The order is placed – As soon as the customer clicks “Buy”, the order information is processed by the retailer’s ecommerce technology (aka the order management system, or OMS). That information is then sent to the order fulfillment area’s warehouse management system (WMS), which lets operations employees know that the order is ready to be picked.

The picking process – This is the first phase that an order physically passes through (and where it actually takes form!). Warehouse pickers receive the orders and walk the warehouse aisles with the order in hand, selecting the products for that order (aka “picking”). Once all of the items for that order have been picked, they take that order to the packing station.

The packing station – At the packing station, packers prepare the order for shipment. They carefully package the items with protective shipping materials and determine the most cost-effective packaging method for each order. The packing station is also the place where additional branding initiatives take place (think order inserts, custom packaging such as tissue paper or logo stickers, etc.).

The freight analysis – After the package is carefully sealed and labeled, it heads down a conveyor belt to a weighing area where it’s weighed, shipping costs are calculated and documented, and the orders are sorted by priority (overnight, next-day, etc.).  Next, the order is ready to head out the warehouse door!

The dock – At the last stage, orders are palletized and loaded onto the freight carrier’s truck. From here, the purchases are whisked off down the highway and on to their destinations!

To some, that might sound boring – but to see all of the behind-the-scenes stuff happen live in the warehouse right in front of you is a pretty cool experience. Not to mention that the entire process is incredibly fast-paced and happens to thousands of orders every day, all with a 99% accuracy rate. Just another reason why working at Fifth Gear is an eye-opening experience for this ecommerce shopper!

1. Hire the right people: Most retailers cut back on hiring in 2011, but as the economy improves and demand spikes, they’re seeking out new employees with more than just a “customer service” mindset. Ability to go beyond the traditional retail mindset to focus on the total customer experience – from web usability to pick and pack order presentation to service after the sale – is a must-have for additions to your ecommerce team.

2. Integrate your channels: Retailers have been talking cross-channel and multichannel for years, but 2012 will be a make or break year for those retailers wanting to present a completely integrated and personalized experience to their customers. From the contact center to the fulfillment warehouse, every part of your operations must talk to each other to make it work.

3. Focus on online security: With 1% of all online sales at risk of being fraudulent and American retailers losing $14.37 billion in returns fraud in 2011, online merchants have the unenviable task of adding more sales channels and making the purchase process easier on consumers while still securing it from fraud. Use technology (check against order history, purchase, fraud prevention tools, etc.) to secure your and your customer’s information. Becoming PCI compliant can help alleviate data breach worries!

4. Add flexibility to fulfillment: You can ace steps 1-3 above all you want, but if your order fulfillment services don’t deliver the order at the right time (and place) to the right customer you can undo all of your efforts in an instant. Many retailers struggle with accuracy rates during the holiday season when record numbers of orders flood the warehouse and phone calls overwhelm your call center.  Flexibility in your retail operations can mean anything from adding additional shifts or extending warehouse and contact center hours during peak seasons to implementing newer sales channels.

Are you poised to make these changes to your ecommerce business this year? If you’re growing faster than you can keep up with, the next logical step for you may be to outsource your retail operations to an outsourced provider. By selecting a single-source provider, you can trust your order fulfillment, technology, and customer service needs to an industry expert without having to hire additional staff or investing in additional tools. Sounds great, right? Talk to us about it!

So what’s all the hype about?  Pinterest has become one of the fastest growing social sites on the Internet.  According to Compete.com, Pinterest had a 6 month growth rate of nearly 900% as of January of 2012. It is the fastest site in history to surpass 10 million visitors. Most importantly – for retailers, Pinterest recently surpassed LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ in retailer referral traffic. Simply put, that means more unique visitors to your site – and more visitors means more opportunities for conversion.

While search engines remain the predominant source for online retailer referrals, social websites are growing quickly in relevance.  Diligent online marketers are scrambling to strategize how to best leverage this new and exciting channel.  Here are a few tips for retailers who are just getting started with Pinterest:

Keep it social – Pinterest is a social site.  Savvy users are able to spot boards that are overly self-promotional and are less likely to revisit.  By weaving in some theme-based articles and content from other websites on your board, you stand a better chance of attracting followers. Start by pinning your best-selling products to your board, for example, or dividing your boards up by product line to attract users.

Find the popular crowd – Similar to sites like Twitter, certain users are more influential based on the sheer amount of followers they have.  Typically when you follow someone of this stature, they will reciprocate by following you back, which will push your content to a much larger circle of individuals. This means more follows and more exposure!

