You work hard at attracting customers to buy from your Online store. You can design it with the best graphics, easy to use shopping cart. But some of the fundamental, simple operations if not done right can really make this all for not.
When approaching an online business you really have to make sure you have your invoicing system down, a easy and clear way to communicate to your customers, access to your product and most important a shipping system in place.
Your Shipping department can make or break you. You can tell your customers all you want how great you are but if you cannot get your product to your customer complete, on time and correctly then you are dead in the water.
With the evolution of online sales, customer expectations of service has increased and at times come be be down right way out of perspective. In most cases the supporting industry has not evolved to the level that other industries have. Order fulfillment is the toughest of these concepts. Online businesses like Amazon have created this illusion that you can place an order and have it next day. While this is the future. The truth is that unless you are an electronics business, The supply chain of most online businesses has not changes. They rely on a distributor dealer network. So while they can have a flashy online presence the back ground operations are still operating like they did 20 maybe 30 years ago. So do you build a huge warehouse full of your product? In most cases it is not feasible for a start business unless you have a lot of start up capital.
So e-commerce has bread in its customers that if you order it online you can receive your product quicker than the local brick and mortar store. When the truth is that the online store usually buys from the same distributor and the order time time will be about the same. Even online store against online store.
So what is this article about. Well, as a online consumer before you order something you should take into consideration of when you need your item and be realistic of the time involved to get you your item. Also it is the internet, nobody is forcing you to buy their product. If you do not like the offer from the company you can cancel your order and shop else where.
Article Written by Edward Proulx
Web & Content Editor
ProParts Direct
www.propartsdirect.net
