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Fulfillment

The 4th and Final Quarter

Oct 2, 2012
Selling

It’s the first week of October. It is, officially, the 4th and final quarter of 2012. Thanksgiving is now just 52 days away, including today. Which means that you have 52 days until Black Friday, and then another 23 until Christmas Day. But…

 

You’ll be fine. Just follow these tips and you should be a bit more comfortable about the upcoming months. Remember, all this traffic is a great thing for you and your business. :)

 

  1. Research. Before you do anything, you must research your position. See what your competition is doing. Try the Internet’s WayBack Machine and see if you can find out what promotions went on last year. You don’t have to beat it, but some of them may be clever enough to inspire you to make your own version for this year.
  2. Pricing. You need to make sure that when people see your products, they immediately go “That’s a great value.” People during the holidays are buying a lot of merchandise, and the more valuable they feel your product is for their money, the better you and they will feel during and after the sale. Don’t offer your products for less than they are worth, but overpricing could kill you this holiday season.
  3. Promotions. Sales are the lynchpin of Black Friday and holiday sales. With your pricing strategy, keep in mind the promotions that you’re planning to offer for these days and how you’re going to make sure you are still making a profit on your sales. Remember, most everybody’s horrible at fractions and percentages. So, use that to your advantage. Giving 50% more of a product free and a B1G1 seem the same to people purchasing, but the former is more likely to be easier on your pocket.
  4. Shipping. If you don’t offer expedited shipping, now may be a time to look into it. Having the “order by [date] to receive by [date]” message on your website is paramount to preventing the majority of concerns on arrivals for e-commerce stores. For marketplaces & auctions, this is probably not as easy for you, but some sort of notification might be nice in your listings. Consider offering free or discounted shipping for some of your higher-selling products, or creating a discount around “order $X and get free shipping.”
  5. Marketing. Every customer pretty much expects that you’re going to offer some sort of sale for Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday. Don’t let yourself get left by the wayside by not telling them about exactly what you’re doing. Make up a snappy title for your e-mail campaign that will leave others looking lame. If you participate in PPC ads, make sure that they’re also eye-catching, advertise whatever promotions you’re running, and call the customer to actually click on your ad. (And then make it worth their while when they actually get to the landing page. After all, you paid for that click.)
  6. Record. Write down everything. Next year, around this time, you’ll love yourself for doing this. Time has a funny effect on memories, and writing yourself a diary of the time everything took to manage, what you did, what worked (and what didn’t), and the successes you experienced will help immensely when it’s time to do it all again.
  7. Relax. You will get everything done. Don’t try to conquer the world, just do what you do the best that you can. These months are busy. They always have been; they always will be. So, take the moments that present themselves and relax. Wine, beer, potato chips, molten chocolate cake… whatever floats your boat. (You can see that food is my favorite way to indulge.)

 

As much as you can do ahead of time, do it. Automation can help you tackle this season, as well as a couple of extra hands on deck. Stock up on shipping labels, boxes, tape, and packing materials so that you’re ready to fulfill and ship orders almost as quickly as they come in.

 

Do you have some pearls of wisdom that you’ve gained through previous seasons? Let me know in the comments!

 

I’m Erika, the social media & content manager for ShipStation. You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, and the other areas of the ShipStation world. In my free time, I’m a lover of video games, my cats, and other generally nerdy things. :)

 

Importing orders from a text file

Jun 1, 2012
News

Entering manual orders can be very time consuming and tedious. ShipStation now has a solution that will allow sellers to quickly import existing orders into our application. By using our new CSV Import feature, sellers can upload orders for marketplaces not currently supported by ShipStation. This feature is currently in Beta testing and is available to ShipStation users on the Silver or higher plans.

 

To begin importing your orders with our CSV Import feature in ShipStation, follow these simple instructions:

 

Step 1) Head to the “Orders” page and locate the “Import” button.

 

 

Step 2) Select a file to import from your local hard drive.

 

Step 3) If this is your first upload, select to create new field mappings. Remember to choose if your file is Comma Separated or Tab Delimited. Be sure to also specify if the first line of your file contains column names.

 

 

Step 4) You can now create your field mappings and save these settings for future imports.

 

 

Step 5) Click next to finalize your upload and view your orders.

 

We have just launched a beta test of our CSV Order Import feature, if you would like to be include you may let us know by emailing support@shipstation.com
or from within ShipStation by hovering over Support and select “Submit a Support Ticket.

 

As with any beta testing, we hope you’ll forgive the occasional hiccup. If you encounter any issues, please contact us through the same channels and and one our technical support team members will respond.

ShipStation is now a FedEx® Compatible Solution!

Apr 16, 2012
News

For the last several months we’ve been working very hard on adding new features to ShipStation. Today, we’re happy to announce that ShipStation is now a FedEx® Compatible Solution!

