How to Make Non-shoppers Shop With eCommerce

Nowadays businesses have classified shoppers into four different categories : the bargain hunter, the researcher, the impulse shopper and the loyal shopper. But then, there's one more important category that businesses tend to ignore. Yes, the non-shopper. These shoppers are said to be low on patience and they tend to dislike shopping anywhere and anytime. They hate digging through the sales rack to find that perfect shirt or pair of pants. 

 

Shop With eCommerce

For such shoppers, there are online subscription retailers like Fancy, Trunk Club and Mantry. These retailers attract the non-shoppers through their monthly subscription programmes. This is how they work: A non-shopper pays a certain amount every month to an online subscription retailer. The retailer on receiving the subscription amount chooses an assortment of products based on customer's profile, and sends it directly to his or her office or house. The non-shopper picks and chooses what's best for him within the given budget. 

 

Such innovative services not only saves customer time but the best part is that non-shoppers get what they want. But to achieve this level of efficiency, the online companies require a robust and capable eCommerce platform that's able to capture and leverage customer records to offer the best tailored shopping experience. 

 

Here’s how they do it.

Solid Customer Profile: 

 

This is a prerequisite that every online subscription retailer should consider. There's a huge responsibility on retailer's shoulder to built trust with customers and gather data about their likes and dislikes. 

 

Order Management:

 

Match customer profiles with supplier inventory levels, lead times, inventory position and financial considerations. Once this is done, come up with a monthly box that's sure to tempt your customers every month and ensure that they stick with their plan of paying the monthly fee. 

 

Packaging and Order Fulfillment

Packaging and Order Fulfillment: 

 

Smart retailers pay extra attention to packaging. It should not look like any plain eCommerce delivery. The box should be printed and branded with an inviting message on it. 

 

Iteration:

Making the customer fill the survey form or profile questionnaire only once in a while is not sufficient. Best of the subscription service companies continually request feedback and additional profile attributes to refine customer profile and use it to stock products that shoppers are counting on.

 

Systems:

Successful on line subscription retailers focus on building scalable and automated systems so as to offer subscribers personalized shopping experience.

To cut the chase, today online retailer can be style experts for their customers by offering customized products. But to carry out this practice efficiently, they should be able to capture the data, store it and act on the information quickly and easily. Non-stoppers are not God, they too can be tempted simply by going the online subscription way.

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How Order Management Works

Order management is a significant part of any business operation as it connects inventory and customers. It starts right from the moment a customer places an order and ends when the customer receives it. Many times, eCommerce merchants connects with the customers after few days to know how happy they are with their products. Although it seems easy, there are lot many intricacies involved in this process. Let’s have a look at the process in detail.

Steps involved in order management

• When the order is placed, the merchant will pick the ordered items from the inventory and ship it to the customers
• Send email notifications to the customer, informing him/her about the shipment status

Problems involved in the process

• The merchant may be facing an out-of-stock situation when he/she received an order. So now the merchant has two options: either he/she can partially ship the order and request the customer to wait for few days to receive other part of the order, or he/she can ask the customer to cancel the order altogether.
• Sometimes the merchant may not stock all the items, especially when he/she is selling thousands of items. He/she may be using drop shipping, asking the manufacturer to directly ship the item to the customers.
• Another potential area of problem is when the merchant is using fulfillment warehouse. When the cost of carrying inventory rises too much, many merchants use third-party warehouses to store their inventory. When the merchant using such facilities receives an order, he/she forwards the order information to the warehouse party, who in turn will ship the goods directly to the customers.

Execution of the process

As I said earlier, many times there can be multiple parties involved in the order management – merchant, customer, shipping company, manufacturer/vendor, and/or fulfillment warehouse. To co-ordinate between all these parties, the merchant will need to use series of communication tools, including email, fax and phone calls. This method is feasible until the operations are small. As your business starts expanding, problems will start cropping up in this system. So in this situation, it’s better to use order management software.

What can order management software do?

Through order management software, a merchant can automate the entire process – right from the moment a customer places an order to the moment when the customer receives an order. Merchants can even set reminders to follow up with customers. Through an order management system, a merchant can:

• Send automatic order details to the involved parties
• Keep track of your inventory through a centralized inventory system
• Co-ordinate with various parties involved through a set procedure
• Send automatic shipping information to the customers
• Follow up with the customers to gather their feedback

Do you need help in implementing such order management system? Contact us.

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