Author Archives: Donna Kutter

How to use Pay Per Click to Drive Traffic to your eCommerce Web Store

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If you’ve got an ecommerce store but are struggling with getting traffic and conversions, Dare Marketing has some tips for you in this easy to understand article on pay per click advertising.

What is Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click or PPC advertising is a mechanism where you display an advertisement online and pay the advertiser every time someone clicks on your ad.

Benefits of PPC Advertising

You only pay when someone clicks!

No more wasting money.  You only pay when someone clicks.  In comparison to buying a magazine ad, you pay per view.  Many people you are paying to view your ad have little or no interest in buying.

Better Quality Leads

Generally, you find you get better quality leads with PPC rather than any other type of advertising.  If people search for “Nike Shoes” and then click on your ad, you’re pretty much guaranteed that the person wants to buy “Nike Shoes”.

Tracking and Optimization

With many forms of  advertising it’s hard to track who saw it, how many saw it, how many turned into customers and what was the ROI.  With PPC this is easy.  Most PPC advertisers give you the ability to track views, clicks, conversions and sales dollars.  Making it easy t calculate ROI and invest in the best PPC ROI campaigns.

Common Misconceptions about PPC Advertising

My competitor will click on the ads and use up my budget.

This is a very common question that PPC advertisers have.  If this was possible it would make PPC pretty much useless.  That’s why PPC advertisers have the ability to filter out unwanted clicks.  Everyone connects to the internet through an IP address.  The PPC advertiser is able to determine the IP address of the person who clicked.  If you get 10 clicks from a single IP address, most PPC advertisers will not charge you for the clicks.

What do I have to do to get top listing?

While in organic Google searches being in the top 3 is what you’re going for, in PCC it’s not really that important.  Depending on your strategy, most people want to reduce their cost per click.  It’s expensive to be listed in the top 3 and you will pay more for your bids.  As long as you’re getting traffic, why do you care whether you’re on the top or #8?  If you can get 10 clicks at $1.00 in the top 3 or 20 clicks at $0.50, being in the 8th position, what would you rather have?  Traffic at the lowest cost!

Wow, $15.00 per click is expensive!

Most pay per click is an auction.  Other advertisers bid to have their ad shown instead of yours.  I’ve seen some cost per click as high as $30!  Keep in mind it’s not the cost per click, but the ROI that’s important.  Let’s take the example of a locksmith.  Cost per click is $15.  You might think that’s outrageous, but let’s look more closely.  Let’s say out of 10 clicks the locksmith gets 1 service call.  So that’s $150 cost per sale.  People are generally not Googling for locksmiths to do research, they look for locksmiths when they are locked out of their car or home.  So a $150 investment gets you a $300 service call.  Doubling your money!  Now how many $15 clicks do you want to buy?

Best Practise in PPC Advertising

Pick longtail keywords to bid on

For example “plumber” is pretty general and could searched for a number of reasons not leading to a sale.  Now consider “24-hour plumber”.  Someone searching for “24-hour plumber” has an emergency and needs a plumber!  You would want to bid higher for these types of keywords as they will convert better.

Don’t send people to your home page

I see so many PPC advertisers sending the clicks to their home page.  This is not best practise.  If you are a shoe store selling red shoes, when someone clicks on your ad for red shoes, you want to send them to the “red shoes” category page in your ecommerce web store, not your home page.  You’ll get better conversions that way.

Marketing 101 still applies

Just because your advertising online doesn’t mean you throw out everything you know about marketing.

Your ads and landing pages still have to incorporate:
1.  Offer
2.  Call to action
3. Reply device

Track Everything

To get the most out of PPC, track everything.  Try to link the click on the ad to the sale.  You’ll be able to tell what’s working and what’s not.  This way you’ll be able to invest in the PPC advertising that has the highest ROI.  This is easily done through your ecommerce software, or simply sending the completed sale, contact form, or reply device to a “thank-you” page and tracking that.

