Part 4: Order Completion

By: Mike Catalfamo

Completing the order using an integrated solution involves updating the order on your E-Commerce site with the relevant shipping details such as the tracking number, shipment date, quantities shipped for each product. This typically triggers a few events on your E-Commerce site such as an email to the customer and release of payment into your bank account. Since this is relatively straightforward, let’s look at shipping in general.

Do Your Homework

It almost goes without saying that shipping is likely the most challenging part of running an E-Commerce site. Charge too much and you will lose customers since they will perceive you as unscrupulous, charge too little and you’ll go out of business. Contact several carriers to find out what they can offer you in terms of shipping and handling costs for your unique product and shop them around to other carriers.

Tip: Carrier’s websites have great tips on packing, preparing packing slips, shipping internationally, etc. Here are a few to get started but each site has a lot of good information and some have savings offers for small businesses right online.

USPS Tools
FedEx Tools for Small Businesses
UPS Business Solutions

Provide Options

Standard, express or overnight shipping is a common option but you could allow the customer to select between small carrier (UPS, FedEx, etc) and USPS or offer flexible delivery times. Regardless, be forthcoming about the expected delivery time. Everyone loves getting a package and will be anticipating its arrival so you want be as accurate as possible with your shipping time estimates to mitigate any customer inquiries to you or your customer service team.

Be Fair

It can be difficult to know exactly what shipping costs will be for a particular order, especially if it contains a combination of products that vary greatly in weight or size but you should do whatever you can to break even on your shipping costs. Customers will know if you’re gouging them on shipping and it’s a sure way to ruin your reputation.

Caution:
One thing to consider is the dimensional weight of an item which means that the product might not be very heavy but the irregular dimensions (defined and vary by carrier) means you could be paying a lot more for shipping than expected. One example that comes to mind would be a poster rolled in a tube; yes it’s light but it’s long and you could end up paying a premium because of the length since the carrier could say that the dimensional weight for the 1 pound tube is actually 15 pounds! If you need to charge extra shipping for a particular item, clearly say so on the product page, tell them how much extra and try to keep this extra charge as a separate line item throughout the checkout process. Transparency is key here. Better yet, offer free shipping whenever you can either as a promotion or on larger orders.

Ship the Order

Once you have shipped the order to your customer, eBridge completes the order processing loop by updating the order on your E-Commerce site with things such as the shipment date and tracking number. This information will be used by the E-Commerce site to:

• Trigger an email to the customer notifying them that the order was shipped
• Capture of funds from the Payment Gateway

For some detail on this process, see the post, “Credit Card Number Please!”.

Follow Up!

Your shipment email and the packing slip should have details about how they can contact you if there is a problem with the order or tell you how happy they are with your product or service. Be proactive about soliciting feedback and reward them for their time. Coupon codes for discounts or a free item on the next order are good options but be careful; often I’ll get a discount on my next purchase but most people recognize this as a thinly-veiled approach to getting you to spend more money with them. Even something small, with no strings attached can leave a good impression and the likelihood they will purchase from you again (or tell others about you) which is exactly what you want.

There are a lot of good resources on the web about shipping that go into much more detail than I have here. Here are a few links that are worth a look. What are your biggest shipping pains and what would you like an integrated solution help you do better?

Links
Shipping 101
15 eCommerce Shipping Best Practices
Shipping: Dimensional Weight Errors Can Cost Big Bucks

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Creating Orders Automatically
Part 3: Inventory Management
Part 4: Order Completion

Article by Mike Catalfamo

Mike Catalfamo has over 10 years' experience delivering integrated eCommerce and EDI solutions and is the Technical Sales Engineer at eBridge Software Inc. When not chasing around his toddler, a few of Mike's interests include playing music, photography, reading, practicing GTD and exploring ways to make the most of technology to integrate and automate information and systems.

Webstore Integration eCommerce, ecommerce integration, Knowledge, Mike C, Series