Save 8 hours a week: Game-changing fulfilment tips and tricks

The peak retail season can feel like a pressure cooker for eCommerce retailers. From skyrocketing order volumes to tight delivery windows, inefficiencies in your fulfilment processes can quickly spiral into costly mistakes and unhappy customers. Other operational challenges like shipping delays or mismanaged inventory can also snowball into bigger headaches if left unchecked.

The good news? With the right approach, you can streamline your entire fulfilment process to reduce errors, speed up packing, and even transform shipping into a profit centre. Below, we’re diving into 11 powerful tips and tricks that will help you tackle the busiest time of the year with confidence, ensuring you stay efficient, save time, and keep your customers coming back.

Table of contents:

• Common peak season challenges for eCommerce retailers
• 11 fulfilment tips to optimise shipping
  • 1. Leverage smart shipping tools to eliminate pick and pack errors
  • 2. Centralise product info to ensure accurate orders
  • 3. Customise your software to suit your unique workflow
  • 4. Speed up pick and pack with a mobile app
  • 5. Streamline order tracking for quick customer support
  • 6. Simplify international shipping with automated compliance
  • 7. Collaborate securely with user accounts
  • 8. Optimise fulfilment with versatile order tags
  • 9. Instantly sync orders with Shopify webhooks
  • 10. Maximise customer engagement with branded tracking emails
  • 11. Turn shipping into a revenue generator with flexible checkout rates
• Next steps

Common peak season challenges for eCommerce retailers

The busy season can overwhelm even the most prepared teams, as eCommerce retailers face a unique set of challenges. With increased order volumes comes the pressure to fulfil those orders quickly and accurately, but this is easier said than done. Here are some of the most common challenges you’ll need to prepare for:

• Packing and shipping errors – with a higher volume of orders, it’s easy for mistakes to slip through the cracks. Incorrect or delayed shipments can lead to returns, refunds and frustrated customers, especially during peak periods when speed and accuracy are critical.
• Manual processes slowing things down – relying on manual packing slips or outdated systems to handle fulfilment can cause bottlenecks. These inefficiencies not only slow down operations but also increase the risk of errors.
• Limited visibility into order status – customers expect real-time updates on their orders, and without proper tracking, your customer support team can get bogged down with “where’s my order?” queries. Lack of transparency into the delivery process can quickly lead to a loss of trust.
• Balancing cost and customer expectations – free shipping is becoming a customer expectation, but offering it without proper planning can eat away at your margins. Retailers are tasked with finding ways to offer competitive shipping while staying profitable.
• Managing multiple systems and platforms – for many retailers, fulfilling orders means juggling data between multiple systems, sales channels, and warehouses. This lack of integration can lead to delays and make it difficult to track or manage inventory in real-time.

11 fulfilment tips to optimise shipping

1. Leverage smart shipping tools to eliminate pick and pack errors

The peak season is hectic at times, and pick and pack errors can quickly add up, costing both time and money. In fact, studies show that incorrect orders can eat up 20% of your operational budget due to rework and returns. But with the right tools in place, you can minimise these costly mistakes:

• Use Packing Validation to ensure accuracy – One common issue in eCommerce is picking errors, especially when your team is under pressure. Starshipit’s Packing Validation feature ensures each item in an order is scanned before it’s packed. The system will only let you proceed once every item is accounted for, meaning fewer mistakes and happier customers.
• Use Recommended Packaging to reduce waste – With more products heading out the door, efficient packaging is crucial. An intelligent algorithm like Starshipit’s Recommended Packaging feature can take the guesswork out of this process, selecting the perfect box for each order based on product dimensions. This reduces empty space, lowers shipping costs, and helps with sustainable packaging efforts.
• Incorporate USB scales for precise shipping costs – Before sending your packages off, make sure you’re using USB scales to weigh orders accurately. This helps prevent overpacking and ensures that you’re not being overcharged for shipping, all while streamlining your operations.

2. Centralise product info to ensure accurate orders

If your products are spread across multiple sales channels or stored in various locations, managing product information accurately can feel like a constant uphill battle. Incorrect or outdated product details lead to mistakes like wrong items being shipped, frustrated customers, and higher return rates.

One way to solve this is by using Starshipit’s Product Catalogue feature to build a single source of truth. This feature helps you centralise all your product details in one place. Whether it’s SKUs, dimensions, or descriptions, you’ll have everything ready to go at the point of fulfilment.

No more scrambling to update product info manually – the Product Catalogue ensures your orders are accurate, reducing mistakes and keeping your customers happy.

3. Customise your software to suit your unique workflow

No two businesses are the same, so why should your software be? One way to streamline your fulfilment operations is to tailor your shipping software to suit your specific needs. Starshipit enables you to customise the orders grid to suit your needs – for example, if you’re only shipping domestically, you can remove the ‘country’ column completely and replace it with more useful information.

This flexibility ensures your team sees the most important information at a glance, making it easier to prioritise, manage, and fulfil orders more efficiently. By adapting your software to your process, you'll reduce friction and save time, especially during peak periods.