Dare Marketing Can Help

If you’re an ecommerce retailer Dare Marketing has solutions for you from consulting to software and fulfillment services.  We have a complete suite of solutions from end to end that will help you sell more online and improve your profitability.  Contact us today for a free consultation.

How to Reduce Inventory and Increase Cash flow for your eCommerce Business

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Every business is concerned with cash flow.  Inventory is always an expensive proposition and ties up a lot of capital and cash flow.  This article explores how to manage that investment.

The 80-20 Rule

The 80-20 rule is rule of thumb that applies to many processes, it is also known as the Pareto Principal.  Pareto noticed that 80% of the wealth was controlled by 20% of the people.  Since then, this rule has been applied to many processes including inventory control.  It is typically true that 20% of your inventory items will account for 80% of your inventory cost.  We can use this assumption to our benefit by being able to tightly manage a small portion of our inventory and get the greatest return on our time invested.

The A-B-C’s of Inventory Control

  One of the simplest ways to begin to manage your inventory is to divide your inventory into “A- Items”, “B-Items” and “C-Items”.

A-Items

A items are the top 20% of items by value that you inventory.

C- Items

C-Items are the bottom 50% or so of items that account for less than 5% of inventory value.

B-Items

B items are the rest in between the top 20% and the bottom 5% of SKU’s (Stocking Units).

How to determine ABC’s

An item’s inventory value can be calculated by multiplying:
Annual Quantity Sales X item cost = Annual Inventory Value
The best way to accomplish this analysis is to put your SKU’s in a spreadsheet with the variables: Quantity, Item Cost and Annual inventory Value.  You simply multiply the columns and then use the spreadsheet’s sorting capability to sort the table on annual inventory value.
Next, add a column “Cumulative inventory cost” where you sum up the total cost of items one a time plus the items above it in the list.  When you get down to 80% of the total inventory cost, these are your A items.  Do the same process from the bottom of the list where 95-100% of the cumulative cost is.  These are your C items.  The rest are B items.

Putting the ABC’s into practice.

Now that you have categorized your inventory, you can begin to apply rules to each category.  In last month’s article we talked about Economic Order Quantity, stocking levels and safety stock.  For your A items, you may want to really reduce the safety stock and say that you’ll try to fill 80% of orders from stock for A items.  In contrast, you can stock a whole year’s worth of C items with little impact on your overall inventory value.
Spend your time managing the A items tightly and try and minimize re-orders on the C items.
This is a great strategy to get your inventory under control and start increasing your cash flow and increasing your ROI on inventory investment.

We Can Help!

Dare Marketing provides order fulfillment solutions to ecommerce retailers.  We’ve got the experience and the systems to help you take, fill and ship orders to your customers.  Plus, we can help you do it cost effectively.  For a review of your current fulfillment practices, or inquires about new ecommerce fulfilment project, please contact us.

Basic Inventory Management for Your eCommerce Fulfillment Center

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So you’ve decided to outsource your eCommerce Fulfillment for your on-line store.  Now you have to decide how much inventory to send to your fulfillment center, how much to order, when to re-order, and in general how to manage your stock levels and what the annual cost will be.

Simple Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) for your eCommerce Fulfillment Center

The first question you may ask yourself is:  how much should I order from my supplier every time I place a replenishment order?  Thankfully, there is a tried and true method for calculating this.


Where:
D = Estimated annual demand
Ct = transaction costs per order (receiving costs, order processing costs, transaction costs)
Ci = annual inventory cost per unit per year. (This includes obsolescence)
Example:
Let’s say you expect to sell 1000 widgets per year.  Inventory costs are $5 per unit per year. And transaction costs are $12 per order receipt.



=69.28 = 69 units.

When should I reorder and what Should my Reorder Point be for my eCommerce Fulfillment Center?

Reorder level for your inventory is easily calculated.
Reorder Level = average lead time demand + safety stock.
Let’s say lead time is 4 weeks, and you want to have a minimum of 25 units in stock.  Going back to the above example of selling 1000 units per year that equals (1000/52 X 4) = 77 units demand during the reorder lead time.  So, your reorder level is 77+25 = 102 units.
You should order 69 units every time your inventory falls below 102 units.

