The reselling business has three direct aspects. The first involves purchasing inventory and warehousing. 

Up next is marketing and all the processes necessary to make sales. The final and most important step is how you ship products to the customer.

But of course, depending on how you run your reselling business, you may not need the first or last aspects. For example, if you’re a reseller who doesn’t hold inventory, you may purchase items on demand from a supplier and deliver them straight to the buyer. So, warehousing necessities won’t bother you.

Conversely, if you’re a reseller operating a brick-and-mortar shop, buyers will walk into your shop, purchase what they need and go with it. This scenario means how to seamlessly ship products to the final destination becomes the customer’s responsibility. 

However, an online reselling business will undoubtedly include shipping responsibilities crucial for customer satisfaction and retention. So, how do you set up shipping for your reselling business? 

Here, we’ll show you the basics you need to deliver products to customers in the UK without any hassles. We’ll start with a detailed explanation of the order fulfilment and shipping process.

Order Fulfilment and Shipping Explained

What most people generally term shipping is a procedure containing two primary aspects. The first is the order fulfilment process, and the second is package delivery or shipping. 

Order fulfilment encompasses initial preparation activities for resellers looking to ship products to customers. That includes handling, packaging, labelling, and recording. Additionally, here’s where you determine the appropriate delivery method and specify delivery instructions.

Shipping describes moving items from the warehouse to the customer. It’s the transit part of the procedure and is often tricky to manage. 

Depending on the nature of your reselling business, you may have limited control over the freight delivery method. For example, if you hire a commercial carrier, you may not have much say over how they move the item unless you’re ready to pay a premium price.

How to Ship products to Customers: Order Fulfilment Tips For Resellers

The overall shipping process starts with order fulfilment. Enjoying successful shipping without first getting the order fulfilment procedure right is impossible. So, let’s begin by exploring crucial order fulfilment tips for resellers.

Determine Your Order Fulfilment Method

The first thing to do while creating shipping strategies for your reselling business is to identify the best order fulfilment method. Primarily, you have three ways of conducting order fulfilment for an online reselling business. 

In-House or Self-Fulfilment

As the name implies, self-fulfilment means the entire process falls under your responsibility. That means you’ll handle or supervise the order fulfilment process without help from a third-party company. 

Usually, this method requires you to have a warehouse for storing inventory and (at least) an assistant/employee to speed things up. However, it depends on your inventory size and the volume of orders you typically have to process. 

For example, self-fulfilment is easiest to manage when you run a small operation. So, if you’re not getting more orders than you can handle alone, you can apply this method right out of your garage.

In addition, self-fulfilment grants you greater flexibility on order packaging and processing. You can also personally monitor your inventory and outgoing packages as you ship products to customers. So, it’s ideal if you like being on top of things and hands-on with every aspect of your reselling business.

Lastly, this order-fulfilment method is perfect if you only resell small units of items regardless of your inventory size. You should only adopt self-fulfilment if you resell items in bits and pieces.

Dropshipping

140,000 sellers in the UK use dropshipping to deliver products to their customers. This order fulfilment method involves moving goods directly from your supplier to the buyer. Primarily, in this case, you only serve as a middleman between the two parties and don’t have to own inventory at any time.

This method’s most significant advantage is how it eliminates the need for inventory, warehousing, and packaging hassles. Instead, you get orders from buyers, transfer them to your supplier and have them ship products to the customers directly. 

However, there are a few significant downsides to this order-fulfilment method. First, you won’t get to inspect the products and ensure their quality before they get to the buyer. 

Secondly, you won’t get to personalise the delivery or add any touch of your brand to it. So, when the buyer gets the items, they’ll receive them with packaging from your supplier, which only serves to advertise your supplier’s brand more.

Furthermore, since it’s not your inventory, you can’t always be sure of the items’ availability. You risk receiving orders for items out of stock at your supplier. Needless to say, that’ll leave you in a frantic search for an alternative means to fulfil the order and ship the product to the customer in time.

Another illustration of the downsides to dropshipping is a situation where the same customer orders different products, each with a unique supplier on your end. Consequently, you’d have two packages going from different origins to the same destination.

This situation equals increased shipping fees. And it won’t be the best idea to impose the extra fees on your customer. They may react by switching to a competitor offering cheaper shipping fees. 

Clearly, there are pros and cons to dropshipping as your preferred order fulfilment method. 

