Although Snapdeal has already kickstarted its festival season sales, Flipkart and Amazon are due to go live with their sales in a few hours from now. This year, online marketplaces have been preparing for months to ensure a glitch-free sales period for customers, and in turn the sellers.
Apart from keeping your inventory ready and up-to-date, there are a couple of factors you should turn your attention to before the sale period starts. Here’s a checklist for a quick look.
If you think of packaging only after you receive orders, it might be the wrong way of going about it. Especially during the peak season, it could hamper your packing lifecycle, which would lead to delay in shipment of orders. And a delay in shipping orders has adverse consequences like payment settlement issues.
For marketplace orders, it is recommended to use branded tapes of Snapdeal, Shopclues, Flipkart or Amazon for the corresponding orders. Now with heightened volumes this practice might eat into your profits. Instead, use normal brown tape for full packing and add the marketplace tape on certain spots. This way you can avoid running out of the branded tapes.
Ideally, you should have enough brown boxes with you for packaging. In case you run out of them, you could use gift boxes (collect and keep them handy beforehand) as an alternative. Reverse the box by plucking pins from one side (see image below). Re-pin it and you have a new box at a fraction of the cost (tip from a seller).
However, you do run the risk of a negative impression on the customer. So it’s best to use this tactic only if you don’t have any other choice.
These security bags should be used for apparel, accessories or small products that don’t get damaged while shipping with this kind of packaging. Avoid packing fragile products.
Hire additional help if needed during the sale period. More the number of hands in the team, faster your orders get shipped out, translating into happy customers and better profits.
While these are just tips and pointers to ensure you ship out products without delays, you must be prepared for setbacks and hiccups. In such instances, the key is to find solutions for which you need to stay calm and have enough peace of mind to think straight.
Happy Festive Season! Do write in to us and share with us about your sales and experiences of the season.
After dwindling with her family business, into travel and hospitality, for more than 3 years, Pooja Vishant found her true love in writing. Happy-go-lucky and cheerful, she loves pink; so pink is the way to go if you want to get into her good books. The Associate Editor keeps track of even a leaf that has moved in the ecommerce world!
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