Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog | Shipping & Fulfillment

Ensuring smooth eCommerce freight logistics is a challenge for many small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that operate globally, often grappling with high shipping costs, complex customs regulations, inventory management, and smooth logistics and visibility throughout the shipping process.

If you work in retail or eCommerce, inventory is the lifeblood of your company. You also carefully pick the best people and recruit top talent to ensure areas like order fulfillment operate as smoothly as possible.

Customer expectations greatly influence the ever-evolving eCommerce landscape.

Their rising demand for efficiency is pushing business owners to improve delivery in their eCommerce stores by bringing down shipping costs and making the experience as seamless as possible.

No business has ever made history because of its bland, brown cardboard box packaging. Physical packaging is free real estate for your brand image that ends up inside the customer's home; it would be a shame to waste that opportunity.

Running an eCommerce shop is a complicated process that involves paying attention to many things simultaneously. One of the most important things you need to focus on is shipping. After all, it’s difficult to keep a business going if you cannot consistently ship products out to your customers on time.

Running an eCommerce marketplace like Amazon can be tricky since there are two sides to take care of — supply and demand. Unless you have a solid supply line, you cannot generate demand.

As an eCommerce store owner, you may run into a situation where a customer would like to order in bulk. These customers could be purchasing on behalf of other businesses, non-profits, or government organizations. Serving clients like this can provide your business with a major opportunity to enter the B2B market. 

Running a business requires a variety of moving parts. Payroll, marketing, and suppliers are just a few. Finding quality suppliers can take up a lot of time — and if there’s one thing that business owners are short on, it’s time. However, price, quality control, and communication should be carefully considered when looking for a supplier.

During the recent global pandemic, some businesses were able to recoup losses or even experience growth through several adaptation strategies. One of the most important tactics was for brands to focus on their local customers by offering delivery services.

In the world of eCommerce, there are several popular models for the order fulfillment process. These include merchant fulfillment, third-party fulfillment, and dropshipping. Many eCommerce retailers employ more than one model of order fulfillment in order to optimize the process for different products and customers.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more customers, both B2B and B2C, shopped online in 2020, resulting in tremendous eCommerce growth. Online retailers like Amazon and eBay had their biggest years ever. B2B eCommerce will be worth nearly two trillion dollars by 2023, which means eCommerce business owners are in need of more sophisticated online sales methods. 

Amazon’s brown cardboard boxes are regular features on our doorsteps, office reception desks, and mailboxes. From deodorants to vacuum cleaners, Amazon delivers millions of products to people around the world every day. It’s no surprise then that the company’s annual shipping costs amounted to a staggering $6.1 billion in 2020.

High shipping costs are one of the biggest obstacles to the growth of eCommerce. While industry giants like Amazon are able to bear these costs, it still cuts deep into[...]

If you own a business that relies on a slick and effective supply chain, you’ll know full well how damaging supply chain disruption can be. Supply chains are often fragile ecosystems in which one broken link can ripple throughout the entire chain. We can all hope that our supply chains will be resilient and reliable, but that’s not always the case.

Launching an online business entails a lot of hard work. During the initial stages, you'll tackle fun and exciting aspects like designing your website, creating a logo, and uploading products. Soon, though, you'll need to attend to more technical details like shipping — after all, unless you sell only digital products, your customers need a way to receive the items they buy from you!

Shipping for eCommerce can seem daunting, as there are a lot of factors to consider. You need to figure out[...]

Shipping charges tend to rise as your packages go further, and carriers determine how much your price scales by seeing how far you ship across their U.S. shipping zones. Carriers each carve up the continental map to create their list, with most dividing up the country into seven shipping zones numbered “2” through “8.” These shipping zones can impact both the cost and delivery speeds available for your goods.

Knowing U.S. shipping zones and how they’re calculated can help an eCommerce business[...]

So you’ve made a smart move and decided to opt for a fulfillment provider. You’re definitely on the right track as far as business decisions go. However, the question now is, “How do I make sure I’m choosing the right fulfillment company for my business?” There are several options to choose from and, as a business owner, making the wrong choice can have serious consequences for your company.

Shipping costs are consistently the leading cause of shopping cart abandonment. Customers add products to their cart and get through checkout, only to see shipping costs that they didn’t expect to pay. For many customers, this is enough to put them off of going through with the purchase entirely.

In order to be upfront with customers about their expected shipping costs, you also need to understand how their costs will be calculated as a business owner. One of the most common ways that shipping[...]

Your eCommerce store is critical to broadening your brand and increasing your reach. While eCommerce offers business a wide range of opportunities, it can be difficult to keep up with high customer expectations and an ever-growing market.

In today’s time where customers have high expectations, we provide three strategies to help make your eCommerce store a success. Choosing the right shipping method, streamlining the fulfillment process, and having an up to date landing page will all impact[...]

Whenever you think about starting an eCommerce business, warehousing, shipping, and fulfillment may come to mind.

Surely, creating sales is the interesting part. However, what happens after the order is made? Somehow your item needs delivering to customers' hands. One of the most popular ways to handle this part is to partner with an order fulfillment company. There are a number of fulfillment services that will store your products and pack and ship your orders.

Value-engineered packaging is the process of designing and producing the best possible packaging solution for your product with costs, security, and performance in mind.

Your brand can benefit from redesigning new and existing packaging solutions for a single product or a wide range of products to use less material, optimize costs, and create more branding opportunities.

For many ecommerce brands, packaging is an expense that’s left to the last minute.