 

With this addition, ShipStation now supports the 3 major US shipping carriers! Here are some highlights of our new FedEx module:

 

Integration highlights

 

Support for FedEx Express, Ground, Home Delivery, and SmartPost
Retrieve real-time rate information
Create labels one at a time or in batch, up to 500 at a time!
Validate addresses for shipping accuracy
Email tracking information to your buyers
Communicate tracking information to your eCommerce platforms
Compatible with your Mac or PC

 

If you are looking for a user-friendly solution that will efficiently manage your FedEx shipping process, give ShipStation a try today!

 
 

See Plans and Pricing

Print Directly from Shipstation to any location with Google Cloud Print!

Mar 28, 2012
Shipping

Google Cloud Print

We’re excited to announce that ShipStation now supports Google Cloud Print! This technology allows you to print your shipping labels, packing slips, and reports to any compatible printer in the world! As an eCommerce store owner, we know you are always on the go. Now with ShipStation and Google Cloud Print, you can print shipping labels wherever you are!

 

This feature is now available on all ShipStation plans. The only requirement is that you have Google Chrome installed on the computer that is connected to your printer. You may continue to use ShipStation with any browser once Google Cloud Print has been set up.

Once Chrome is installed, follow these simple steps to get started with Google Cloud Print:

 

Step 1) Using Google Chrome on the computer that is attached to the printer, log in to ShipStation.

 

Step 2) Go to Settings > General Settings

 

 

 

Step 3) On the left, click the “Google Cloud Print” item

 

 

Step 4) Click the Get Started button and follow Google’s instructions for connecting your printers.

 

Another great feature is that you can print directly to “Google Docs”, so you can send labels or packing slips to your free Google “cloud storage” for archive purposes.

 

Free yourself from your desktop shipping program by using ShipStation and Google Cloud Print!

 

Look for more announcements and buzz in the coming months as we roll out new features and functionality to enhance ShipStation. In the meantime, check out the pricing section of our website to get started with your 30 day free trial today!

 

Go Green with UPS Paperless Invoices!

Feb 27, 2012
Shipping

Here’s another great reason to process your UPS shipments with ShipStation – UPS Paperless Invoices. Once this feature is enabled on your UPS account, ShipStation will communicate your customs information electronically – eliminating the need for paper commercial invoices!
 

The UPS Paperless Invoice has several benefits:

 

  • Electronic transmission allows customs processing to begin earlier, reducing customs holds by up to 56%!
  • Streamline your shipping process – you no longer have to send documents to a separate laser printer.
  • Reduce costs on ink and paper.
  • Help the environment by reducing paper use.

 
To enroll in the Paperless Invoice program, follow this link:
 
http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/paperless.html
 
If you aren’t using ShipStation to process your UPS shipments, get started today!

Use Product Tags to Automate Decisions and Save Money!

Dec 14, 2011
News

We are continuing to enhance the features of the “Products” area of ShipStation and this week we released a feature that can be extremely handy in the process of automating your shipping selections. We now allow products to automatically “Tag” orders that contain them. This can have several advantages from simply informational to surprisingly functional. Here’s a quick example of how you can use product tags to save money using cubic rates.

 

Intelligently Qualifying Orders for Cubic Pricing

Cubic pricing can provide some fantastic cost savings on certain packages, but not all.  In this example, we’ll tag some specific products that we know fit the cubic pricing “sweet spot”.  We’ll then create a filter and automation rule that will automatically assign a cubic package and service for the orders.

 

Step 1)  In the products area, we can open a product to modify the settings.  We’d typically use a Regional Rate box to ship this product, which is a decent rate, but if it’s shipping to Zone 5 or higher, we can do even better with cubic rates!  We start by creating a new order tag called “Cubic Option” and apply the tag to this product.

 

Since product tags are automatically assigned to orders that contain them, any new order that is imported will also have the “Cubic Option” tag assigned to it.

 

Step 2) In settings, we create a new filter that will isolate orders that  contain the “Cubic Option” tag.  We also want to make sure it’s a domestic shipment.  Finally, we want only orders that are going to Zone 5 or higher.

Now we can isolate any order that is appropriate for cubic rates.

 

Step 3) Lastly, let’s create an automation rule that will setup cubic shipping settings for any order that matches the filter we created in step 2.

After we save the rule, we should start seeing orders for this product automatically configured to ship with cubic rates!

 

Other uses for Product Tags

  • Identify orders that are back-ordered, made-to-order or otherwise take longer to fulfill.  You can even create an automation rule for those products to automatically place them On-Hold for a period of time.
  • Identify orders that might need special care or handling.  You can add an internal note for your packing team with an automation rule.
  • Identify orders that should be insured and automatically request  insurance.
  • Identify orders that contain sensitive materials.  You can create an automation rule to require adult signature confirmation if needed.

Improved Visibility to Shipping Rates

Nov 10, 2011
News

We recently released new features to allow our sellers to have improved visibility to shipping rates for individual orders. Unofficially dubbed “Quick Rates”, this feature will allow you to very quickly price one or more shipments based on the currently selected carrier, service and package. This feature consists of a few new user interface elements that reside in the order management screen of ShipStation.

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