Can you keep up with Shipping?

The year is now 2020 and many things have changed.  We all had a toilet paper scare and many people lost their jobs or were forced to work from home.  The world literally took a turn and many economies slowed to a halt.  The one area that kept on running and working overtime was the ecommerce side of our economy.  The world economy too for that matter was sustained largely by e commerce companies.  This caused a paradigm shift in how we shop, think about shopping, and leaving the house.  Since lots of brick and mortar shops were closed down or limited, shopping online became the main rage and shipping supplies became paramount.

 

If you were unable to get your shipping supplies then you might now have any way of actually making money for your business.  This was a huge shift in the economy and many companies pulled a 180 and changed their business model overnight to adapt and survive in this economy. The gumption of Americans made me proud and we were able to pivot and succeed, but it still was hard and is still hard on many companies. The ability to ship takes a whole new department and also adds cost to each product that is now sold.  So keeping up with pricing and competition sometimes comes down to the boxes and tape you are able to source and ship.

 

The most important part is being efficient and knowing exactly what you need.  When you can narrow down the products you must use to ship for your inventory then you can actually shop for the best price and start being competitive or smoke your competition in the ecommerce game. It is not always about price or boxes, and bags, but that can play a huge part of it.  The ability to be seen and known online is also a big part of shipping success in ecommerce, because you cannot ship or sell an item if no one knows you exist.

 

This is where e commerce can be expensive and hard and that is being found online.  Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising, but if you are unknown as an ecommerce company you may have to start doing Search Engine Optimization and that is expensive and takes time to get onto organic search traffic. Pay per click is a possibility or google adwords, but those cost for each potential customer and can be very pricy when competition is high. So be smart and ship well!