Many top e-commerce sellers are using Shopify to build their stunning e-commerce stores. Based on our quick survey, many chose Shopify is because of:

• Apps & ecosystem. Shopify comes Shopify App Store whereby these are ready resources to make your challenging e-commerce journey less difficult. The apps have included fulfillment, marketing, payment, security, reporting and many others.
• Easy to use. The navigation is simple, subscribe, open store, setup product and start selling!

In this post, we will share with you the ways we can avoid landmine on your Shopify website. Let’s start!

Product Setup – Efficient SKU System

Stock Keeping Units (SKU) are product codes used to search and identify stock.Shopify is pretty straight forward in uploading products, you may refer to this Youtube Video:

What we are going to mention here is Stock Keeping Units (SKU). It refers to product code which can be used to search and identify stock. It’s something that you must pay serious attention to. There are some guidelines that AllSome has summarized for your quick reference as below:

• All SKUs must be unique. A product with multiple variations must be given different SKU. For example, “Blue Shirt + S” and “Blue Shirt + M” must not share the same SKU.
• Create meaningful SKU. It must be something that you can quickly understand, it will save you a lot of time in inventory management. For example, “Blue Shirt + S” will be BS-S while “Blue Shirt + M” will be BS-M.
• Do not change SKU as long as it’s possible. For example, you have 1,000pcs of ready stock for BS-S and you change your SKU to BS-SS. For orders sold under BS-SS, it will show BS-SS as no stock. If you immediately change all your inventory to BS-SS, previous orders sold under BS-S will show BS-S as no stock. Hence, for the case if change of SKU is an action which cannot be avoided, the right way of doing it is to finish fulfilling all orders under the old SKU(s). Then, create a new product profile with new unique product SKUs. Then, safely move old remaining inventory to new corresponding SKUs.

Please work closely with your fulfillment partners to keep your inventory in order.

Order Setup – Phone Number Required

After your products are nicely setup, now it’s time you look into buyer order details. Experience what your buyers will experience, you can go through this video to learn:

One thing that we must highlight is you must ensure the buyers to insert their phone numbers during checkout. The reason is because phone numbers are required by many delivery circumstances, especially for cross border shipments. Although some buyers may refuse to provide their phone numbers on e-commerce sites, based on AllSome experience it’s not affecting our clients at all.

It can be configure through Shopify Admin Dashboard > Settings (Bottom Left) > Checkout > Form options – Shipping address phone number (Choose Required). Click here if you’d like a step-by-step on how to add a phone number as a requirement on your Shopify website.

Payment Setup – Effective Order Tracking System

After the ordering process is considered, there is one last thing that you must not forget – Package tracking system. Many online sellers are using PayPal as their payment method, which make this step very significant. PayPal will freeze your account if:

• No proof-of-delivery is provided.
• Unverified business activities.

Don’t freak out, it can be solved! So, you will need:

• A valid package tracking page.
• Some support business documents, your business entity and your business partners. The documents are usually:
  • Business Registration Certificate, Business Addresses Proof (Utility bill and Broadband bill)
  • Identity card, passport, driving license: To proof of person-in-charge for the business
  • Supplier information: Website, email, phone number, registered addresses

Fulfillment Setup – Effective & Error-Free Fulfillment

After buyers have placed orders, they are expecting their purchases to arrive as soon as possible. Therefore, effective fulfillment is one of the most important component to support your journey in building your awesome brand. There are some potential changes that you should be reminded:

• Cancelled orders
• Change of purchased SKUs
• Updated addresses

When you have several hundreds and thousands of orders per day, the above changes from your buyers are very common. However, you must always update your fulfillment team to avoid wrong fulfillment.

Fulfillment Setup – Kitting Fulfillment

There are times you have multiple SKUs that you would like to combo them to sell it out as a set. The process of combining these SKUs into one is kitting. It’s a great idea and many has gained very positive returns. You however should always check with your fulfillment team to see if they can cater for that.

AllSome is proud to introduce our new kitting feature whereby you can sell the combo SKUs by just leaving us a message, we will configure everything for you. And, after the quick configuration, you can sell the SKUs individually and when you have orders with the combo SKUs, we can fulfill as normal without kitting fee.

However, there’s more than just these four steps that will help you excel in being an outstanding e-commerce store. But with every step of the way, your dreams of outshining your competitors will come true.

For complete Shopify Tutorial Video, it’s available at Shopify Help Centre Youtube Channel.

AllSome Fulfillment provides cross-border e-commerce fulfillment in a painless way, starting from only US$0.25. Contact us today!