Fulfilment tips for your Ecommerce Start Up

Logistics is one of the most vitally important stages in a customer’s journey and for many start-up businesses it is the bane of their lives. Companies need to have a process for dealing with their order fulfilment and must be on top of handling the supply of packaging materials, postage accounts and accurate picking and packing. We are going to run through a few tips to ensure that your orders get to their destination – and in one piece.

Choosing your Packaging

In order to ensure products arrive in good condition, a reasonable amount of packing material needs to be used in the correct way. There is a fine balance to be struck between being environmentally responsible, keeping your costs under control and ensuring items are adequately protected.

Depending on what you are selling you will most likely be using jiffy bags, poly mail bags, book wraps and boxes. You might wonder whether it is worth buying packaging which is designed for specific items, but book wraps are a sensible investment as they hold not only books but also CDs and DVDs securely in place, and avoid the need for extra internal protection.

When choosing boxes, it’s important to use the correct size – nobody wants to receive a USB drive in a huge box! Double wall boxes which, as the names suggests, are made from two layers of corrugated cardboard, are a good choice for heavy items. Single wall boxes are fine for lighter items.

You may find cost savings in designing your own packaging for your product, if it is an unusual size, or requires a lot of packaging. You can design it to use the least amount of materials as possible, or to be made from lighter materials to reduce costs in shipping.

Internal protection

OK, so we have chosen the most appropriate box. Next we need to ensure that the items inside have the best chance of standing up to knocks, drops and the occasional chuck. The trick is to ensure that the product in the box cannot move. Start by putting some loose fill on the bottom of the box. Loose fill can be anything from those irritating packing peanuts, wood wool, airbags and brown paper. Brown paper is cheap, effective and recyclable. If you need that extra bit of protection air cushions are excellent and often biodegradable.

It is worth mentioning that many carriers will not compensate you for items they damage if your parcels contain glass or liquids, so it pays to go for maximum internal protection with these so you don’t end up having to replace them at your own cost.

Sealing

Now all you need to do is seal the box securely. I have seen it mentioned that branded parcel tape is a cost effective anti-theft solution in that it is unlikely a parcel will be opened, items removed and resealed. I am sure this is true if you are sending on a tracked service, otherwise the whole box just needs to be stolen! Branded or not, a good quality parcel tape applied with a tape gun is my recommendation. Pay particular attention to the bottom, taping the flaps down the centre followed by the outer edges to form a letter H. The addition of ‘This Way Up’ stickers will hopefully prevent your carrier from upending the parcel, and pop a ‘Fragile’ one on there too if it’s called for.

Sending

Complaints to Royal Mail over lost and misdelivered items totalled 927,637 in 2012 – a rise of 7,331 over 2010/11 – yet the number of lost or misdelivered parcels could be significantly reduced by taking a little extra care over addressing and labelling. It may seem obvious, but do make sure the recipient’s address and postcode is clearly displayed on the parcel, as well as your own address and phone number so that there is a contact point for any queries that may arise during transit. Try not to use ink that smudges and invest in labels that have a reasonably strong adhesive.

Make use of tools such as Royal Mail’s postcode finder to verify any addresses that don’t look quite right, or check with the customer if necessary. Most people would prefer a short delay rather than risk their parcel being lost, and your thoroughness can only help your reputation.