Order fulfillment is a concept where a customer goes through with the entirety of the purchase, without backing out at any point in the process. Needless to say, improving it may give you a chance to boost your income, thus making your business, overall, more effective. The simplest way to improve the e-commerce order fulfillment rate is to examine the shopping cart abandonment rate and look for the reasons why people back out of orders without making a purchase. Here are five reliable methods that you should try.
1. Some people are “just looking”
The concept of the customer lifecycle is the idea that not everyone is ready to become a customer right away. Before this can happen, a lot of people need to spend some time interacting with your brand. To put this into a real-life perspective, you need to understand that there are a lot of people who are “just looking” what you have to offer or are trying to compare prices. There is literally nothing you can do here, seeing as how it’s an integral part of most people’s shopping process. In fact, as much as 34 percent of all shopping cart abandonment is attributed to this scenario, which is why you definitely shouldn’t get discouraged by it.
Luckily, there is a solution. Expertly crafted abandoned cart email might just work for people who are on the fence.
2. In-store purchases
Another factor that you need to consider is the fact that, if you have a brick and mortar store, some people might just be doing their research in order to make a purchase in-person. In fact, as much as 78 percent of local mobile searches eventually become offline purchases. In other words, not all of shopping cart abandonment is a customer abandonment, still, if you aim to increase online sales, you might want to give special discounts or benefits for those purchasing online. However, keep in mind that this kind of incentivizing might end up hurting your profits. Just remember that it’s your bottom line that matters the most, regardless of where the sales come from.
3. Reduce your shipping costs
Another major reason why people are backing out of the deal is the shipping cost. You see, the cost of an item is something that they’re already anticipating, which means that they’ve already made some room in the budget for the order. The shipping cost might be the tipping point, seeing as how it may exceed the budget. Now, the cost of delivery is what it is, but there are several ways you can trim the price. For instance, you could find a specialized delivery service like JMIT distributors, in order to reduce the overall cost of delivery on your part. This would allow you to reduce the shipping cost while still remaining profitable.
4. Improve your e-store
Another reason why a lot of people don’t buy from the store is due to various technical issues. If your e-commerce website is non-responsive, has a lot of lag or it’s not optimized for different devices, chances are that a lot of people won’t feel comfortable purchasing via it. Therefore, in order to improve your e-commerce order fulfillment, you need to improve your e-store. Moreover, you might want to consider making your checkout process a lot simpler. One way to do so is to eliminate the need for registration. By offering your customers to send a receipt via an email, you can still acquire some vital information, even without forcing them to register, which will allow you to kill two birds with one stone.
5. Introduce more payment options
Finally, we come to the topic of payment options and the lack of some of the major ones might make some customers back out. Think about it, if you don’t have their preferred payment method, they’re more likely to find the item in question on another e-commerce website, rather than applying for a new credit card. Sure, you can’t include every single payment method out there but there are several things that you absolutely have to include. Visa and MasterCard, PayPal, American Express cards, bank transfer, and direct debits should be a bare minimum.
Conclusion
All in all, the first thing you need to do is learn how to understand the factors that you can’t affect. Keep in mind that not all of your shopping cart abandonment is due to something you’re not doing or something you’re not doing right.
Second, try to improve your logistics so that you can reduce costs and provide a much better service.
Finally, try to take a more holistic approach to this scenario and develop a strategy that will work for you in the long-run instead of giving you a temporary boost in sales.