** note there are ways to calculate what your optimal safety stock should be based on average demand and the standard deviation of demand and the service level you want to achieve i.e.:  99% of orders filled from stock.  This is a little bit more complicated than the rest of the calculation in this article.  You might want to just look at your demand and pick the largest weekly order you have and keep an extra week.

How much will carrying cost be for the Inventory I store at an eCommerce fulfillment center

Let’s use what we’ve already calculated from the above two examples.  Your total annual variable cost of inventory can be calculated as follows:
Where ss = safety stock.
So, in the example we calculated 5*69/2 +12*1000/69 +5*25
=172.5 +173.9 + 125
= Your annual inventory costs for this item under this plan would be $471.40

Practical Implementation of These Calculations

Most on-line stores sell more than one item.  Doing this calculation for hundreds or thousands of items can be very time consuming and impractical in the real world.  The use of a spreadsheet where you can calculate one item per line and copy the calculation down the spreadsheet gives you an easy way to manage your inventory re-order points, order size and estimated annual cost of carrying your inventory.

Dare Marketing has solutions to help you manage your inventory and fulfill your ecommerce orders from our fulfillment center.  We’ve got over 20 years of expertise and modern systems to help manage, pick, pack and ship your orders.  Contact us!  We’re here to help.

The Value of Outsourcing Rebate Management

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The entire cycle of rebate management is a critical operation that impacts profitability and revenue generation of an organization.  Besides creating as winning promotion and rebate program, the next best way to increase your ROI on your rebate management marketing campaign is to reduce your fulfillment and administrative cost associated with the campaign. Consequently, it is crucial to employ up-to-date technologies and leverage economies of scale in rebate fulfillment.

Outsourcing or In-House Rebate Management?

Increased recognition of rebate programs as a key sales and marketing tool puts pressure on an organization to cost effectively execute a rebate program.  Rebate programs can be both expensive and administratively complex to execute in house.  That’s where outsourcing comes in.  Outsourcing rebate fulfillment processing improves the convenience and expediency of the practice and may add some data gathering that was previously unavailable. The advent of modern technology has prompted business owners to rethink their idea of rebate processing. Outsourcing of rebate management can help customers realize substantial cost savings as well as reduction in labor cost and better data collection by leveraging a rebate management specialist.

Benefits of Rebate Management Outsourcing

Multiple practices

When it comes to rebate processing, a professional rebate management company has the capacity and experience of implementing full-service rebate management processes. The process incorporates multiple levels of service delivery involving scanning, generating and issuing checks, and partial or full online processing with automated rebate optimizer software.  If done in house, this can be a tough burden on management time and process control.

Data Collection

Outsourcing enables single source database creation that allows for detailed analysis of new and existing rebate agreements, analysis of profitability, impact of rebates on different deals before negotiations, creation of elaborate rebate programs.  Access to a central database of this information will speed up the decision making process and approvals for new offers and marketing programs.

Accuracy in Pricing

Thorough processing of a rebate form requires as much as time as processing an invoice!  Outsourcing can reduce this administrative burden while collecting market prices for your competitive database.  Accurate market pricing information is important to remain competitive in the marketplace.

• Cost Reduction
• Reduction in costs of order processing
• Conversion of fixed cost operational models into variable cost
• Online access to forms for seamless collaboration
• Call center cost decrease
• Reduced program cycle cost

Significant cost optimization is possible as companies that carry out huge volumes of rebate processing already have the infrastructure and the economies of scale in processing. Depending on the specific outsourcing solution, anticipated cost reduction can vary anywhere between 20% and 40% or more as compared to processing in house.

Efficient pricing strategies combined with rebate management outsourcing helps reduce cost while improving the effectiveness of your promotions.  Both these factors lead to improved ROI.

To see how you can improve the ROI of your next rebate management project, please contact Dare Marketing where we have solutions to execute a winning rebate management program.

