In e-commerce, success depends on a strategic alliance between marketing and logistics. The first step in this journey is customer acquisition: 82% of French consumers say that delivery times influence their choice of shopping platform. This statistic highlights the importance of offering the right delivery times to attract and retain customers.
However, even with high traffic, the challenge remains to convert visits into sales. Around 60% of shopping baskets are not finalized, often due to unforeseen additional costs, such as delivery or preparation costs. This underscores the importance of a transparent, competitive strategy when it comes to delivery costs.
Last but not least, the delivery experience is crucial to customer loyalty. A poor experience can deter 85% of customers from returning to an e-commerce site, underlining the critical role of logistics in building a lasting reputation.
In this article, find out how smart logistics can strengthen your marketing strategy, by focusing on these key aspects of winning and retaining your online customers.
Logistics and procurement
The success of your e-commerce business depends heavily on your ability to effectively manage logistics and attract targeted traffic. Find out how to create a robust and effective acquisition strategy.
Omnichannel and acquisition
Shippingbo’s Order Management System (OMS) plays a crucial role in enabling you to easily connect different sales channels. Whether it’s your own merchant site, popular marketplaces, private sales sites, or even dropshipping partnerships with other e-tailers, Shippingbo’s OMS is the perfect tool for centralizing and efficiently managing your sales.
This tool is designed to adapt and synchronize with the stock dedicated to each of your sales channels. This near-instantaneous update is essential to maintain the integrity of your stock and avoid customer disappointment due to out-of-stock situations. By being present on several channels, you increase your visibility, which translates into increased traffic to your site.
The advantage of integrating on marketplaces is not just the increase in orders. These platforms, often very popular, such as Amazon or Cdiscount, offer exceptional visibility. Even if each visit doesn’t immediately lead to a purchase, it contributes to your brand’s reputation. This increased presence on various channels can attract potential customers to your e-commerce site, or even to your physical stores, if you have any.
Boost your SEO by expanding your product catalog
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a fundamental lever for attracting targeted traffic to your site. An often under-exploited aspect of improving your SEO is working on your catalog, and more specifically, on your product sheets. The more exhaustive, detailed and rich in data and characteristics a product sheet is, the more beneficial it is for your SEO.
Let’s take a concrete example: a USB-C cable. The classic approach would be to create a generic product sheet listing a wide range of compatible devices. However, this approach can prove ineffective, as evidenced by some Amazon product sheets with endless, unfocused titles. A more effective strategy would be to create very specific product sheets, for example, “USB-C cable for Samsung Galaxy S21” or “USB-C cable for Xiaomi 13T”. This attracts a specific audience looking for those exact terms.
However, one challenge is that traditional e-commerce platforms often don’t allow you to create multiple product sheets for a single SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), which limits this strategy. Shippingbo distinguishes between the “virtual catalog” and the “physical catalog”. In other words, you can have multiple product files associated with a single physical SKU in your warehouse. This distinction between the commercial catalog and the actual catalog in the warehouse simplifies your inventory management and boosts your SEO. You can increase the number of product files without complicating the logistics of routing and order preparation.
Another innovative aspect to consider is the creation of bundles. With Shippingbo, you can easily manage these bundles in your Order Management System (OMS). The order picker simply retrieves the individual products and assembles them into a package, without the need to prepare bundles in advance, thus avoiding logistical complications.
Logistics and conversion rates
A well-honed logistics strategy directly influences customer perceptions and decisions, playing a key role in optimizing your conversion rates. Discover the elements that interact to boost your e-commerce.
Stock control
Controlling your inventory is fundamental in e-commerce, not only to guarantee operational efficiency, but also to fully exploit your marketing strategies. The key lies in the reliability and synchronization of your data in real or near-real time. This precise control over inventory offers significant marketing opportunities, particularly by leveraging “marketing stress” or FOMO(Fear Of Missing Out).
Imagine this: a customer visits your site and sees that only a few units of a product are available. This creates a sense of urgency, increasing the likelihood of immediate purchase. You have two options here: either simply indicate that the product is in stock, or play on this marketing stress by announcing, for example, “Only 5 products left in stock! Buy now to avoid missing out on a great deal”. This is a powerful lever that can positively influence conversion rates.
In a context where you’re selling on a variety of channels, it becomes essential to have a tool that allows you to define marketing stress strategies for each of these channels. This is where the importance of a modern, efficient Order Management System (OMS) comes in. The right OMS is designed to increase your online sales by integrating these marketing strategies. We’ve met many prospects who are keen to adopt this type of strategy, but who are limited by their existing internal tools.
Transport strategy and delivery promise
A clear and achievable delivery promise is essential. It’s crucial to display it at the earliest stages of the customer journey, especially on product sheets. Clearly stating “Expected delivery on [date] if you order within 5 hours” is a powerful conversion lever. This transparency must be maintained in the mini-basket and shopping cart to reinforce trust and encourage finalization of the purchase.
When choosing delivery methods, clarity is essential. In B2C, instead of simply listing the names of carriers, it’s often more effective to present options in terms of promises: for example, “Express delivery in 24 hours”. This approach simplifies decision-making for the customer and improves the user experience. In B2B, where certain carriers may be more recognized and trusted, it can be a good idea to highlight them.
By using an intelligent transport management system (TMS), like the one integrated into Shippingbo, you can not only keep your sales promise, but also optimize your transport costs. For example, logistics intelligence can suggest click and collect for an order close to your physical store, thus reducing delivery costs.
