returns management service

Many people think fast shipping depends on the newest shipping technologies. While this plays a significant role, Market America | SHOP.COM also focuses a good percentage of their resources on updating warehouse processing technologies — because efficient processing is just as important as fast delivery times.

It definitely poses a major logistical challenge. It’s still fairly new and retailers are still figuring out how to do it all to serve the greatest amount of customers: BOPIS, same day delivery, and ship-from-store.

I was just imagining if cash was being introduced as a payment type. Would we be asking ourselves if we’re asking too much of stores to collect money, put purchases in bags or boxes and remove security tags too? There is no reason to abandon ship-from-store, but there’s no reason to perpetuate forecast errors either.

For combating the issues listed above, it all comes down to sharing real-time updates with customers. Customers are generally understanding when it comes to delivery delays or issues — as long as they’re informed. Failure to communicate issues to customers could cost them to go elsewhere: 69.7% of shoppers said they’d be less likely to shop with a retailer who fails to inform customers of delays or issues. And 12.5% would never shop with that retailer again.

There are a number of factors to consider when determining your shipping process. These factors include More than half of consumers are willing to pay more for expedited shipping services such as overnight or same-day delivery. Offering consumers a variety of shipping options helps to increase the likelihood that they’ll purchase an item instead of letting it sit in their shopping cart. Some of the most popular shipping services are:

Of course, we all know that not every order will come with free shipping. Yet, online shoppers find limited reasons to pay for free shipping. Thus these online shopper reasons are instructive and can help retailers know when these fees are deemed acceptable among the online community. Simply wanting the product is highest on the list for 41% of respondents. 32% look at the cost of the order and, if palatable, will pull the trigger. Knowing they can’t meet the threshold in the cart was a factor for 26%. In the same vein, 19% paid for shipping when receiving a product discount greater than shipping. And let’s face it, with private label products, there may only be one choice for buying a product. Lastly, fast matters and 18% of those surveyed wanted same-day delivery.

With time in transit so important, where you ship from matters, too. Shipping from points as close as possible to customers cuts down on the amount of time it takes to deliver packages. It also enables lower-cost service levels to be used to realize a similar transit time. For example, a Zone 2 package shipped UPS Ground will deliver next day. This makes sending the same package Overnight Express at a much higher rate unnecessary. An obvious example, but there are surprisingly few shippers with the ability to make such carrier routing decisions on the fly within their shipping operation.

A leader in the 3PL industry, RSL currently offers cost-saving order fulfillment, including pick/pack and ship, kitting, returns, and freight services. In today's competitive eCommerce business vertical, shipping can add significant costs to doing business. That's why RSL's Xparcel Priority is designed to offer eCommerce retailers a method of both lowering their shipping costs—and increasing the speed—of delivering products to customers.