Have you considered a USPS Consolidator & Drop Shipping in your ecommerce supply chain?

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If your ecommerce retail store or catalogue business ships internationally, then you could save time and money by using a USPS consolidator to employ consolidation & dropshipping your orders.

How Dropshipping works

If you’re in Canada trying to ship to the US, it’s both expensive and time consuming to send your packages individually.  If you employ the use of a consolidator and dropshipper, you can send all your orders to the consolidator, who will pack and ready them for mail to the US.  They’ll send all your shipments to the USPS as one consolidated shipment.  This saves both time and cost when shipping to the US.

Key Advantages of Consolidating & Drop Shipping to USPS

 

  1. Flat Rate Shipping –makes it easy to calculate your costs and include it in your billing to your customer.
  2. On-Line Track and Trace –allows your customers to trace their own shipments, giving them piece of mind and saving you time manually tracing their shipments when they have questions.
  3. Fast Delivery Service – the USPS network is both fast and efficient getting your deliveries out to your customers quickly and economically.
  4. Ship to International Destinations – Routing through the USPS allows you to ship to international destinations other than the US.  A one-stop solution for your entire fulfillment needs will save you time.

 

Who Can Help Me with Dropshipping?

Dare Marketing has 20 Years experience in order fulfillment, logistics and parcel dropshipping to the USPS.  Contact Dare Marketing for more information.

How to Generate Sales for Your eCommerce Business Using Direct Mail

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If you have an eCommerce website where you sell products or services, this blog article is for you. This article will give you a marketing plan designed to generate more sales from your existing customer list.

So, you’ve been in business a while and have developed a good list of clients. What are you doing with this list? Many on-line businesses are so focused on generating new traffic for their websites through on-line marketing and Google Adwords, they forget about the goldmine they have in their previous customer list. Have you considered direct mail? It’s a great way to capitalize on the loyalty of your past customers to generate more sales.

According to a recent survey conducted by Target Marketing Magazine, the channel that delivered the strongest ROI for customer acquisition for B2C marketers was direct mail. Direct mail also scored highest among marketers for customer contact and retention.

Let’s say you sell shoes. You know that the average person buys 1 to 2 pairs of your shoes per year. You have to capitalize on repeat business in order to grow your business! Here’s how.

Mine your list.

Your ecommerce website supplies you with all kinds of data if you use it correctly. You can pull a direct mail list of everyone who bought shoes six months ago. You know they’re likely to purchase again. You need to be in front of them when they do.

Plan Your Offer.

You know from you data that you’ll likely sell 200 pairs of shoes, so now it the time to negotiate a mass purchase from your supplier to support your promotion. You should be able to negotiate preferred pricing which you can use to support a special offer to your client list.

Work with Your Fulfillment House

With prior planning, you can work with your fulfillment house to prep orders in advance and in bulk. This can save you in labour and fulfillment costs. Your fulfillment house can also receive orders for you from your direct mailing campaign. This will save a step in the fulfillment process.

Design and Mail

Design and mail your offer to your mailing list. A letter or card sent to previous clients is a great way to generate sales. It’s personalized and is more likely to get opened than an email.

Support Your Direct Mail Campaign with email.

Support your direct mail campaign with reminder emails. This will increase the response rate of the campaign and result in higher sales for you.

Start Again & Repeat

This is a process that can and should be done repeatedly with clients on your list. If you establish a program of repeating this cycle monthly, quarterly or semi-annually, whatever makes sense for your business. This process will help grow your on-line ecommerce business.

Tips for Driving Traffic to your eCommerce Website

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Many ecommerce websites are built in a hurry and vendors quickly get overwhelmed at adding new products, photos, product descriptions and filling orders.  If you want to sell online, you need to rank on Google for the products you’re selling.  There are some key things you need to do to make your site more search engine friendly.

