Online shopping may never see a significant boon such as the one in the beginning of COVID-19’s emergence. With safety at the forefront, online shopping became the safest option as professionals began tackling the virus throughout the country. The trending lines were all positioned upward before the initial COVID outbreak though. Throughout 2019, online retail sales contributed more than $3.5 trillion dollars globally, as nearly two billion people shopped online for various products and services.
These numbers wouldn’t be possible without Amazon. Amazon has single-handedly transformed the way in which retailers operate within the e-commerce space. Through Amazon’s marketplace, customers are free to browse over twelve million different products from a wide range of suppliers. With upwards of 200 million users visiting the platform every month, 12 million products seems a bit more reasonable. With that being said, this sort of influence can impact smaller online retailers by a large margin. As the expectations set forth on the rest of the industry, many smaller online retailers struggle to keep up, particularly in regards to shipping options.
These businesses competing with Amazon in this space certainly feel their impact. Adjusting to that impact is imperative for these businesses. Developing ways to keep their customers happy despite their logistical woes is a challenge, but a necessary one. In most cases, this is accomplished through branded tracking pages or member-based shipping prices. While a tracking page doesn’t solve a customer’s need for their product at an expedited speed, it does provide them the agency to stay up to date on the processing and shipping cycle of their orders. These pages can increase brand recognition and improve the customer experience.
The reason these smaller businesses should prioritize their customer experience over their shipping abilities is because it’s going to be difficult to match up to Amazon regardless. Free two-day shipping is nearly impossible to keep up with, no matter how good a businesses’ automated storage and retrieval system is. However, if these smaller retailers were to prioritize one aspect of their shipping, it should be the cost associated. While most customers prefer their orders to arrive at an accelerated rate, they’re not willing to pay the costs associated with that rate unless it’s necessary, hence Amazon’s success. However, these same customers would be willing to wait a bit longer for their package assuming it doesn’t cost them anything. This is where smaller online retailers can focus their efforts for maximum return on investment.
Managing customer expectations and shipment capabilities simultaneously can be a real challenge for online retailers in such a developed space. For some more helpful information on how to stack up against the industry powers, be sure to check out the infographic coupled alongside this post.
Author bio: John Hinchey is VP of Sales for Westfalia Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of logistics solutions for plants, warehouses and distribution centers. He has more than 20 years of experience in manufacturing and warehouse automation.
