Your products are the core of your business. Good inventory management is essential to making sure your customers get those products in a timely manner. Inventory management includes maintaining stock, tracking shipping costs and a system for recording and reporting restocking needs and proper stock updates and the tracking and management of those systems. The goal of inventory management is to provide uninterrupted sales and customer service. Any breakdown of these systems can cause losses and even business failure. So, a reliable inventory management system is critical to the success of your e-commerce business. Here are some inventory management best practices to make sure your e-commerce website is running smoothly and profitably.
- Accurate lead time: Communicate with all suppliers or manufacturers to be sure you are clear on their lead time. Know exactly how long it takes to restock to keep product available to your customers and reduce back orders and shipping delays. Ensure you are partnering with reputable, reliable suppliers.
- Priority Product Stocking: Flag your best-selling products as high priority and set reminders when stock hits a certain low level. Keeping your bestsellers constantly in stock will guarantee consistent sales and profit.
- Drop Shipping: Consider using a drop shipper for some products to reduce overhead and in-house inventory, particularly if you are a start-up. Drop shipping can create what it called an “endless aisle” ensuring your products are never out of stock. However, to be successful with drop shipping, you need a reliable inventory management system to help you track suppliers, invoices, and shipping.
- Variant Products: Variant product management can be tricky. If you sell clothing, for example, and have a shirt that you stock in several colors and sizes, you will want to be sure you keep track of many of each color and each size you have. That means a lot of SKUs to manage. Be sure to choose an inventory management system that enables you to accurately and easily handle the number of products your e-commerce site sells.
- Accurate and Immediate Inventory Updates: Along with accurate lead time, real-time inventory updates are necessary to reduce back orders and overselling. Be sure you have an e-commerce inventory management system that instantly updates your product quantities. Having to inform a customer after they have placed an order that their product is back ordered could you lose you a customer forever.
- Inventory Management System: Choosing a comprehensive, reliable and user-friendly inventory management system is critical to the success of your e-commerce site. Appath provides a centralized multichannel e-commerce inventory management in a simple solution. Connecting all your e-commerce stores in one place, Appath links to major selling platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Newegg, Bigcommerce, Magento and more. Update product inventory quantities in real time across your selling channels ensuring all items are in stock.
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