 Be Consistent with Product Names on Your eCommerce Website

Be consistent with product names.  If you’re selling “Brand A Hats” then you want to make sure you set up your product pages properly and be consistent.
·         The URL for the product page should contain “Brand A Hats”.  Example http://www.mystore.com/brand-a-hats-pt333595
·         Your H1 page title should contain “Brand A Hats”  Example: Brand A Hats from  My Store.com
·         Your sub heading H2, H3, etc should contain the product name.  Example: “Product Specifications for Brand A Hats”
·         In your text, you should include “Brand A Hats” 3-4 times.
·         Make sure you include in your Photo Alt text “Brand A Hats” for all of your product images for that page.

Get your Meta Titles and Descriptions Right for Your eCommerce Website

Don’t fill in your Meta Titles and Descriptions by Default!  Sometimes people use their store name to fill in Meta Titles and Descriptions.  This is not right either.  Your store will be found on your store name, pretty much guaranteed, so don’t waste this valuable space to re-state your store name.  The meta title and meta description are what people see when your page gets found on search engines like Goolge.  Most ecommerce store software gives you the ability to customize this.  You should be writing your meta titles and descriptions to both contain your keyword and entice customers to click on your search result.  Example:
SEO Title:  Best Online Prices For Brand A Hats | Free Shipping!
SEO Description:  Great prices on Brand A Hats, thousands in stock, same day shipping and Free shipping on orders over $100.

 Employ Canonical References

Most ecommerce website software solutions are messy when serving up pages for products.  For example you may be able to find the same page under:
·         www.mystore.com/brand -a-hats
·         www.mystore.com/catagories/hats/brand-a-hats
·         www.mystore.com/ladies-hats/brand-a-hats
·         www.mystore.com/daily-specials/brand-a-hats
·         www.mystore.com/?search?prod_id3395.asp
Search engines see these as multiple copies of the same page.  They will all rank separately.  What you want is direct all the ranking to one page.  This is where canonical references come into play.  Simply add http://www.mysite.com/brand-a-hats/>  in the HTML to the product page and this will ensure that no matter how your ecommerce website serves up the page, it always tells the search engines that /brand-a-hats is the main page and where all the ranking should go.

 Make sure you don’t have more than one version of your home page.

Similar to the canonical issue, many websites by default have many versions of the home page.  You need to make sure they are all directed to a single one.  Examples are:
·         http://www.mystore.com
·         http://mystore.com
·         http://mystore.com/default.htm
·         http://mystore.com/defaul.php
·         http://mystore.com/index.htm
·         http://mystore.com/index.php
These issues have similar effect on ranking by search engines as canonical issues. The engines don’t know which is the “real” home page.  This issue can be dealt with using the canonical reference, but a better way is to employ a 301 redirect.  Your ecommerce store software should have an option to do this.  If not, you can use your .htaccess file in your root directory to employ 301 redirects.

Missing Pages and non-existent products

Ensure you don’t have any missing pages.  404 missing page errors count negatively against you in SEO.  The search engines rank user experience very high and if your site is generating a lot of missing pages and 404 errors you should clean them up.   Also, if you have old products that you no longer carry in stock, you should re-direct them to the current version.  For example if you had “brand-a-hat-ver2” and new for this year it’s being replaced by “brand-a-hat-ver3” then you should re-direct traffic to the new page.
Both of these issues can be solved by using a 301 Redirect from the missing page/old page to a current and active page.  You’re software should have an option for you to do this.  If not you can manually add the redirect in your .htaccess file.

Hire an eCommerceFulfillment Expert

Product reviews are key to driving conversions on your website.  Lot’s of positive reviews drive sales.  Getting the right products to your customers fast is critical.  Here at Dare Marketing, we understand your business and how important fulfillment is for your ecommerce website.  We offer full ecommerce fulfillment solutions.  Contact us today for a free consultation on ways we can help you improve your ecommerce fulfillment.

How Drop Shipping from Canada to the US can be Easy and Economical

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Drop Shipping from Canada to the US

Drop Shipping from Canada to the US is a Headache No More!

