ShipStation: How businesses can succeed through economic instability

With the ongoing economic challenges, including inflation at a 40-year high, and the cost of living continuing to increase, it is understandable that businesses are worrying about the future. Whilst the current situation is challenging, there are tools to help businesses ensure continuity through this financial crisis, such as implementing automation, reducing shipping costs and investing in making your business run more efficiently.

To be more profitable during the bad times and good, the e-commerce experts at ShipStation have put together a comprehensive guide to help you act faster, change quicker, and adapt while maintaining exceptional service levels.

Assess your shipping and label rates

As a small business, label rates can consume a significant portion of your budget and depending on the speed required and the size and weight of the package, rates can vary with the major couriers. ShipStation believes that time is money, and automated order fulfilment is more efficient and saves time and money. The software streamlines the delivery process and saves money on shipping by offering the best real-time shipping rates and discounts accessible from its easy-to-use dashboard.

Cutting costs doesn’t mean reducing service levels

Whilst becoming leaner is part and parcel of a recession, it should not affect your service levels. Maintaining good customer communication and continuing to engage with customers is vital during a recession. Ending these processes could be detrimental to your business long after the recession has ended.

Are you doing all you can for the environment?

We’re at a critical point in climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and curbing CO2 emissions and moving toward a net-zero future is good business practice and vital for an e-commerce retailer’s success.

A management study in 2014 indicated highly sustainable business portfolios performed much better than businesses without an Environmental, Social or Governance (ESG) or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy. While businesses with little to no CSR reputation experienced much higher capitalisation losses versus firms with dedicated sustainability initiatives.

Click-and-Collect and Ship from Store

One way to address your carbon footprint is to implement click-and-collect or Ship from Store solutions, especially as HubBox states that 49 percent of customers are willing to spend more to support eco-friendly practices.

ShipStation pioneered Ship from Store during the pandemic to enable brick-and-mortar stores with e-commerce websites to work in tandem. Customers order their products online, and the local branch of their store ships directly to them. This drastically reduces the mileage and carbon emissions of a delivery, while also cutting out the need for warehousing, and helps retailers maximise their retail site investment.

Improve efficiency through automation

Making your business’s processes more efficient is vital during challenging economic times. Manually processing orders can be incredibly time-consuming. By removing repetitive tasks, such as importing and checking orders, printing labels, allocating couriers and inventory management, you can streamline your order process.

Automated order fulfilment and delivery software can help e-commerce retailers instantly notify customers of their order and delivery status, print picking lists, set shipping rules and make promotion decisions based on stock availability.

Proactive planning can help your business through the recession

The recession is a worrying time for everyone, especially retailers – but it isn’t all doom and gloom, adds ShipStation. The more you prepare now, by investing in your marketing and implementing automation to help cut costs, the easier the challenging times will be.

ShipStation’s software streamlines your order fulfilment and delivery process with automation, making it simpler and less time-consuming. The software will even let you apply your preferred shipping method to orders with import automation features and print your labels in batches of up to 500, while also communicating shipment notifications directly to the customer.

ShipStation’s state-of-the-art software can help your business by:

• Automatically importing orders
• Connecting selling channels effortlessly
• Integrating with over 100 carts, marketplaces and carriers
• Managing all couriers in one easy-to-use hub
• Setting up customised workflows and alerts
• Providing self-service tracking and returns capabilities