With the holiday season and retail madness quickly approaching, the uptick in shipping for anything and everything will continue to increase throughout October, November, and December. This influx of purchased eCommerce products often means backlogs and delays for shipping and logistics. 

To avoid unhappy customers waiting weeks or months for their purchases, it’s essential to plan ahead and prepare accordingly for product fulfillment during the year's busiest season. So we’re sharing five tips we recommend to ensure your products get shipped on time this holiday season. 

Start Early 

The best way to satisfy your customers with on-time order delivery is to start your promotions early and get ahead of the rush. The earlier you can begin running your holiday marketing campaigns and promotions, the better. This ensures you’ll have additional time beyond the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush to get orders out the door and delivered in a timely manner. If you use a 3PL for fulfillment, starting your holiday campaigns ahead of peak season will help to alleviate potential bottlenecks caused from heavy order volume condensed into such a short period of time. 

Peak season for eCommerce runs from late October through December, so we recommend kicking off holiday sales before the holidays, if possible. 

Factor Extra Time Into Your Planning 

Extra time means that your fulfillment team can focus on serving your clients with exceptional service and turnaround times rather than rushing to simply get products out the door. Lean on your fulfillment experts (or look into partnering with one if you don’t already) to help with your planning timeline and campaign launches. The more notice you can give them about arriving inventory, new SKUs, additional scopes of work, and your planned holiday campaigns, the better prepared they can be to support your business efforts. 

While extended supply chain lead times are improving, there are still backlogs and bottlenecks, and planning for delays is essential. Whether it’s a parcel delivery bottleneck because a carrier is overwhelmed by holiday demand or your manufacturer is still dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 and resulting shortages, make sure to add additional time as a buffer within your logistics planning. 

Create A Pre-holiday To-do Checklist 

Like any good to-do checklist, your pre-holiday planning one should outline everything your business needs to complete in preparation for the holiday selling season. You can break your checklist into days, weeks, and months leading up to the holidays to help keep things manageable – but prep early and prep often. 

Some things to include on your pre-holiday to-do list might include: 

• Ensure your website’s product pages are optimized with unique, high-quality imagery and product details
• Audit your checkout flow
• Update your shipping and return policies if they are out of date
• Evaluate your online checkout process and make a note of any areas that need changes
• Communicate frequently with your logistics team and fulfillment partners 

Evaluate Your Third-party Integrations And Support 

Take a look at your third-party integrations and assess how they are performing. Keep in mind that an influx in holiday orders will only put more strain on your current systems – so if they’re functioning but allow room for improvement, consider how you can look to improve these areas before the busy season is in full swing. 

At ShipDaddy, we make eCommerce fulfillment easy and handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on growing your business. With scalability in mind, our services and support are designed to grow your business today – and years down the road. 

Hire a Reliable Fulfillment Service Provider

To ensure your products get to where they need to go, partner with a reliable fulfillment service provider who can handle the fulfillment logistics for you – like ShipDaddy. As you look into potential partners, be sure to evaluate their fulfillment operations and available services. 

While the cost of services is important to consider, make sure you’re looking into all aspects of potential partners, including their processing time, support services, system automations, online reviews, locations, eCommerce knowledge, and more. 

Looking For Expert Support With Your Holiday Fulfillment? 

If picking, packaging, and shipping orders is a bottleneck in your business, outsourcing fulfillment logistics could solve your problems and grow your bottom line. ShipDaddy’s experts are here to help support your e-commerce needs and offer exceptional service for your company. We do all the heavy lifting, while you focus on scaling your business.

Interested in working together or have other questions about our services and offerings? Connect with our friendly team today and get a free quote! 

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