of damaged or incorrect orders from customers.
Ship Products to Your Customers
Once orders are picked, packed, and labeled, the fulfillment center will hand them off to the carrier to be delivered to customers. Since fulfillment centers have such a high volume of packages to ship, they can negotiate with carriers to get a better shipping rate than your e-commerce business.
These lower rates create cost savings they can then pass on to your business. With these cost savings, you could start offering free shipping for your e-commerce orders. Free shipping can boost your sales because fewer customers will abandon their carts to avoid these fees.
Expand Your E-Commerce Business With a Fulfillment Center
Fulfillment centers are a cost-effective, customer-friendly way to outsource your shipping needs. As your business grows and must fulfill more e-commerce orders, a fulfillment center makes it easy to keep up with demand. You can set your business up for future success to make growing easy.
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