What is e-Commerce fulfilment?
A complete overview to everything expert e-commerce fulfilment.
What is e-commerce fulfilment?
At Codestorm, we know a thing or two about e-commerce fulfilment – and we’re proud to have helped some of the UK’s best and brightest e-commerce brands to bring their incredible e-commerce products and goodies to the Direct to Consumer or D2C market. From Candy Kittens and Tarquins Gin to rising stars like Fearne and Rosie and PaleFox our experienced, practical and innovation e-commerce fulfilment team have seen it all and helped turn challenges into profitable, growing businesses.
We believe that expert e-commerce fulfilment solutions start with understanding the challenges that our clients face. If you’re ready to start your journey to more effective, hassle free and seamless e-commerce fulfilment talk to us today.
DEFINING E-COMMERCE
So, what is e-commerce fulfilment? E-commerce has been around for many years, whilst we haven’t always had the infrastructure in the UK that we have today businesses have been capitalising on the power of the web to deliver products to a wider than ever audience since inception. More recently the UK’s e-commerce sector experienced a significant surge during the Coronavirus pandemic as physical stores become inaccessible, and most businesses had to rely on their digital channels to trade. As a result, consumer habits have shifted, with 70% of consumers preferring to shop online compared to just 50% prior to 2020. This ‘lockdown boom’ has seen many businesses grow rapidly, with D2C e-commerce fulfilment being one of the most popular and effective ways to maintain this growth and amplify your success. That’s why we’ve built this helpful resource to help you through everything you need to know about e-commerce fulfilment, why outsourcing to a fulfilment company is beneficial, and how Codestorm can help.
E-commerce fulfilment
E-commerce is, in short, digital trading, or the buying and selling of goods by utilising online platforms. This pertains to the fulfilment of orders placed and paid for online: from sorting, selecting, packaging, and sending items as well as storage, warehousing, inventory management and data control as well as personalisation and bespoke packaging. This can be done in-house or outsourced to companies like Codestorm where critical mass reaches a level that it’s more effective and cost efficient to outsource to a specialist provider. E-commerce fulfilment houses should also be able to assist with returns processing and order tracking, which can be a particularly difficult procedure that must be handled with care, or risk losing return custom and ensure that stock management is optimal.
Why is outsourcing ecommerce fulfilment popular?
Many new and start-up e-commerce stores may well begin with an in-house fulfilment function; think of Jo Malone creating candles and shipping them from her famous kitchen table. As a business grows, all too often, fulfilling customer orders can become overwhelming and, rather than creating growth, can hold businesses back from reaching their potential.
Firstly, outsourcing your e-fulfilment service allows your business to focus on the start of the buyer journey, namely Sales, Brand Awareness and Customer Engagement, as well as the post-delivery part of the journey (customer experience, brand advocacy and loyalty programs), to help grow your customer base and grow your business in the long-term. Recent statistics have demonstrated that the post-delivery service is more important than many organisations realise, with a poll by Convey showing that 40 per cent of customers find the brand interactions post-purchase are the most meaningful in shaping their opinion on the brand. Consumers want to feel appreciated throughout the sales process, especially since they spend their hard-earned money on your products. Outsourcing to an e-commerce fulfilment expert is a great way of shifting your focus onto this all-important aspect of the buyer journey.
If your business is already growing at a fast pace, outsourcing fulfilment is a natural progression which allows you to scale your operations, especially if your existing warehousing or storage has been outgrown. What’s more you can expand and contract your warehouse space as your business needs develop, with e-commerce fulfilment companies such as Codestorm having access to specialised inventory technology, we call it LINK and you can check out here.
Great E-fulfilment and inventory management tools, whilst they may not fill the top of the funnel allow you to effectively manage everything from stock control and supply chain to individual customer orders with ease, creating clear understanding of not only the rate of your business-growth and status of your stock, but helping to streamline processes and optimise promotions and customer experience. On the surface of course outsourcing fulfilment allows you to stop you from manually fulfilling orders, which is time consuming, but at a deeper level the right partner will provides you with unrivalled access to data and analytics so you understand your business better and achieve the next level of growth.
E-commerce Efficiency
Efficiency is key, especially in a world where Next Day Delivery is so popular: we often find that reaching a scale that other larger brands already have can give growing brands issue in creating economies that customers simply demand, meaning you may not be able to fulfil orders at a fast pace whilst maintaining good customer service and quality control at the right cost. This is why outsourcing is so popular, as it allows a team of fulfilment experts to help you take on the responsibility of packing, tracking and delivering items. This allows you to remain competitive in terms of delivery timescales and costs, which is especially important considering that over one third of shoppers will abandon their orders if their projected delivery time exceeds a week.
Since 2019 Codestorm have supported Candy Kittens’ rising e-commerce growth. From pick and pack, warehousing and detailed personalisation Codestorm are a core partner for Candy Kittens D2C offering and regularly provide bespoke promotional activities including fulfilling a record 18000 orders in 48 hours.
“They provide both fantastic fulfilment and customer service. With every Tribe pack personalised to each customer we have increasingly complex fulfilment needs. The full team have helped us evolve and delivered to a consistently high standard.” With our support, Tribe expanded from 10 SKUs to 25, as well as significantly reducing their postage costs. All while helping to maintain the company’s reputation for excellent customer service.
Men’s cosmetics provider, Mancave have chosen Codestorm as their e-fulfillment partner for 4 years, helping the brand to grow consistently across multiple channels and supporting exceptional performance peaks throughout promotional campaigns. As well as warehousing, stock management and pick solutions Codestorm also source and bespoke packaging that aligns with the brand’s ethos.
The introduction of LINK was a game-changer for WWF, our team and more importantly our supporters; enabling us full visibility of every process step, stock control, quality monitoring and audit trailing as well as the ability to provide after-sale updates direct to purchasers and supporters through their email platform.
Why use Codestorm?
Codestorm are proud to offer world-class e-commerce fulfilment services to our clients, such as ManCave, Tribe, Candy Kittens as well as many many more . Our digital platform, LINK, provides our clients with access to real-time data regarding orders, stock and fulfilment, which lets you to make fast, well informed and relevant decisions to optimise your business.
From offering the very best prices on all postage, courier and shipping services, to producing truly personalised e-commerce solutions that suit your brand’s dynamic, Codestorm are able to assist any goods retailer in their e-commerce journey. Our software integrates seamlessly with all major e-commerce platforms – from Shopify to eBay and Amazon – which means less time spent on tedious account management, and more time helping your business grow. Whether you’re just dipping your toes into e-commerce fulfilment, expanding your business, or are simply exploring your options – book a demo with us today.
See what’s possible with Codestorm
Let us take the hassle out for D2C e-commerce fulfilment – our expert team are here to help you grow your business with better, smarter, more efficient e-commerce solutions.
Book a demo and we’ll show you how easy it is to take control of your entire fulfilment process.