Run contests – You’ve likely put a lot of time into building out your other social channels like Facebook and Google+.  Leverage the audience you have in those spaces by running a contest that points them to your Pinterest page, such as a “Best Use of Our Product” photo contest with entries getting pinned to your account.

Engage – All online retail marketers know that engagement is the holy grail of online marketing. Encourage your followers to interact with your brand by opening up your board to their contributions.  You can reciprocate by re-pinning content or leaving comments about other user’s pins.  Adding mention (using the @ symbol) tags to captions is another way to let users know that you are repinning their content and will drive them to follow you.

Add Pinterest Share Buttons – You can embed a “Pin It” button to your blog or website just as you likely have for other social media sites, making it easier for customers to share products of interest. “Pin It” buttons are also a must for product pages – if your customer just purchased your product, for example, you want to make sure she pins it to her “Stuff I Love!” board! Additionally, you can encourage shoppers to follow you by adding the Pinterest “Follow” button on every page of your site.

When was the last time you took a good look at your operations? Most multichannel retailers treat their retail operations as the stepdaughters treated Cinderella – leave it to do the dirty work of the pick and packprocess while they focus on the more glamorous functions like site design, merchandising, and social marketing. But since order fulfillment is the backbone of any direct-to-consumer retail business, retailers should pay special attention to these processes to ensure that their customers’ experience is a dream come true from start to finish. Here are a few areas to focus on that we find are trouble spots for most retailers:  

• Start with shipping: When was the last time you and your fulfillment provider conducted an audit of your freight costs? When did you last analyze both your inbound freight costs (shipping from your manufacturer to your fulfillment services warehouse)? By paying attention to the details of your shipping strategy – such as knowing where a majority of your customer base resides or figuring out which carriers have hubs nearest your distribution facility – you can reduce your shipping costs and pass that savings along to your customers.
• Leave no inventory unaccounted for: Matching up inventory levels with marketing campaigns is smart, but it’s the least of your inventory problems. Having a warehouse management system that provides accurate data on unlisted products, over- and under-stocked SKUs, and aged inventory is critical for management to calculate the cost of inventory, devise ways to effectively manage it, and create merchandising plans that make sense for the business.
• Streamline customer interaction: ‘Operations’ isn’t limited to just warehouses, racks, and pick and pack staff – it should also include any department that has everyday customer interaction, such as your contact center. All of these departments should communicate regularly and be streamlined to provide a consistent, responsive, integrated experience for your customer before, during, and following the purchase process. To control costs and improve service levels, pay constant attention to agent performance, training opportunities, system maintenance, and customer feedback.

What most retailers forget is that unless your order fulfillment operations are running efficiently and cost-effectively, you’re not providing the best service possible. If you want your customers to ‘live happily ever after’ (or at least until the next purchase!), outsource your order fulfillment operations to Fifth Gear. By using our fulfillment outsourcing services, including warehousing, shipping, customer service, and freight management, you can focus on the ‘glamorous side’ of ecommerce while we take care of all of the practical details!  

How many brand managers do you have? Now, how about channel managers? I’m willing to bet that for most of you retailers out there, the answer might be one – if you even have one at all. As the number of direct-to-consumer channels increases by the hour, it becomes increasingly difficult for a retailer to preserve and enhance brand identity across the many ways that consumers find them.

Why should the brand matter? To customers, your “brand” goes far beyond your logo, your color scheme, or your site – it represents the company as a whole, its ideology and values, and most importantly, the way you attract new customers and retain the ones you already have. So while you’re busy synchronizing your order fulfillment and customer service processes as I suggested in a previous blog,  you can also put a few of these ideas into practice to ensure that your brand comes through crystal clear in every channel you use.

• Your brand should guide your marketing strategy: As you plan your marketing activities for your various channels, let your brand’s strategy be your guide. If your brand stands for cool and trendy, are your marketing campaigns saying staid and stodgy?  Are you busy writing up content-heavy case studies when your customers prefer to interact via social media? It’s easy to get caught up in what you “should” do from a marketing perspective – make sure that you’re walking the walk AND talking the talk when it comes to what your brand means.
• Integrate all brand activity via your website: Experts recommend that all activity that involves your brand (webinars, conferences and events, promotions etc.) should tie back into special landing pages and campaign codes on your website. In addition to helping you understand customer interest and increase conversion (as well as determine which marketing efforts work and which don’t), your website now becomes the endpoint to deliver brand identity.
• Analyze customer commitment to your brand based on activity: Did the customer download a case study? Request a live demo? Click on the Buy button? Retweet? Each interaction represents the level of commitment on the part of the customer to your brand (attraction, intention to buy, intention to talk about you). Use actual engagement statistics, not meaningless data such as the number of likes or followers, as success indicators for future reinforcement.

