More and more online shops gain customers from abroad. Whenever you send a substantial amount of packages to a certain country, it might be interesting to make use of local stock. At this page, we describes the benefits of shipping from multiple countries and how this will increase the conversion rate of your webshop.
Despite varying wishes and requirements between consumers from different countries, there is one thing they have in common: Every consumer, in every country, wants the package to be delivered to the agreed delivery location – in optimal condition. Besides, whenever the ordered product doesn’t fit the needs and wants of the consumer, it shouldn’t take much effort to return the package. A large share of consumers value fast delivery. Next to that, they expect that attention is paid to a minimized ecological footprint during the transportation of the order.
Now, imagine you’re an online entrepreneur. Maybe, you actually are one!
You are aware that you must take all of the above into account to keep your customers satisfied.
Now pretend you own a Dutch webshop and you receive an increasing amount of online orders from Germany. Of course, you can choose to send your products from a warehouse in the Netherlands to Germany, and the foreign consumer can simply return her items back to the Netherlands. However, in many cases, this does not outweigh the benefits of having a warehouse or local stock within that specific country (Germany in this case).
For instance, in case you’re working with local stock in each of the countries where you sell a substantial amount of products, you will eventually never run out of stock anymore…
Yeah, sounds like magic huh? Please continue reading, we’ll explain you why.
Let’s state 5 key reasons why you should start focusing on cross-border logistics:
- Shorter lead times. This one speaks for itself, but is definitely important. Your lead times are shorter because your products are already closer to your customers. This means the package gets to the consumer faster, which will increase your customer satisfaction. More happy customers = more repeat purchases. Which means…. More revenue!
- Smaller footprint. The ecological footprint will be reduced, since distances are shorter. This is becoming increasingly important among consumers.
- More favorable rates. Delivery costs are lower because agreements are made with (multiple) local carriers.
- Reliable and fast return process. For any consumer, it feels much more reliable to return a package to an address in their own country, compared to sending it to another country. In addition, the product will be send back to the warehouse faster (because of shorter distance) and therefore the product will be put back into circulation quicker. This means that the customer can expect the payment for that product back sooner. This faster turnaround is also beneficial for the webshop. Especially in sectors like fashion, where more than half of the items are returned, having a local presence of your products is essential for a quick response and to keep costs manageable.
- Sold out? Not at all! It can happen that a product from an online shop runs out of stock during a successful national campaign. We, people from Monta, have thought about this. For instance, we have a client that sells Home products. This client has both local stock within the Netherlands and in Germany. Some months ago, they had a very successful campaign in Germany. In the end, the product sold out there. In this case, some fulfilment companies simply choose to replenish the stock (supply new stock from the Netherlands and ship it to a warehouse in Germany). Actually, that takes quite some time. We at Monta don’t like to wait. And we understand our clients don’t like waiting as well. We want to act freaking fast and be proactive. This way our clients grow rapidly and that’s what we love the most! So…. We do things differently: Whenever a German client orders a product which is sold out in Germany (most of the time, this doesn’t happen, but for now just pretend it happens: AAGGH!), we can then still forward the online order from the warehouse in Germany to our warehouse within Netherlands via our own Monta-software. We then send the ordered item from our client directly from the warehouse in the Netherlands to the German consumer. This way, we can still deliver to the consumer quickly. Well, we know this is in contradiction with the things we said earlier. But in THIS particular case, it will always we the fastest way. Plus, you can still sell the item, because it’s not really completely sold out. Conclusion: you won’t miss out on any orders. You keep your customers happy and you can still make money. And while we are forwarding the orders, stock is being replenished in the meanwhile in the warehouse in Germany. The consumer notices nothing, and the online shop doesn’t miss out on any orders.
Having multiple local stocks definitely influences the competitive position and conversion rate of a webshop. Experiences of Monta’s clients highly confirm this. There are also customers who choose to send all orders from one country, that’s fine too. The choice should always be up to the entrepreneur.