The delivery strategy must also take into account cultural and geographical preferences. In Spain, for example, the national postal service is often preferred because of its extensive coverage and convenient working hours. A hyper-personalized approach based on the location of the order can greatly enhance the customer experience.
Improve customer reviews
In e-commerce, customer reviews are a major asset for your business. Often left on neutral platforms such as Trustpilot or Verified, they play a key role in the perception of your brand and directly influence the loyalty and conversion of new customers. The majority of these reviews are closely linked to the customer’s post-order experience, in particular delivery, which usually takes place between 24 hours and a week after dispatch.
The quality of the post-order experience is crucial. A successful and timely delivery is often the customer’s last contact with your company, and leaves a lasting impression. Integrating and highlighting these reviews on your e-commerce site is a winning strategy. By displaying them in strategic places, such as the footer or next to product descriptions, you increase visitor confidence in your brand. These authentic testimonials act as social proof, reassuring potential customers about the quality of your products and services.
Another best practice is to integrate rating engines directly into product sheets. This allows your customers to leave product-specific reviews, enriching the information available to potential buyers. These product-level ratings help build trust in the quality and reliability of what you offer, contributing to better conversion.
Logistics and loyalty
Building customer loyalty in e-commerce is a complex challenge, in which logistics play a crucial role. Understanding and optimizing this link between logistics and loyalty is essential to keeping customers engaged and satisfied.
Break detected after ordering
The fear of running out of stock after a successful order is a dreaded scenario for many e-tailers. This problem, often linked to stock desynchronization, arises when your e-commerce platform and stock management solution are not perfectly aligned. This desynchronization can be even more pronounced when distributing products across multiple marketplaces, especially those that don’t reserve stock. The immediate consequence is an order accepted for a product that is ultimately unavailable, leading to cancellation of the order and laborious management of customer dissatisfaction.
Faced with this challenge, it’s essential to have a solution that synchronizes inventory in real time, almost instantaneously. The technology offered by tools such as Shippingbo’s enables this synchronization in a matter of seconds, minimizing the risk of stock-outs after an order has been placed. This reactivity is particularly crucial during high-traffic events such as Black Friday, where the high volume of sales increases the risk of out-of-synchronization.
In addition to multi-channel management, specific solutions such as stock reservation for events like private sales ensure that these situations are isolated from the usual risks. So, by adopting advanced inventory management technologies, e-tailers can not only avoid post-order shortages but also enhance the customer experience, strengthening brand loyalty and trust. It’s a strategic investment that translates into a significant reduction in the costs associated with managing customer dissatisfaction, and a marked improvement in the company’s reputation.
Quality of order tracking
The quality of order tracking is a key element in building customer loyalty and satisfaction. This means not only being responsive and transparent, but also communicating regularly and accurately on the various devices and media preferred by your customers.
At Shippingbo, our solutions offer a multitude of order tracking statuses, enabling detailed traceability from the moment the order is received, throughout its processing, from preparation to release to the carrier. This granularity of tracking not only improves visibility for the customer, but also adds a personal touch.
At Shippingbo, our role goes beyond that of a simple software publisher. We position ourselves as a strategic partner, providing accurate, customizable information flows. Our customers can integrate this data into their CRM or CMS, enhancing their communication and customer relations strategy. This approach also enables us to work closely with consulting agencies to optimize marketing strategies tailored to specific consumer needs.
An easier return
Currently, around 45% of French people return their orders, a figure amplified in the fashion world due to questions of morphology and fit. To limit this return rate, several practices can be put in place.
First of all, enriching product sheets with precise details can greatly reduce returns. By avoiding disappointment upon receipt, you contribute to a better customer experience. The use of clear visuals, and if possible, videos, is a recommended practice. In addition, the use of size guides, particularly for fashion and watches, helps customers to choose the right product and reduces returns due to incorrect sizing.
However, even with these optimizations, returns are inevitable. In this context, facilitating the returns process becomes a key strategy. For example, platforms such as Zalando require returns to be simple and hassle-free. In practice, this means providing a returns label in the product’s back office. The consumer can then easily return the product, simply by affixing the label to the parcel and taking it to the post office.
On the merchant side, efficient returns management is essential. At Shippingbo, we adopt an approach similar to that of airports managing airplanes: a parcel is expensive as soon as it’s not on sale. So, thanks to our technologies, the time between your suppliers receiving the returned product and putting it back on sale is reduced to less than an hour. The product is received, reconditioned if necessary, and its barcode is scanned for an almost instantaneous return to the pre-established sales channels.
This approach not only optimizes returns management, but also transforms them into a sales opportunity. By offering a smooth, effortless returns experience , you increase customer confidence in your brand, which can translate into increased sales and improved customer loyalty. In short, a well-managed returns process is a productive tool for your business and your sales channels.
Harmonizing logistics and marketing for successful e-commerce
Delivery times, associated costs, the quality of order tracking, and effective returns management are all components that directly influence the customer experience, impacting loyalty and conversion rates. The omnichannel approach, enriched by intelligent inventory management and SEO optimization, opens up unprecedented avenues for attracting and retaining a wider customer base.
These strategies, combined with greater transparency and improved customer communication, are not only ways to increase sales, but also to build a brand of trust and quality. By adopting innovative solutions like those offered by Shippingbo, you can not only meet these challenges, but also turn these opportunities into tangible success.