Operating your brand over numerous channels, while still keeping your message from getting diluted in the process, is much easier said than done. But at the end of the day, your brand is what you make it – and it’s definitely worth protecting. In fact, even retail fulfillment services and customer contact centers can become key areas that carry on your company’s brand identity!

But beware. Producing and implementing product videos is costly, and there are several approaches a retailer can take.  Depending on your retail niche, product videos can be launched to achieve various goals, so some thoughtful planning needs to take place before you dive into a video project. Some videos simply show a product in use with multiple views.  Others are instructional how-to’s with narration. Showing a product in use is a perfect way of diminishing shopper doubts when buying online. What’s more, video can play the role of the in-store sales associate, explaining the features of a product, and its benefits to the consumer.  A “salesy” approach isn’t what consumers want, however.  They are looking for an authentic and conversational explanation that is helpful in making the right decision.

They say “seeing is believing” which is why A/B testing on sites with video show a 2x higher conversion rate over those without. In the end, videos can mean reduced customer support and fewer product returns.  They set the expectation of a product size, performance and uses in a way that still photography simply cannot achieve.

What are the options for producing video, you ask?  Retailers leading the way in product video implementations have tried a variety of methods to generate their video content.  You can go the in-house route, and for many retailers this is easy enough and appropriate for their brand.  Other retailers should look to their suppliers and manufacturers for video clips or find a professional production agency. Alternately, some retailers have found success in collecting user-generated video. 

No matter which option turns out to be suitable for your retail site, you should give it a try. You’ll need to test video to ensure that the approach you choose is in line with your shoppers’ behavior. Follow their purchase decision process and integrate video to discover the best possible conversion impact.  Figure out what works best for your own customers. Don’t forget that those same videos can be repurposed in email marketing and on social media sites. 

Love is in the air – with Valentine’s Day just 4 days away, I’m sure that you online retailers who promote the holiday have seen a significant spike in traffic and sales of everything from stuffed animals to apparel to chocolates and food items. However, one of the most popular themes for Valentine’s Day gifts includes a personal touch. Whether it’s an engraved photo frame, an embroidered blanket, or a customized t-shirt, providing your customers with a more sentimental gifting option can be a boon for online retailers. And the best part – even though a love-themed holiday like February 14^th lends itself well to customized products, the demand for product personalization remains steady throughout the remainder of the year (and even spikes again during the holiday season!).

It’s true that embroidery machines and engraving lasers can be pricey additions to a retailer’s budget, but that doesn’t mean that offering customized products is out of your reach. By using an outsourced fulfillment provider who offers custom fulfillment services, you can take advantage of the provider’s existing equipment and expertise. Furthermore, the cost-per-order for offering personalized products are often considerably cheaper when a retailer doesn’t have to worry about machine maintenance costs,  supplies, or hiring, training, and paying employees to operate the machinery. And because you get all of the additional benefits to outsourcing your retail fulfillment, it’s a win-win.

Think about it – your lovesick customers log on to your site, pick out the perfect gift, and type in a sappy message for their valentine to forever be emblazoned on their product. And by choosing a single-source provider for both your pick and pack and custom fulfillment needs, you’ll also save both time and money by reducing shipping between the warehouse and the personalization venue.

Oh, and here’s a helpful customer experience hint: for the less romantically inclined or the incredibly uncreative, you can offer a dropdown menu of standard messages on your product checkout pages to inspire your customers (think: “I love you”, “Happy birthday”, etc.). Being able to read your customer’s mind? That says genius!

What makes the customer check that top box instead of any of the ones below it? You have been working on your order fulfillment process, refining it to meet your predetermined productivity and efficiency levels. However, experts recommend that you also synchronize your fulfillment services based on your customers’ expectations and treat your retail operations as an extension of your customer service team.

How do ecommerce retailers do that? In our previous blog we spoke about how customers are not concerned about how many channels you operate from – all they want is a seamless shopping experience from research and browsing, through the fulfillment process to post-purchase customer service. As you forge ahead with your ecommerce strategy for 2012, keep these three tips in mind to make sure that you’re exceeding your customers’ expectations.

Data is king: The more you know your customer and his habits, interests, likes, and dislikes, the more you can meet his expectations. As you gather analytics from the different channels you operate from, put them together into a cohesive and comprehensive report that your merchandising and marketing teams can use to fine-tune their campaigns and customer touch points. Focus on data provided to your contact center team as they take customer calls and complaints, or from your fulfillment services team as they pick and pack your customer orders.