Many Canadian retailers and eCommerce merchants face the issue of how to supply US customers with their products from Canada.  Now, drop shipping from Canada to the US is the answer.  No longer do you have to open up or contract with a distribution warehouse in the US to service your US customers.  You know that opening a distribution or fulfillment center in the US is both costly and time consuming.  There is an alternative.  You can set up a Canadian Fulfillment center to act as a US Postal Service Depot and ship from Canada just like you were in the US, eliminating the need to set up a US fulfillment center.  Here’s how.

How to drop ship from Canada to the US

Dare Marketing offers a unique service.  They act like a US Postal Service Depot  and route the parcels through the US Postal Service for you.  This is a great option to deliver packages to your US customers.  Not only is it affordable, but easy to integrate into your ecommerce business because they offer flat rate shipping.  Also, take advantage of all the excellent tracking and tracingoffers that the US Postal Service offers.  You’re customers will get a USPS tracking number to track their shipment.  Plus, not only can you ship to the US via this method, but internationally as well.  Dare Marketing offers a similar solution through the USPS for international order fulfillment as well.

Key Advantages of Dare Marketing’s USPS Drop Shipping Solution

1.       Flat Rate Shipping 

Makes it easy to calculate your costs and include it in your billing to your customer.

2.       On-Line Track and Trace

Allows your customers to trace their own shipments, giving them piece of mind and saving you time manually tracing their shipments when they have questions.

3.       Fast Delivery Service

The USPS network is both fast and efficient getting your deliveries out to your customers quickly and economically.

4.       Ship to International Destinations

Routing through the USPS allows you to ship to international destinations other than the US.  A one-stop solution for your entire fulfillment needs will save you time.

Is Drop shipping from Canada to the US for you?

If you’re an eCommerce merchant, or maybe involved in an on-line deal site where you are shipping small packaged items under $200 per item, then this is a great solution for you to be able to supply your US customers both economically and efficiently.  Plus, the tracking options give your customers a great impression of your service levels.

How Can I get Started Drop Shipping from Canada to the US?

Dare Marketing offers a complete solution including set up for a very reasonable cost.  Contact Dare Marketing today and speak with one of their logistics experts to help you find the most cost effective and efficient way to fill orders shipping from Canada to the US, or anywhere for that matter!

How eCommerce Retailers Stay Ahead of the Competition

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ecommerce fulfillment

eCommerce Fulfillment is a Growing Market

The ecommerce fulfillment market is growing rapidly.  It’s key for your online business to make sure you’re getting your share of this huge growth opportunity.  This article will explore some of the key issues that will keep your ecommerce sales growing.






eCommerce revenues topped $1 trillion dollars for the first time EVER in 2012

Source:  eMarketer

eCommerce sales represented 10 of ALL discretionary spending last year, and are expected to increase by 9-12% in 2013

Source: comScore

How can you capitalize on the incredible growth in the ecommerce market?

The key areas to focus on for your ecommerce business are: marketing, pricing, fulfillment and service.  These four factors are key to expanding your ecommerce business.

Marketing Your eCommerce Business

Marketing is a big part of any online business.  The concepts of on-line marketing aren’t really that different from traditional marketing, other than there are a wide range of new tools and technology available to make marketing much easier.  Marketing is still about three things.
1.  Knowing the value of the product or service you offer and differentiating that from your competitors.

2.  Finding an audience or market segment that is interested in your message.

3. Promoting your product or service to that audience at a price that makes sense

In today’s World, finding your audience and promoting your product or service has never been easier.  Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, Google Adwords and Google Search Engine Marketing are tools that most business owners are comfortable with and can easily leverage their huge potential to get their message out.  Those uncomfortable with the technology can work with an SEO or Social Media Consultant to them put together an on-line marketing strategy.

Pricing Your Products and Services

Pricing products and services on-line is requires a little more strategy than traditional pricing strategies.  On-line it’s easy for customers to look up multiple competitors and do a fair bit of pricing research before buying.  Here are some things to consider in your on-line pricing strategy.

