With the growth of the e-commerce environment, the demands of customers for the delivery of their orders are also gradually developing. Nowadays, if an e-shop wants to be successful, it takes more than just a high-quality product and good marketing.

In order to make a customer want to buy again from the online store, he needs a positive experience from placing the order until unpacking the package.

The competitive environment in the field of e-commerce is relentless. If the merchant cannot ensure delivery in a short time, the customer will switch to another seller for the next purchase.

Therefore, there is one basic rule with e-commerce logistics: customers do not like to have to wait. This is also confirmed by studies focused on e-commerce.

Their key findings demonstrate the importance of logistics in the decision-making process of online shoppers. The reasons affecting the purchasing behavior of consumers are:

  1. Fast delivery of goods – up to 87 percent of shoppers in e-shops claim that the delivery time influences their decision to buy again from the same seller
  2. Willingness to pay more for fast delivery – approximately 67 percent of shoppers would pay more for the option of same-day delivery
  3. Transparency during the shipping process – around 51 percent of shoppers would like to know as much information as possible about the current status and location of their order. In addition, up to 47 percent claimed that they did not repeat the purchase in the e-shop precisely because of low transparency about the status and location of the order from the previous purchase
  4. Low error rate of package content – up to 45 percent of buyers encountered a situation when they found a different product in the package than they ordered

Challenges and trends in e-commerce logistics

The results of the study also show the challenges that e-commerce logistics must face. Among the biggest is to ensure for e-shops the delivery of goods transparently, within a few hours of ordering, and, moreover, with a minimum error rate.

However, there are parts of the year when the e-commerce company cannot guarantee these points during delivery. In addition, there are other challenges for sellers, such as the internationality of e-commerce, ensuring the lowest possible carbon footprint of the shipment, or many others that increase every year.

To ensure these challenges are met, significant investments are required, which not every e-shop can afford. In order to maintain competitiveness in the market, however, merchants must come up with a solution to be able to compete with the big e-commerce players.

One of them is investing in logistics services offered by 3PL (third-party logistics) companies, for which delivery within 24 hours, managing seasonal peaks, reducing the carbon footprint, and delivering worldwide are no problem.

Our company, Fulfillment by FHB Group, is one of the largest providers of logistics services focused on these current trends or challenges in logistics. In the centre of Europe, we operate a fully equipped logistics center that takes care of the logistics of e-shops, with an emphasis on automation and informatization in fulfillment processes. The area of more than 30-thousand m2 allows us to handle more than 10 million parcels per year, with delivery to 220 countries in the world.

Advantages of Fulfillment by FHB Group for e-shops

Availability, flawlessness, and speed of delivery are essential for our logistics services. Our own daily transport network (line haul) in combination with verified and relevant courier companies for last-mile delivery enables us to transport the package to the customer within 24 hours of placing the order.

The flawlessness and availability of the shipment are made possible by the most modern technologies in the logistics process. These include, for example, fully automated packaging lines, sorting conveyors, mezzanine shelving systems, lifts, carts, and many others.

In this way, we are able to constantly offer clients or end customers the most current trends in e-commerce logistics as part of our services. These can be, for example, ecological packaging, express processing of the order and subsequent delivery, or various other consumer requirements.

The low error rate of packages is ensured by the work system, when goods and orders are weighed and scanned several times during the entire process of warehousing, picking, packing, and shipping. Everything happens with a link to the information system, which will reveal any problems. The result is an almost zero order-picking error rate and high customer satisfaction.

In Fulfillment by FHB Group, we also use digital identifiers in the form of electronic labels, which, thanks to their unique codes, enable electronic tracking of the movement of the ordered goods during every change and manipulation. Tracking the movement of our vehicles and the shipment in the last mile delivery whenever the status changes also contributes significantly to transport transparency.