And of course, you should also consider the type of products and whether they’re appropriate for this order fulfilment method.

Outsourcing and Fulfilment Warehouses

Inventory processing, storage, and distribution will always constitute a significant headache for large-scale distributors. But drop-shipping removes the need for all of that. You can simply receive and process customer requests and then have a third-party partner package and ship the products to them. 

Outsourcing and fulfilment warehouses mirror dropshipping in that a third party handles the order fulfilment process. The only difference is you’re paying the third party — they aren’t your supplier. 

Hence, outsourcing fulfilment is best if you resell items in bulk or get high order volumes. Fulfilment warehouses take away the need to maintain or process inventory. Instead, you’ll leave all the work to an off-site third-party partner.

Additionally, if there’s any need for warehousing, fulfilment warehouses will take care of it for you. Interestingly, you may not have to communicate personally with your fulfilment partners whenever an order comes through your online store. 

A well-integrated order processing framework will notify the fulfilment warehouse of an order and the shipping instructions automatically whenever orders come through.

Augment Your Order Fulfilment Procedures With Digital Tools

Technology can make shipping-related tasks easier for resellers. If you operate an online store, you can sync it with software and extensions to streamline several logistics in the shipping procedure. 

For instance, you can automate communication between your store and drop-shipping partners with digital tools if you’re drop-shipping items.

Similarly, you can use digital tools to reduce order processing time and offer shipping discounts in a self-fulfilment setting. And as we mentioned earlier, some systems can integrate your online store with your fulfilment warehousing partners’ processes to notify them of orders coming in.

Use the Right Packaging

Order fulfilment ends when you hand a package to the carrier for delivery. However, as much as you have specific freight handling instructions for the carrier, the shipment’s safety starts with you. Primarily, you must package the item in the safest way possible, depending on the commodity’s nature.

Your choice of packaging is significant as it impacts customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, up to 7% of package delivery issues in the UK happen due to damage. Therefore, extra consideration during packaging is important to avoid being a part of this statistic.  

For example, you can’t package glass products like plastic materials even if you intend to ship them to the same customer. Instead, you must add more protective elements to the glass material packaging and clearly label it fragile.

If you neglect to label such a package as fragile, there’s every chance someone who didn’t get your specific instructions will eventually have to handle the delivery. And you can expect them to treat it like any other random item, thereby increasing the chances of product damage.

Product Shipping Guide: Considering Your Shipping Options

Once you’ve taken care of the order fulfilment process, all that remains is to ship the product to the customers. Of course, you won’t need to worry about this if you’re dropshipping the items or have a fulfilment warehouse. 

However, given that self-fulfilment is ideal for small-scale resellers, here are some tips for choosing a carrier to ship products successfully. 

Calculate Shipping Cost and Set Pricing

It’s easy to assume this should come first, even before considering order fulfilment options. 

However, you can’t calculate shipping costs without deciding how you want to package and move items to buyers. Only then can you make cost estimates and factor them into your pricing. 

On the other hand, some resellers opine that knowing the price may influence your choice of order fulfilment method. 

However, order fulfilment methods aren’t processes you can switch and choose at will. Instead, it’s better to pick one right from the start and stick with it for as long as possible. 

In conclusion, your order fulfilment method will determine your shipping cost, not the other way round. 

Since your set-up will primarily ship products to customers within the UK, most of your dealings will be domestic. With that in mind, these four factors will influence shipping costs: 

• The carrier service and speed
• Distance to the destination
• Shipping volume
• Package dimension and weight

The carrier’s service and speed will depend on the preferred transportation method. Moving goods by air is the fastest and arguably the most reliable, but it will ultimately attract a higher fee. And speaking of distance to destination, the farther your products go, the more you pay! 

Increased shipping volume comes with higher shipping fees. However, several carriers offer discounts on large shipping volumes. Lastly, the package’s weight, dimension and nature will also affect its handling, determining the total fee.

Considering all these factors alongside your order fulfilment expenses will form the makeup of your shipping fee. But you can efficiently compute your overall delivery expenses using a shipping fee calculator like the UK Royal Mail calculator.

Choose a Carrier

You can’t personally ship the products to where the customer wants, but there are professional businesses that’ll do that for you. So, find one you can work with and set up shipping activities for your reselling business with them. 

