5 Ways to Fulfill Web Orders

If you’re just getting started on your online retail venture, you might be wondering what is the best way to handle web order fulfillment. There are some effective ways and not-so-effective ways. Here are five ways today’s retailers fulfill web orders.
- Take the order online and call the customer to confirm – This is a primitive way to fulfill web orders. Instead of using automated confirmation and shipping, your website offer a form for your customer to fill out. You get an email notification, call them to confirm, and manually mail the product. This is not the most desirable way to fulfill web orders.
- Your customer calls you from your website – Even less desirable is your customer gets your phone number from your website and calls you. You take the order over the phone and mail the product.
- Automated confirmation and delivery – With this method of web fulfillment, your client finds the product they want in your online store, adds it to their shopping cart, pays for it, and then automatically receives the product because confirmation and delivery are automated processes.
- In-store point-of-sale – With this web order fulfillment technique, your sales clerk carries a table around in the store. Whenever a customer can’t find what she needs, she asks for assistance. Your employee finds the product on their table and places the order for the customer. The customer receives the product at their location of choice–in the store or at home or place of business.
- Kiosk – One way of fulfilling web orders is to have in-store kiosks. These are tablets or computer terminals inside your store that allow customers to find what they are looking for. If it’s in the store, they can grab it off the shelf. If it isn’t, they can order it and have it delivered to their home or place of business.
Web order fulfillment has become much more sophisticated than in the early days of the web. And it’s more profitable for the retailer.