Fast Fulfillment Services

Is your current fulfillment process slowing you down?

To stay competitive, online brands need a fulfillment strategy that enables fast fulfillment to meet customer expectations around fast and affordable shipping. But without a robust fulfillment infrastructure and advanced technology, it can be hard to keep up with customer demand and the competition.

That’s why fast-growing brands partner with ShipBob, a best-in-class ecommerce fulfillment provider that offers fast fulfillment services. Read on about how ShipBob’s fast fulfillment solution can improve your bottom line and boost customer satisfaction.

ShipBob has been the perfect partner. Their speed to scale and fast pick, pack, and ship process has been seamless, as our business grew 1,200% in a couple of weeks.

Andrea Lisbona,

Founder & CEO of Touchland

Fast fulfillment involves the ability to not efficiently and accurately pick and pack customer orders, but it also relates to offering fast, affordable shipping.

Fulfillment is often slowed down due to a lack of technology and logistics automation, inventory distribution, and product allocation, which all plays a role in optimizing the fulfillment process. Not to mention, as your order volume grows, you and your team will have to spend more time on logistics operations, rather than focusing on other important business tasks.

The good news is third-party logistics (3PLs) providers like ShipBob can offer fast fulfillment solutions for ecommerce businesses when order volume becomes difficult to keep up with.

Customers expect fast fulfillment

Here are the facts:

• 25 % of online shoppers have entirely canceled an order because of slow delivery speeds.
• 53% of consumers said that delivery time is an important factor when it comes to evaluating their online orders.
• 51% of ecommerce retailers are already offering same-day delivery, as compared to only 16% in 2016.

Thanks to major online marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart, customers expect fast fulfillment no matter what they order. That means, most online brands need a fast fulfillment process in place that optimizes their supply chain.

Fulfillment speed is more important than you think

Fast fulfillment is not just about creating a fast and accurate pick, pack, and ship process. Fulfillment speed has the power to improve your bottom line, boost customer satisfaction, reduce cart abandonment, and more. Here are a few reasons why fulfillment speed is an important factor in ecommerce growth.

1. Maintains high customer satisfaction

Consumers today want fast shipping. The average maximum amount of time considered acceptable to wait for a package is only 4.1 days compared to 5.5 days back in 2012.

In the age of instant gratification, offering guaranteed two-day shipping, or transit times that won’t be seen as “too long” in their eyes, can lead to a positive customer experience. In turn, this can lead to better customer reviews and recommendations.

2. Quicker return management

A 3PL can make ecommerce returns easier. With fast fulfillment, you’re also able to speed up the returns process. You can provide customers with prepaid return labels and share return tracking information.

3. Increase visibility across multi-channel platforms

For an ecommerce business to scale, it’s crucial to have visibility into inventory levels at all times.

Having full inventory visibility enables you to prepare for the unexpected and provides you with the data and analytics you need to make better business decisions, such as how to efficiently allocate inventory across your distribution network for faster fulfillment and shipping.

4. Reduces cart abandonment rate

Two of the top reasons for high cart abandonment rates are high shipping costs and slow fulfillment and delivery. Storing inventory closer to your customers not only speeds fulfillment, but it also reduces shipping costs.

Leave fulfillment to the ShipBob experts

ShipBob is a leading 3PL that partners with over 5,000 ecommerce businesses in a wide range of industries across the globe. ShipBob offers a growing international fulfillment network, 2-day shipping via ground, premium technology, and best-in-class customer support. Here is an overview of how ShipBob fast fulfillment services can help keep your business competitive.

Process order volumes easily

As soon as an order is created or imported into your ShipBob dashboard, it is automatically sent to one of our fulfillment centers with your inventory to be fulfilled. We assign orders to our picking team, who receive a picking list of the items, quantities, and storage locations at our facility to procure and count to complete their pick.

2-day fast shipping

If a customer’s address is within ShipBob’s predetermined area of coverage, the customer will be offered a guaranteed 2-day via ground shipping option at a significantly lower price than expedited 2-day air.

ShipBob also has a 2-Day Express Program, which enables fast delivery for all contiguous US orders for any of our ecommerce store integrations.

Distributed warehouse network

With customers today expecting a two-day turnaround for their orders (and many accepting nothing longer), using multiple warehousing and storage locations lets you significantly reduce last-mile delivery times.

Accurate order fulfillment

ShipBob is also constantly implementing new technology and automation tools to improve order accuracy, such as automated sorting and box selection algorithms that use dimensions and your packaging preferences to tell us which package size to use for any order combination.

Sales forecast demand

ShipBob offers demand forecasting tools, data, and analytics to help you predict future demand by using historical sales data. That way, you can make informed business decisions about everything from inventory planning and warehousing to running promotions.

Switching to ShipBob is quick and easy

Getting started with ShipBob is simple. Once you sync your online store to our technology, we help get you up and running quickly. As soon as we receive your inventory, orders are automatically sent to the closest fulfillment center to the order’s destination and are quickly picked, packed, and shipped.

Fast fulfillment FAQs

Here are answers to the most common questions related to fast fulfillment.

How does 2-day shipping work?

There are two primary methods that enable delivery in 2 days: air shipping and ground shipping. Merchants that offer 2-day shipping via ground typically ship orders from fulfillment centers in different regions.

Why is fast fulfillment important?

Fast fulfillment helps online brands compete with established brands and marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart. Fast fulfillment can be achieved by outsourcing fulfillment to a 3PL like ShipBob.

How does ShipBob offer fast shipping options?

ShipBob offers same-day fulfillment for B2C orders imported into the ShipBob dashboard. Merchants can also distribute their inventory to multiple ShipBob fulfillment centers that are closest to their end customers to reduce shipping costs and speed.