Finding the Best 3PL for Your ECommerce Business

It’s a common trope for many eCommerce companies that logistics and fulfillment decline as business improves. Why? Accurately keeping up with the demand of inventory management and large shipment quantities is difficult, leading many brands to their demise. To help you avoid that fate, we’ll explore how to spot the best 3PL for your eCommerce business, and how eCommerce integration plays a pivotal role in finding the right partner.

What Is ECommerce Integration?

ECommerce integration is the ever-evolving relationship between the front-end component of a business (such as a website) with the critical components of accounting, inventory, sales, CRM, ERP, and marketing. This process involves tying various software and apps with shopping carts and marketplaces for seamless data exchange.

For instance, we offer the following shopping cart integrations at Jay Group:

Why Does Integration Matter?

Seamless eCommerce integration matters because it helps you operate and maintain your software functions, such as the shopping carts listed above. Finding the right 3PL for Shopify and the right 3PL for Amazon (referenced below) all starts with integration.

Integration removes the manual work of managing information across all your e-stores and marketplaces. It also maintains up-to-date information on products, customers, orders and inventory, sales, and shipments across all online platforms.

At Jay Group, we also support the following marketplaces:

The Benefits of ECommerce Integration On Business Growth

ECommerce integration helps you connect all of your business systems. But what exactly does this look like? Let’s take a look at 5 of the top benefits of eCommerce integration and how it can help you scale your business.

#1 Better Inventory Management

Manual data entry is error-prone and a recipe for headaches. Automated inventory management eliminates that time-consuming process, plus helps you keep your best-selling inventory in stock while helping you avoid overstocking. Real-time updates also ensure you don’t oversell an item.

#2 Automated Order Tracking

Customers love real-time updates. An integrated eCommerce experience gives you the opportunity to send notifications to your customers with updates on their orders through every stage of the fulfillment process.

#3 Personalized Outreach

Again, eCommerce integration is important because it helps you compile, access, and capitalize on data more easily. This allows you to personalize your outreach to customers. In addition to something as simple as using their name in the subject line of an update, eCommerce integration allows you to offer personalized recommendations on your site and in advertising.

It also gives you the ability to better segment buyers by tracking their interactions on and off your site.

#4 New Channels Available

ECommerce integration is also about reaching new customers, which means expanding to new channels. Seamlessly include marketing through email, text, and push notifications to keep customers in the know about offers and launches.

#5 Business Intelligence

A quality business intelligence interface gives you complete transparency into the fulfillment process — even giving you up-to-date information on freight costs. All of this helps you visualize complex data in real time for increased performance and risk reduction. The result? You and your customers will have access to the pertinent information you need, when you need it.

Spotting the Best 3PL for Your ECommerce Business

As an eCommerce business, your goal is to get your potential customers to hit the buy button. Your marketing team takes care of the customer funnel, but what happens after the add-to-cart and purchase process is just as important.

We’ll explore four of the top qualities to look for in a 3PL to help you better understand how to spot the best 3PL for eCommerce.

#1 Organization and Safety

One of the first signs to look for in a 3PL partner is their attention to organization and safety. An unorganized facility will naturally lead to delays, errors in picking and packing, and ultimately a poor representation of your business to your customer base.

Understanding a 3PL’s logistics, picking, packing, and fulfillment process is a necessary first step. ECommerce inventory can move fast — especially around busy seasons — and a facility’s organization and safety procedures will help you understand how efficient they will be.

#2 Customer Service

Reputation is everything, especially for an eCommerce business. When your customers can’t visit a brick-and-mortar location, the updates you provide for them along their customer journey help build trust. Additionally, handling returns, exchanges, and refunds is an important component in customer satisfaction, as is providing order tracking updates.

When it comes to customer service, you want to know there is a clear avenue of contact and a dedicated representative you can call with questions and concerns — and this likely will happen from time to time. Being able to pick up the phone and speak with someone who knows your product and account is important. Better yet, someone who is physically in the location your product is in provides even more peace of mind.

Your eCommerce business may not be able to offer 24/7 support, but a 3PL can help on your behalf. With fulfillment technology like reverse logistics and real-time tracking, an experienced 3PL can help you increase customer satisfaction and build brand equity.

At Jay Group, we help make the lives of eCommerce customer service reps easier by reducing customer service inquiries and increasing customer satisfaction.

#3 Multiple Warehousing Locations

The benefit of eCommerce is that you can reach a wider range of customers than a typical brick-and-mortar store. So why limit yourself due to logistics? The best 3PL for eCommerce will have multiple strategically placed warehouse locations so you can service the full range of your customer base.

The added benefit of multiple warehouses across the country is that it increases order delivery time. ECommerce transportation that runs efficiently creates a positive impact on your customers, enhancing your brand’s reputation and building customer loyalty.

#4 Reliability and Proven Results

Ultimately, spotting the best 3PL for eCommerce comes down to reliability and proven results. Any 3PL provider can give you the right answers, but you need a partner who can back up the industry jargon with data, customer success stories, and proven reliability.

At Jay Group, we’re proud to provide advanced eCommerce order fulfillment, subscription logistics, specialty packaging, reverse logistics, and omnichannel distribution to top eCommerce brands in a number of industries, including health & beauty, supplements & nutraceuticals, and more.

How A 3PL for ECommerce Differs from Dropshipping

When you think of dropshipping fulfillment, you might think of it as synonymous with third-party logistics. While dropshipping has similar components to a 3PL — such as allowing eCommerce companies the ability to ship products to customers — it differs in its capabilities.

Dropshipping is when the product manufacturer or distributor sends individual orders straight to customers. A 3PL fulfillment service ships orders to customers and specializes in services like packing and logistics. Dropshipping may be the right method for small eCommerce brands just starting out. However, dropshipping simply can’t keep up with the strenuous demands most large eCommerce businesses experience.

Looking for more information on our eCommerce fulfillment services? Contact us today to see how we can help your growing brand.

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