Customer Experience Ecommerce Product Fulfilment Design: How to give customers the best post-purchase experience by Matt Parkinson Last updated on October 3rd, 2022 Ecommerce product fulfilment is arguably the most important part of the ecommerce experience design. After all, this is when the customer gets the product; you know, the thing they actually want. Ecommerce merchants can sometimes obsess about every single detail of the frontend in the “pre-purchase experience”. And this is a good thing to do. Of course. However, customers will navigate your front end without much thought, only to then obsess about an item not turning up, or a cumbersome return process. This gap between what customers want, and what merchants spend energy on can be a source of missed opportunities. What is ecommerce product fulfilment? Ecommerce product fulfilment is the process of getting the product to the customer after they have purchased it. It involves the following steps: Processing the order in the Order Management System (OMS). Picking the item, packaging it and dispatching it with a delivery partner. The communications with the customer as the process unfolds (dispatch notes, order tracking, delivery confirmation). Facilitating and processing any returns. A great product fulfilment proposition is not only easy to use and reliable, but it also offers many different options to customers to suit every use case. For example click-and-collect, express delivery or nominated days. A checklist for product fulfilment customer experience design To deliver a great product fulfilment experience, you need to take care of five areas: confirmation page, click-and-collect, flexible delivery (eg nominated days), returns and tracking. The Confirmation page and email arrive promptly and contain all the information The post-purchase experience starts precisely the moment that the user clicks “Place order”. Two things need to happen at this point to reassure the customer: The confirmation page tells the customer that the order has been placed. It also mentions that an email has been sent and to what email has been sent. Finally, it includes the details of the order (including the order number and the delivery address). A confirmation email arrives in the customer’s inbox straightaway. This email is very important, because this is what users will use to check order details as needed (for example if the order is delayed). Besides the order information, you need to include the estimated delivery date, as well as tracking information if available (more on this later). An easy and convenient Click-and-Collect option SkateHut is a leading ecommerce sports retailer, but they don’t have many physical stores. Therefore, offering Click-and-Collect via Collect+ integration is a great choice. Click-and-collect grew in popularity during the pandemic, and it has remained an important choice for customers. In 2020, a study from Ampersand revealed that 80% of retailers in the UK are offering click-and-collect services. Of those, 14% are able to offer a same-day turnaround. In addition to that, we know customers expect to use these services more. Data from Deloitte found a 26% expected expansion in usage of click-an-collect services after the pandemic, globally. In-store pick-up is a great way to deliver click-and-collect, as it offers the possibility of incremental sales. According to research from Metapack, 52% of global consumers have made an additional purchase when collecting an order in-store. However, this is not the only way to deliver Click-and-Collect. You can integrate with a delivery platform to deliver to local stores convenient for customers. We have experience building Metapack integrations and cooking our own Magento extension (GENE Metapack). This allows our clients to display store collection locations, as well as accurate delivery dates and charges. In terms of designing the user interface, consider the following tips: Offer Click-and-Collect at the beginning of the checkout process Users enter the checkout process with a delivery method in mind. So, offering this option as early as possible on the checkout page avoids drop-off. Include instructions on where to park/collect items in the store. If you’re offering in-store pick-up, it can be very helpful to include some instructions on the confirmation email. For example, let customers know if there is a specific area for parking, or a specific point in the store that processes these orders. Allow people to let you know when they have arrived to collect When designing Click-and-Collect functionality for Krispy Kreme, we wanted to offer a feature so that customers could alert the store of their arrival For a crème de la crème experience, allow customers to let you know when they have arrived at the store. We worked with Krispy Kreme to design their in-store pick-up experience. As part of this, we built a feature to let customers know the store they had arrived at. It was a blast for customers who appreciated the gesture of making the collection easier and faster. Nominated Days Delivery Nominated days delivery is a less popular option, but can make the difference between making a sale or not. Nominated days have grown in popularity since people increasingly work from home on fixed days of the week. Whilst it typically costs more to select nominated days, it can seem like a nominal charge for big-ticket items. With most couriers now offering nominated days, it’s very easy to now offer this additional delivery option. Again, our GENE Metapack Magento module can come in handy for a quick rollout! Convenient return management Return management has become a hot topic. Many retailers consider them a plague, as they can eat into profits, mess up inventory, and require a separate logistics work stream. Having said that, returns are considered to be the most important aspect of the post-purchase experience. Granted not all customers need to return a product, but for post-purchase journeys that involve a return, this is the most emotive element. As many as 93% of customers in the annual Metapack survey picked return experience as the most important element in their satisfaction. A dedicated self-serve return management portal can make a huge difference in this crucial step after the purchase Return rates vary per category (with women’s clothing and shoes the highest, and beauty the lowest), with an average of around 17% (source: IMRG). Retailers such as Zara, known for their generous fulfilment practices have now started to charge for online returns, (BBC ) while allowing customers to return items to the store for free. Ecommerce analysts expect this trend to continue. Whether you charge for returns, or you offer them for free is a strategic choice. You need to consider competitor analysis, constant monitoring and the state of your own ecommerce fulfilment operation to make a decision. For example, do you have enough retail presence to allow customers to return in-store? We implemented a return management solution based on our own GENE Hermes Magento module to help our client Tommee Tippee offer convenient return management. Our work was based on customer research and an understanding of our client’s logistics. Order Tracking integrated on your site Order tracking and related notifications keep users informed of order status and remove the need for users to proactively contact customer service with WISMO queries. Clear and thorough order tracking is a hygienic factor: it needs to be right. Most customers will despair if their order is delayed and tracking information has not been forthcoming. Or if it has been poorly delivered. A recent study by international shipping company Etrak found that 30% of users won’t buy an item if they knew order tracking was not available at all. In the same study, only 7% of people didn’t consider tracking to be important. Order tracking needs to be available both as a link on the shipping confirmation email (which many users will rescue to navigate to the tracking status). In addition, users should be able to navigate to the order tracking information from their account area, signposted from the top menu navigation, and the site-wide footer. Don’t rely on sending customers to third-party courier sites. This often offers a poor experience and misses some of the information the user expects. Instead, bring all the relevant information to the account area, or another dedicated area for logged-in users. Keep them within your brand experience. On order tracking pages, provide the expected arrival date (both as the number and as a day of the week), order sub-events (dispatched, on the route, etc), a summary of order contents, the delivery address and the details of the delivery company.
