You need only take a quick look at the numbers to see how popular ecommerce has become, both with consumers and e-retailers.
Consumer ecommerce purchases eclipsed a trillion dollars in 2012 and are expected to grow in the healthy double-digits at least through 2017. (emarketer.com)
Meanwhile, the number of ecommerce businesses grows at a similar pace, posting a 13.5% increase bin 2013.
For ecommerce businesses old and new, there’s a major downside to all that online retail growth.
Increased sales and popularity means increased competition.
So how can your B2C product-based ecommerce business stay competitive in the face of explosive growth? By using the traditional ‘one, two’ punch for staying competitive in any business:
- Increase Sales – You need to get away from the day-to-day logistics of running your company and spend your time growing your business. In other words, you need to work on your business, not in it.
- Decrease Costs – While it’s easy to get into ecommerce, it’s not so easy to grow. As your business scales, keeping up with inventory, orders, packaging, shipping, returns, etc., can become a costly logistical nightmare.
How Third Party Fulfillment Services Gives Your Business the One-Two Punch
Too often, online businesses view the outsourcing of some or all of their logistics as an added cost. Instead, third party fulfillment services should be looked at as an opportunity to cut your logistics costs, free-up your time to work on your business and allow you to offer your customers a level of service you couldn’t do otherwise:
Promotion Services – From print and online marketing, to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs, third party promotional services give you ‘big company’ branding and advertising at a reasonable cost.
- Transaction Services – By taking advantage of up-to-date third-party online transaction services, you make it easier for customers to buy from you.
- Order Fulfillment & Tracking – Nothing loses a customer faster than a botched order. And nothing makes a customer more loyal than well delivered product and customer service.
- Care & Support – On a basic level, we are all in the same business: customer service. Regardless of how good the product you deliver is, if you don’t deliver top-notch customer care, support and warranty service, you’ll find it much more difficult to reach your goals.
- Warehousing – Maintaining inventory levels is rarely an easy job. Sometimes you just need a small space temporarily to be prepared for a ‘rush’, and other times you need ongoing, climate-controlled warehousing, shipping services and inventory tracking.
You can outsource some or all of your logistics services. Whatever you choose, do it for the right reasons: to stay ahead of your competition.