5. Streamline order tracking for quick customer support

“Where’s my order?” queries can quickly pile up, and digging through multiple tabs and systems just to find a single tracking number wastes valuable time. Simplifying this process can make a big difference in keeping your team efficient and your customers satisfied.

With simple browser-based tools like Starshipit’s Order Tracker Chrome extension, your team can quickly track orders without leaving their current screen. By simply entering an order number into the browser’s sidebar, they can access real-time tracking updates in seconds. This not only speeds up your team’s response time but also reduces customer frustration with faster, more accurate order updates.

6. Simplify international shipping with automated compliance

International shipping can be a daunting process with various customs regulations and compliance standards that differ from country to country. For many retailers, managing these requirements manually is time-consuming and often leads to errors, resulting in shipment delays or even rejections.

That’s where Starshipit’s Product Catalogue comes in. You can upload and store all the required information about your products, from HS codes to customs descriptions, reducing the risk of delays at customs and ensuring your international shipments go smoothly.

And if your goods require any additional information like Fabric Certificates or Declarations of Origins, these can be added to the Document Manager, a dedicated section to store all shipping documents in one place. These documents are then automatically assigned to your orders based on the items, giving you peace of mind knowing you’ve provided everything you need to stay compliant.

The challenge that often comes from this is keeping sensitive information safe and ensuring only the right people have access to key settings. Without proper controls and permissions in place, there’s always a risk of unintentional mistakes that can disrupt the workflow.

In Starshipit, you can assign user accounts with specific permissions based on each team member’s role. For example, an admin can have full access, while temporary warehouse staff might only need access to fulfilment tasks. This way, everyone has the right tools to do their job, and you reduce the risk of accidental changes to your shipping software or sensitive data customer being shared.

8. Optimise fulfilment with versatile order tags

During the busy season – especially across Black Friday/ Cyber Monday, it’s easy for key orders to slip through the cracks, especially high-priority ones. One way to make sure this doesn’t happen is by using tags to organise and prioritise your order effectively.

In Starshipit, tags allow you to add custom labels to order, making it easier to identify important details at a glance. For example, you can create tags for high-value orders, flagging them for priority fulfilment. Better yet, you can set up rules to automatically apply tags, like assigning a “priority” tag to any order over a certain value or to specific repeat customers.

Tags aren’t just useful for order management; they also help communicate key information to your fulfilment team, ensuring everyone is on the same page and orders are processed without a hitch. By using tags strategically, you can reduce the chance of missing key orders and create a more streamlined fulfilment process.

9. Instantly sync orders with Shopify webhooks

Delays in processing orders can lead to unhappy customers and bottlenecks in your fulfilment process. One way to eliminate these delays is by automating how your orders are synced between platforms.

With Starshipit’s deep integration with Shopify, and support for Shopify webhooks, your Shopify orders are imported into Starshipit as soon as they’re placed. This real-time sync means your team can start processing orders right away, speeding up the fulfilment process and ensuring customers get their packages as quickly as possible.

The best part? If a customer contacts you to update their shipping address before the order is shipped, the webhook instantly syncs that change between Shopify and Starshipit. This reduces the chance of human error and keeps everything running smoothly.

Shopify Enhanced will support syncing any updates to your orders in Starshipit with webhooks as long as the order is unshipped. For example, if you cancel an order in Shopify that is already imported into Starshipit, then next time Starshipit imports, we will remove that order from your unshipped tab.

By automating these updates, you’ll save your team valuable time and reduce the risk of costly mistakes, ensuring a more seamless experience for both your team and your customers.

Using Starshipit’s branded tracking, you can keep customers informed about their delivery status while staying on brand. These emails have an open rate of around 65%, making them an excellent channel to share key updates, promote future sales, or offer re-purchase incentives.

By using branded tracking, you not only keep your customers in the loop but also engage them when they’re most attentive. It’s an easy way to build brand loyalty and drive repeat business, all while providing a top-notch post-purchase experience.

11. Turn shipping into a revenue generator with flexible checkout rates

Offering free shipping is a great way to attract customers, but it can eat into your margins — especially when it comes to premium delivery options like same-day shipping. So, how can you balance the appeal of free shipping with the need to maintain profitability?

Starshipit allows you to turn shipping costs into a revenue generator by adding a small margin to your live rates at checkout for premium delivery services. Customers who want the convenience of faster shipping are often willing to pay a bit more, and that extra margin can help cover the cost of your free shipping offers or even boost your profits.

By using a mix of free and premium shipping options, you can meet customer expectations while generating some extra revenue. It’s a win-win for both you and your customers!

Next steps: Get ahead of the peak season with smart fulfilment strategies

Implementing these fulfilment tips can help you navigate the busiest times of the year with greater efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction. Whether you're fine-tuning your packing processes, automating your shipping compliance, or customising your software to fit your workflow, taking proactive steps now will set you up for success when the orders start pouring in.