With online sales steadily increasing each year, online retail companies must stay ahead of the competition and have as much reach as possible when it comes to their scope for delivery. This may involve expanding into international markets, which means that delivery, logistics, and extra costs much be taken into consideration.
Businesses should also look for ways to optimize their delivery process when reaching places far and wide. This includes utilizing the latest technologies and partnering with order fulfillment firms like Shape to ensure that orders are delivered quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. That said, here’s everything you need to know about how your shipping service could affect your business.
Profitability
Expanding into an international market can give you a huge opportunity to grow as a business. With consumers increasingly heading online for their purchases, you are no longer limited to a local consumer base or selling your products from a physical store.
However, think carefully about whether your company has the capability and support to enable business expansion. Customer expectations are high and failure to meet them may have a negative impact on your profits.
Consumer Trends
To successfully expand to an international market, your business must meet growing customer expectations. By enhancing your customer experience, they will be more likely to make repeat purchases and remain a loyal customer. Here are some areas that you should consider:
- Customers want more options
To offer them a personalised experience, you need to have a variety of delivery options to suit their individual needs. Statistics have shown that over half of internet users would be willing to pay more for same-day delivery. However, consumers also expect free delivery, which they still want to receive quickly. This can become much more complex when posting internationally – use a service such as Inxpress to organise your deliveries for you.
- They want updates on their transactions
Customers want to be able to monitor the progress of their order and where it is. Offer your customers the option to track and trace their deliveries so that they are involved at every point of the transaction. If it makes you fret, considering all the technicalities involved, remember that you can always enlist the help of a tech-savvy professional from a reputed IT support in Doncaster, or wherever your business is based. He can optimize your website well and can possibly add all the features on the site that can be beneficial for your consumers to navigate through it, so that they can easily track their products.
- Delivery services can affect your brand image
The growth of social media has put a lot of power in the hands of the consumer. With a decline in levels of customer tolerance, you must make sure you provide the most efficient customer service as possible. Of course, when it comes to delivery drivers, you want to make sure that they are still driving safely and within the law, so you may wish to get something like this FMCSA compliance software so that they are able to read exactly what is expected of them, and for fleet operators to be able to deploy any necessary training to individual drivers.
Deliveries that are constantly delayed or fail to arrive will have a negative impact on you financially if you have to reimburse the customer. Also, they may decide to vent their frustrations on social media, which could be a PR nightmare for your business as people may be discouraged from buying your products.
When deciding to expand your business internationally, keep in mind the importance of a fast and reliable delivery service. Failure to meet customer expectations may have a negative effect on your company and with customers placing more emphasis on the importance of delivery services, it is something that your business cannot afford to ignore.