Competitive Prices

Do some research!  It’s not hard to find out what your competitors are charging.  You absolutely need to use this as a benchmark for your pricing.  While there may be many reasons for you to charge a higher or lower price than your competitors, you still need to know what you’re up against.

Know Your Margins

You need to know what your costs are pretty accurately.  For any pricing strategy to be successful, you have to know whether it will generate enough margins to keep you in business.

Consider “Value Based Pricing”

Value based pricing is an interesting concept and should not be ignored.  Let’s say you’ve invented a tire that lasts twice as long as the tires currently available today.  It doesn’t cost any more to produce, so should you charge the same price as other tires on the market?  Of course not, value based pricing says that you could charge almost double to the current price of tires.  This is how pricing based on value works.

Cost-Plus Pricing

Many people practice cost plus pricing.  They know for their business to survive they need to make, let’s say, a 30% margin.  Pricing using this strategy is pretty simple.  Just mark up every item to make a 30% margin.  However, this is not ideal.  You may be losing business where the volume and cost to service would justify a lower pricing and you may end up with business with low volume and high cost to service.  Be careful applying this one.

Anchor Pricing

Consider using anchor pricing.  We’ve all seen it, but it works.  This is where the first price a customer sees is very high let’s say $100.  Then after a few clicks on your website, “Today only, one low price of $49.99”, even though you intended to sell it for $49.99 in the first place!  The concept of anchor pricing works because the buyer perceives a higher value than the actual price.

Contextual Pricing

People often like to compare.  Don’t give people an incentive to go and compare your price with someone else!  Give them easy to understand option on your site.  For example:  Platinum = $100, Gold= $75 and Silver = $50.  Then you can even highlight the gold package as “best value” knowing that that’s the one you want to sell.  Contextual pricing works because it gives your buyers the option of choice.

eCommerce Fulfillment is Key to Growing Your Business

Once you have one the order online, then next step is ecommerce fulfillment.  You need to be able to deliver the right order, quickly and economically.  This is where an eCommerce Fulfillment provider comes in.  Best practice is to outsource eCommerce Fulfillment to an expert.  Some of the key things to look for in an eCommerce Fulfillment House are:
·         Expertise and past history of successful ecommerce fulfillment
·         On-line order tracking
·         The ability to process rebates and returns
·         Logistics and shipping expertise that you can leverage
·         Knowledge and expertise in how to fulfill your orders economically and come up with win/win promotions that reduce fulfillment costs and increase sales.

After Sale Service

Your customers are going to want to know if the items they ordered are in stock, when they will ship, when they did ship, where they are in-transit and when will they be delivered.  They will also like an easy returns policy if an item is defective.
All these services are typical of what an ecommerce fulfillment house can do for you.  Typically, you want to make sure you’re ecommerce fulfillment partner has an online tracking and inventory system as well as, a way to integrate their data into your information system.

Next Steps

Dare Marketing is a premier ecommerce fulfillment house with years of experience fulfilling on-line orders.  Dare can help you bring it all together.  Your marketing, fulfillment and logistics all under one roof!  For a free consultation with a fulfillment expert, contact Dare today and we’ll give you our opinion of your current ecommerce fulfillment strategy and recommend some economical ways to improve your fulfillment system while reducing costs.

Fulfillment Houses: eCommerce Retailers’ Secret Weapon

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fulfillment house

What is a Fulfillment House?

A fulfillment house is a company whose primary business is the logistics of taking and processing your orders right up to final delivery to the customer.  Most fulfillment houses provide warehousing services, on-line order entry/tracking, pick and pack services, as well as, shipping and mailing services.  A mailing house is typically a complete outsourced, end to end solution to fulfill your orders.

Why are Fulfillment Houses so Popular?

