You have orders flooding into your stores, and everything seems to go well. Inventory is flying as the orders come, and your revenues are giving your goosebumps. Everything looks perfect. Suddenly, you don’t have an adequate supply to meet the demand. The panic button has been triggered; what do you do? How do you avert this and keep your customers? Backordering is a common phenomenon in the eCommerce industry.
When faced with such a situation, you should panic because most business successfully operates and rely on backorder to boost sales. Backorder is a widely used strategy to manage inventory and customer expectations, especially during the holiday period when sales are high.
Benefits of eCommerce Backordering
While some eCommerce storeowners see backordering as something terrible, especially during the festive period, it can be an excellent strategy to cut costs for new store owners. When rightly implemented, there are several benefits of eCommerce backordering. Let’s look at a few of these benefits.
Cut carrying cost
For new retailers, the first thing to avoid is overstocking your products. However, you should focus on backordering to allow you to have enough orders pending when people start buying. With this, you don’t have to pay additional money for storage space since you deliver the goods once they arrive. For a new eCommerce store, the order volumes aren’t high initially, which can help minimize cost. With backordering, you can reduce costs.
Save warehouse space
When you have a large inventory volume, you need space to accommodate these products. Regrettably, it can take a huge toil for your business, which can turn out to be expensive. However, keeping a low stock can help cut costs and save warehouse space since you pass your inventory to customers as they come.
Increase product value
In retailing business, curiosity is very important. A backorder can help increase a product value. A company can create a product and allow a consumer to order it before they can ship it. It creates significant value for the customer and a great marketing plan since customers will think the product is very good or offers excellent benefits.
However, to utilize this strategy, a particular number of customers are waiting for the product. When a customer waits for a particular product excessively, it can create disinterest in buying it. Therefore, you have to be careful when using a backorder strategy. Apple is a reputable brand that utilizes this strategy such that its customers always wait when it announces a new iPhone.
Retain customer
Backordering provides relevant information about product sales, trends, and customers’ behavior. You can use it to understand what customers perceive about a particular product. You can use the statistics to analyze what you need to stock, the product your customers want, and how frequently you need supplies.
Must read: Customer retention strategies.
Conclusion
Backordering is an excellent way to handle high volumes when you don’t have adequate storage. However, despite this, customer service needs to be top-notch. Ensure that you keep your supply chain open so that you can consistently deliver the product when necessary. Although customers understand that backordering takes time, it shouldn’t take too much time to become uninterested in the product.
Be sure to check out our product BigCommerce BackOrder if you are looking for a backordering solution for your eCommerce store.