Forget customer service silos: Having the data by itself is useless if your customer service team isn’t trained to use it to solve customer problems and issues. If your customers shop via smart phones, does your team have access to the same technology to see what the customer sees? Are they trained where certain products are located on your website and what search terms will bring them up? If there are any pricing discrepancies, can they take care of it right away and explain why? If your employees have never read your blog, interacted with your social media profiles, or even seen your website, they can’t provide the best customer service possible – period.

Don’t spread yourself thin: Make this one a constant reminder! As a business, every channel you operate should enhance your brand identity, not dilute it. It is the management team’s responsibility to analyze each channel of operations and make sure each channel’s marketing efforts, customer service teams, products, and operations communicate the company’s brand values consistently.

Synchronizing your order fulfillment and customer service processes with what you know your customer wants is obviously easier said than done. If you need help in creating a seamless shopping experience for your customers, talk to Fifth Gear. We have been building brands, fulfilling orders, and servicing customers for over three decade!

The Super Bowl is over and the retailers had a rocking party as customers shopped to their sports-loving hearts’ content. With all that behind us, it’s now time to focus on a holiday that retailers and marketers alike have really grown to love: Valentine’s Day.

According to the NRF’s Customer Intentions Survey, experts are projecting a 10-year high in Valentine Day sales in 2012 – which means that those lucky in love will shell out roughly $17.6 billion on jewelry, apparel, candy, food, gift cards, flowers, and more. In recent years, the holiday has become a marketing boon for retailers, so they’re going all out to attract the love (and the money) on Valentine’s Day. So what can you to attract some of the $126 Americans will be spending for February 14? Here are three tricks you can apply to your ecommerce site before the big day – and use for other holidays, too!

• Gussy up your site: As starry-eyed teens and last-minute-shopping lovers start searching for their desired gifts online, make sure that your website is the first they find. That means adding some Valentine-themed content (think blogs, social media posts, and even new pages) and prominently displaying the perfect products on your homepage. If you use pay-per-click advertising in your online marketing strategy, don’t forget to create some campaigns specific to Valentine’s Day with keywords that your target market will most likely use to find you (and landing pages for those products, too!). And since most shoppers will buy at the last minute, have your shipping and delivery dates clearly marked on your website – especially next to the “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button.
• Make it easy for the men – Let’s be honest, fellas – we know most men dread wandering around the busy aisles of retail stores, hoping for inspiration to strike. What will inevitably drive them crazier is if they have to search around your website doing the same thing. Display your special promotions and deals prominently on your website, and spread the word about it via newsletters and social media. Just in case she doesn’t love it – remind your pick and pack staff and contact center agents of your returns process and make sure it’s easy to find on your site.
• Valentine’s Day is for all retailers – Feeling left out? Even if your products or services don’t exactly fit the mold for attracting Valentine’s Day shoppers (like sporting goods, outdoor apparel, pet supplies, etc.), spread some love by bundling a couple of products together as a special “Valentine’s Day package” for the pet, child, parent, or other non-traditional gift receivers during this holiday. And don’t forget – nothing says serious thought like a personalized gift, so if you offer embroidery, engraving, or other custom retail services, keep those offers front-and-center and be prepared for a spike in sales!

You don’t need an excuse to show your customers that you love them. But on Valentine’s Day, you get the perfect reason to do so. So make their experience an easy, pleasant one on your site and they will show you the money!

And because life is hectic (thus the online shopping), chances are they’re multi-tasking at this point of wrapping up their purchase.  The hard part of choosing the perfect product is done, and now it’s done to the boring stuff.  Your shopper has now likely moved on to talking on the phone, glancing at the tv, eating a snack, digging for their credit card, or deciding whether to scold their screaming kids. The point is, there are are simply too many things that can derail the completion of your sale, so nothing’s more important than making the process easy.

Retailers who get the importance of optimizing their checkout processes will capitalize on the shopper’s natural inclination to take shortcuts.  We know that checkout abandonment is a serious inefficiency for many online retail sites. I just read that some 45% of shoppers admit to abandoning their shopping cart within a three-week timeframe – and not just once!  This is something to worry about.

Improvements to checkout can focus on the overall experience, or they can apply only to a single element in the process.  Here are some areas to review on both fronts:

Overall optimization opportunities:

• Clean form design
• Effective instructions for usability
• Information error messages

Areas for specific optimization:

• Login, password, and first-time registration
• Delivery options and shipping cost details
• Promotional codes or coupons
• Summary of the order
• Final confirmation

In general, the goal should be “keep it simple”. The experience should be predictable, easy to use, and simple to understand. Remember, the psychology of your shopper says they’re lazy at this point, so make it clear and simple in any way you can.