How can an online retailer connect their shopping cart to a third party warehouse?

For ecommerce e-tailers, perhaps the most important steps to begin working with a third party ecommerce order fulfillment is to connect your shopping cart/ ecommerce platform to the fulfillment center. You need a way to send the orders that come into your online store to the warehouse for packing and shipping. 

The order data you will send to the fulfillment center contains information like customer name,  shipping address, the method to ship (USPS Flat Rate, FedEx Air, UPS Ground, etc.) and the sku's and their quantity. 

After an order had shipping, data will then also be sent back to your ecommerce/ logistics software from the fulfillment center such as shipping confirmation number and inventory updates.

The data exchange can happen a number of ways.

API – Most ecommerce software programs offer an API plug in that will connect directly with the fulfillment company's warehouse management system (WMS). The WMS is the system that controls all the operations within the warehouse including inventory, pick tickets, shipping, etc. This may require some custom programming.

FTP, via Email – Order files (as a csv, txt, xml etc) can typically be created automatically from a shopping cart program and placed on an FTP site and then imported into a WMS. The files can also be emailed. This can be completely automated end to end or may involve some manual file handling depending on how it is set up.

Web Portal – For lower volume clients, some prefer to enter the orders manually via our web portal.

When you are evaluating third party fulfillment centers make sure you discuss how the exchange of order information will work right at the outset. Some fulfillment centers may be limited in how they can work with certain ecommerce platforms so it is important to know that up front.

Selecting Shopping Cart Software

Shopping Cart Software

The shopping cart software, or ecommerce platform you select for your online store is a lot more than just a way to enable customers to pay for orders on your website.  The right software will provide tools and support to not only sell more products but operate many other parts of your online retail business more efficiently.

If you are looking evaluate options for selecting a shopping cart program click here.

The following is a list of ways a comprehensive shopping cart software/ ecommerce platform helps an online retail store.

• Payment Processing – payment support for credit card processing, PayPal or other methods of processing payments
• Webpage Design – including step by step wizards and store front design templates to get your store setup plus most will also integrate into the backend of your existing website
• Inventory Control – processes to keep track of your inventory, set up low inventory alerts and generate reports
• Shipping – tools that calculates shipping costs for orders with integration to small package carriers like FedEx, UPS, and the USPS
• Tax Calculation – help to calculate sales taxes, which is complicated to handle on your own
• Customer Management – reporting and purchase history for customers
• Marketing – integrated information on affiliate programs, search engine optimization, social network marketing, site analytics, and conversion optimization
• Security – protection of confidential information for your customers
• System Integration – connection to the software with your ecommerce order fulfillment provider

Plus a few more ideas....

• Administration and Inventory Control – Functionality to support business needs from Account and Inventory to Mobile Applications
• Marketing – Support with social media connectivity, cross-selling and up-selling at checkout
• Support – Features like SSL secure checkouts, fraud protection, backup, restoration, and cookies
•  SEO – Control over title tags and descriptions to help maximize the store for search engine optimization
• PCI Compliant Hosting – A Payment Card Industry compliant hosting environment
•  Up-Selling and Cross-Selling Features – Offering customers products of a greater value that what they are considering plus offering complimentary products
• Product Reviews – Enabling customers to post reviews of products on the site
• Price Management – Flexible options for pricing enabling promotional or other pricing options
• Catalog Management – Simple, set up and addition of products on store including images
• Site Analytics – Monitoring of site activity and user tracking for optimization
• Product Feed Support – Able to create a feed of your products to shopping comparison sites