Your decision here will impact your ability to ship products to customers seamlessly. Therefore, we recommend considering these primary factors before delivering your goods to a carrier.

The first factor is the carrier’s reliability. You must be sure you can rely on the carrier to not disappoint in terms of timely delivery and ensuring the package’s safety.

That said, your best bet will be to go with a well-known carrier for reliability considerations. These are large companies with vast networks and a track record to protect. So, they have every incentive and resource to ensure your items get to the buyer in good condition and on time.

The second factor is availability. This factor deals with the carriers’ position on delivering packages to the customer’s preferred destination. You have to consider if the delivery company is available and willing to take the items to the buyer’s geographical location.

The last factor is carrier fees. How much will they charge to ship products to your customers? 

Earlier in this guide, we discussed some factors determining product shipping costs. Carriers also consider the same factors when defining their fees.

Typically, you’ll get reasonable prices and reliable service from mainstream carriers like the UK Royal Mail, FedEx and UPS. Plus, you don’t have to worry about your packages’ safety with them.

Set A Ship-Out Schedule

Your excitement about fulfilling and shipping orders is understandable, but you shouldn’t rush into anything because of it. It’s not every order you’ll send out right away; doing that will make you waste money on gas and also miss out on discounts. 

Instead, let the orders pile up to a sizable bunch and then ship them all out once. 

Then again, most shipping companies will have you drop your freight in their warehouse as they often can’t accommodate door-to-door carriage. So you’ll have first to move the items to the carrier’s warehouse. 

Now imagine you’re moving each item as the orders come in, consider how much you’d spend on transportation. With the UK’s energy crisis, this expense can quickly cost thousands of dollars. Instead, you can set a schedule for transferring any packages into the carrier’s care.

A good idea for a small-scale reselling business is to set a weekly or bi-weekly ship-out schedule. This scheduling gives enough time for orders to pile up to a significant size before sending them out. The common practice is a Monday and Thursday ship-out, so you can also adopt the pattern. 

However, you can set a more frequent ship-out schedule if you get high order volumes daily. You can even transfer the items daily to prevent them from piling up too much.

Reseller Best Practices to Ensure A Successful Order Shipping and Delivery

Depending on your arrangement with the carrier, they usually become responsible for the package once the handover is complete. But, that doesn’t mean it’s hands-off until the items get to the buyer.

The following practices will ensure your customers receive their items in excellent condition.

Freight Tracking and Monitoring

Freight tracking is relatively straightforward. For example, the UK Royal Mail and Post Office have apps with order tracking and monitoring features. 

So you can get a real-time report of your item’s location and condition whenever you want. You can stay up to date with situations and quickly take pre-emptive actions where necessary.

Logistics Planning 

While most carriers prefer the typical routes, you can always get them to use a preferred route. This level of logistics control is typically accessible depending on the shipment’s size and whether you’re paying a premium.

However, we advise you never to arbitrarily decide on one route without considering the carrier’s opinion. They know the routes and can tell you the best one for the journey.

Have a Shipping Policy

A shipping policy helps to set customer expectations around where and when you ship the products. So, they know when to expect the item, which reassures them to put all their anticipations towards a specific date. 

The same policy helps customers to decide the best location they want you to ship the products to. By viewing the shipping policy page, buyers can see the estimated delivery time and the shipping cost. They can then use this information to determine the optimum location to receive the shipment.

Communicate With Your Customers

Constant communication with the customers is a significant shipping best practice for any reseller. It improves the customer’s experience, increasing the chances of repeat business and referrals. 

Keep your customer as informed as possible at every step of the shipping process. Of course, that doesn’t mean you constantly have to message your customers about their goods.

Instead, you can automate purchase confirmation emails and shipping tracking notifications on the client side of the store. That way, you make it easier for the customer to be in the loop concerning their shipment status. 

Satisfy Your Customers with Seamless Shipping and Delivery

Your best bet is to start with self-fulfilment to ensure the order fulfilment process goes properly. Then, find reputable carriers to handle the delivery for you. Finally, ensure to track your orders and keep customers in the loop.

But if you can afford to outsource or prefer drop-shipping, they’re both excellent choices. The reseller product shipping tips here are only meant to guide you. The final decision is still yours. 

Do you have any more questions about how to ship products to customers? Crep Chief Notify offers a comprehensive reseller platform that provides one-on-one help. Sign up today!