The most important part of building a long-term online brand (when selling physical products) is shipping logistics. In fact, over 70% of online shoppers say that a simple shipping experience is their main priority when shopping with online brands.
As shipping logistics become more complex with each new emerging e-commerce brand, it’s important to invest in a shipping strategy that meets customer expectations while being able to fully integrate with your business shipping needs.
3 Types of Shipping Logistics
Shipping logistics includes 3 major categories; inbound, outbound, and reverse logistics. Let’s break them down:
- Inbound logistics are the processes that move products from a manufacturer to be received at a fulfillment center or warehouse. Your inbound logistics network should include everything your business needs to transport, store, and deliver goods including sourcing products, production lead times, and warehouse receiving.
- Outbound logistics are all the operations necessary to move your products from a fulfillment center or warehouse to your customers, including picking and packing, shipping, and carrier partnerships.
- Reverse logistics refers to processing customer returns and exchanges. This includes both inbound and outbound processes such as return labels, inspecting the returned merchandise, processing refunds, and shipping out a new item if it’s an exchange or damaged replacement.
Optimizing Your Strategy
One of the best opportunities for shipping logistics improvements and growth is to outsource to a third-party logistics partner like Simple Global.
90% of customers say free shipping is their biggest incentive to complete the checkout process. This means you need to ensure your products are as close as possible to your customers as it will allow for faster and more cost-effective shipping. From one of our global warehouses, you’ll be able to reach customers on a worldwide scale, no matter where their location may be.
This also ties into our warehouse management system (WMS), which uses up-to-date technology and innovations. This lets you access your personal dashboard, allowing you to monitor and control all operations within our warehouses, and provides real-time insights of all operations. You’ll have full visibility into customer orders, picked and packed items, and in-transit orders, while being able to keep track of stock levels and inventory fluctuations.
Conclusions
We’ll take care of everything from basic warehousing to the entire order fulfillment and distribution process. Once orders are placed, they’ll show up on our system and automatically be sent to the nearest fulfillment center in regards to the customer location and where your inventory is stored. From the time we receive your customer orders, to the time it’s delivered, we provide a swift and efficient order fulfillment process with guidance from the latest industry technology.