With the tremendous growth of the internet and on-line retailing over the past decade, it’s made it very easy for virtually anyone to start an online business.  All you need is a product or products to sell and a website.  The internet has empowered many small business owners to start to make real money on the internet.  However, the back-end of on-line retailing isn’t as simple as setting up a website.  Someone has to store your products, receive orders, process them, provide economical shipping options and manage the day to day flow of orders and goods to customers.  This is where most ecommerce retailers get bogged down.   Order fulfillment is a complex task, best left to experts.  It’s also very capital and overhead intensive.  Two things a small business cannot afford.  This is where Fulfillment Houses come in.  Fulfillment houses provide this service as a full outsourced solution, at a reasonable cost, with little or no overhead investment.

Benefits of a Fulfillment House

There are many benefits to an ecommerce retailer to outsource the fulfillment process to a third party.  Some of the key benefits are summarized below.

Reduced Overhead

Investing in a warehouse and distribution facility is an expensive proposition.  Add up the costs of people, rent, equipment, software, insurance, heat, hydro, etc. it can be very expensive, especially if you’re just starting out.  The other issue with on-line retailing is that it’s usually very seasonal, around events and holidays.  However, the costs of operating your own distribution warehouse are a constant all year long.  If you choose to outsource, you only pay for what you use.

Improved Cash Flow

Seasonality is a huge factor for an on-line retailer to deal with.  Cash comes in giant lumps around major holidays and shopping seasons, but expenses continue all year long.  Having to lay out cash for employees, rent, insurance, etc. all year long, is a real drain on cash flow.  When an ecommerce retailer chooses to outsource fulfillment, the cash outlays are matched with the incoming cash.  Outsourcing offers retailers an excellent way of managing and improving cash flow.

Speed of Implementation

Let’s say an internet retailer wants to launch a new product line, or just start up.  While the process of building a website and marketing the products on-line may be pretty straight forward, launching a distribution facility with a proper fulfillment plan is not.  It takes time to hire people, put the facilities and technology in place to start the order fulfillment process.  An internet retailer who chooses to outsource order fulfillment can start up in no time, leveraging an existing fulfillment house’s facilities, technologies and distribution network.  This makes it easy for an internet retailer to enter the market at light speed!

Access to Technology

A modern fulfillment house is full of technology.  Technology is key today in reducing picking, packing and shipping costs.  A typical fulfillment house will have a front end web based interface for their customers that is completely integrated with their back-end pick and pack operation.  Order fulfillment houses typically have barcode pick and pack systems, inventory control systems as well as logistics and shipping systems.  There is a huge investment in technology required to keep costs as low as possible.  Most small business and ecommerce retailers can’t afford the expense and the time required to set up these systems.  The better choice is to rent them by outsourcing to a fulfillment house.

Access to Expertise

There is a great amount of expertise required in the fulfillment process.  Think of all the specialized knowledge that’s required:  operating a facility, people management, equipment maintenance, safety programs, legal compliance, logistics, shipping, insurance.  Much of this expertise and specialized knowledge takes years to acquire.  Why not gain access to it by outsourcing to an expert!

Less Headaches, Peace of Mind

Many internet retailers get into the business because they like to sell and market products.  Many also get into the business for the flexible hours and the allure of a business that can be operated from anywhere with a WIFI connection.  However, the reality of order fulfillment requires a 24/7 presence that comes stress and headaches.  Trucks don’t show up on time, replenishment orders get delayed, customers sometimes get an incorrect product.  All these customer service functions have to be resolved immediately if a business is to continue operating.  These situations are stressful and time consuming.  By outsourcing the fulfillment function to an order fulfillment house you alleviate these headaches and keep your schedule flexible to travel and enjoy the fruits of your labour!

Is a Fulfillment House Right for You?

If you enjoy selling and marketing more than the headaches that come with fulfilling the orders, then you should definitely consider outsourcing.  In addition to the key benefits outlined above, outsourcing allows you to work “on” your business instead of “in” your business.  This is a recipe for success!

Next Steps

Dare Marketing is an experienced, full service fulfillment house.  Dare Marketing can help you reduce costs, overhead, and increase cash flow and profits.  Book a free consultation with one of our fulfillment experts today and we’ll help you put together a great fulfillment plan that will drive your business.