Now that the holiday season is over and the flood of returns has slowed to a trickle, businesses like yours are focusing on ways to boost eCommerce sales in 2022. That’s the right target, given that experts project we’ll break eCommerce records yet again.
However, those sales and consumer habits mean more competition than ever before. If you’re going to stand out and keep scaling your growth, you need an intelligent plan for success. The best eCommerce plans typically include partners, like product suppliers and an experienced 3PL, to help you get more done and focus on what you do best. Here’s why that makes so much sense.
Boost eCommerce sales method 1: Reduce sales hesitation
Some of the biggest red flags that potential customers have about an online sale are hidden fees and unclear shipping times. Your 3PL can help tackle this and boost eCommerce sales opportunities by directly integrating your store and shopping cart with shipping options and carriers.
Working together, your 3PL can help you show customers shipping costs and speeds before the checkout process starts. That eliminates surprise fees or abandoned carts due to slow shipping speeds. A great 3PL like Red Stag takes this one step further by guaranteeing the speed and accuracy of your orders. This means customers consistently get the right products at the right time. Together, we eliminate delays that harm current sales and provide assurances and quality service that help customers buy from you again and again.
Improving sales method 2: Enhance customer satisfaction
3PLs also help you improve your sales outlook by enabling you to serve your customers better. That comes in two main flavors:
- Outsourcing fulfillment and inventory management allow you to prioritize product development, sales, marketing, and customer support channels.
- Improved delivery reliability (time and order accuracy) reduces customer service request volume and allows you to prioritize higher-value or more complex issues.
Let Red Stag Fulfillment manage your order fulfillment and inventory management needs so you can get back to doing what you love. Your time won’t be taken up by resolving logistics challenges, carrier negotiations, parcel testing, or other in-house logistics tasks. Instead, you can prioritize developing new colors and customizations, tackling the latest trends, and building a deeper brand story and connection.
Our experts offer efficient, accurate delivery that minimizes disruptions to the customer experience. Getting the right products in every order reduces complaints, returns, and refunds. The best news is that we can maintain this excellence even as you grow. You can’t beat that to boost eCommerce sales.
Boost eCommerce sales method 3: Scale without delay
Market demands, product availability, and the bullwhip effect have dramatically changed how eCommerce business and sales get done. If your operations are struggling to scale — up or down — with the market, you might benefit from a 3PL relationship.
You’re probably thinking: How does a 3PL help with that?
The core effort of scalability for eCommerce companies is making room for growth or shrinking inventory and not paying to store empty space when you need to scale down. That covers small fluctuations and the difference between peak and your slow season. 3PLs like Red Stag have room and continually build out their capability to give you that space. Paired with cubic metric storage models, you only pay for the physical space your inventory uses. Not only does that mean no paying for air, but you also aren’t paying for a full pallet when it’s poorly stacked or any of the other common issues that crop up under other models.
With fixed per-order costs, too, you can grow without having to see labor and other expenses scale exponentially as you grow.
Growing sales method 4: Improve overall service
Poor customer service can lead to an immediate request for a refund and a loss of future sales opportunities. Tackle that and offer top-notch customer service by outsourcing fulfillment (and the multitude of tracking required) to a 3PL partner.
Let us add tracking details and information to orders. Use integrations and APIs to simplify the process of status updates and information for customers and your sales team. And trust us to know the status of each order and then get it out on time and accurately. We do that every day, even at the busiest moments.
During December 2021, at the height of the busiest eCommerce holiday season on record, Red Stag had a 99.959% on-time accuracy and 99.976% order accuracy. That blows away the industry standard. And it is what our customers deserve. That’s how we elevate excellence and empower you to give customers the best delivery and fulfillment experience possible.
When 26% of holiday 2021 shoppers are returning products because orders were late, it pays to have a partner that can keep your orders moving. There’s no better way to protect your sales opportunities than with that level of service.
Boost eCommerce sales method 5: Reach more people
One of the most effective ways to improve sales is to have a larger audience. Achieving this in the eCommerce space requires more warehouse space and locations strategically positioned to meet consumer demand. You’re targeting the people who want to buy your products and ensuring that they can get these products quickly. Use a 3PL to secure locations that make it easy to have nationwide fulfillment coverage. That’s a clear plan to reach most customers quickly.
Red Stag Fulfillment’s strategic locations allow your products to reach more than 95% of homes in the continental U.S. within two days. And our growing network of partners can make it easier to reach international customers as well. Our coverage map overlaps with where your U.S. customers are right now, giving you the advantage to reach people for a repeat purchase. However, we can also deliver to new customers quickly, no matter where they live.
As a leading 3PL, we understand the best ways to get your products to people quickly. That includes where to ship from to help you skip zones. And that brings us to one final benefit for your operations.
Bonus tip: Reinvest more into your business
“Lagniappe” is a little something extra that people give. Typically, it’s a small gift or freebie you give to someone at the time of purchase. It also covers other benefits you receive on top of the primary exchange. In the fulfillment space, 3PLs offer some lagniappe to help boost eCommerce sales by giving you more money to put back into your business and customer service efforts.
By prioritizing efficiency, driving down fulfillment costs, negotiating better rates with carriers, and optimizing last-mile distances, you’ll typically pay less for fulfillment than if you did it yourself. Your balance sheet gets that extra bit. You can turn around and invest in a chatbot for service requests, text updates, discounts, more fantastic marketing, and a host of other things.
Bottom line, working with a 3PL helps ensure you’ve got a little more capital at the end of the day. Put it exactly where your customer needs it. Shopper demands are growing, and you’ve got a lot to monitor and track to maintain and boost eCommerce sales. Turn to Red Stag to see where you might be able to save and reinvest a little more while offering a better order experience.
