Successfully manage your orders and stock on marketplaces with Lengow

To ensure both the shipment of your products and customer satisfaction, it is essential to have a global, detailed view of your orders placed on marketplaces. Regularly visit the “Orders” section where you can perform the following actions: accept/refuse/cancel an order, refund, start shipping packages, etc. To save time, you can also use the automatic order acceptance option. If you want to benefit from a centralized view of orders from your e-commerce site’s back office, download one of our modules (Magento and Magento 2, PrestaShop, Shopware, Shopify and Woocommerce), or use the Lengow API.

Once an order has been accepted, it is essential to respect the delivery times indicated to your customers at the time of their purchase. Be sure your processing and delivery times respect your commitments. If you receive an order for an unavailable item, update the availability of the product and cancel the order immediately.

Make sure that your couriers can still deliver your products in spite of the current situation:
– active couriers: Royal Mail, Parcelforce, DHL, UPS.
– inactive couriers: Mondial Relay, Relais Colis.
– couriers with limited activity: Amazon Fulfillment (essential items)

(Updated: 24/03/2020)

We strongly advise you to update your delivery times for orders that cannot be delivered to a PO box and that don’t fall under “priority products”.

Your stock is the field that changes the most in your product catalogue. In order to have the the right number of products in stock, it is important to analyse your environment and performance on a daily basis in order to anticipate consumer demand.

To benefit from an updated view of the sale of your products from your online store and marketplaces, your stock must be regularly updated within your product catalogue (manually or automatically depending on your operation).

To be as reactive as possible, we advise you to automatically synchronize your stock by connecting your online store with the e-commerce modules at your disposal via our API, or to import your inventory using our “Additional Sources” feature.

NB: be aware there is a delay between the time a customer places an order on the marketplace and the time the marketplace updates your stock.

Finally, as a marketplace seller, it is imperative to allow for a minimum stock to meet higher demand, otherwise, you risk being penalized or even having your account suspended by the marketplace on which you sell your products. To maintain your stock and avoid products becoming unavailable, which in turn leads to frustration from your customers, we advise you to set up automatic rules that will allow you, for example, to unpublish items in your catalogue when stock is less than 5. In addition, some marketing channels allow you to limit the amount of a product purchase allowed for a single order. For example, Shopping Actions provides the attribute ‘purchase_quantity_limit’, allowing you to indicate a limit.

If you distribute your products on several marketing channels, it is all the more important to implement these actions. You can take advantage of this period to activate new marketplaces in order to respond to the growing demand for your products or to prepare in case platforms have to temporarily close their doors.

If you have any questions about your orders, your stock or any other subject related to the use of our platform, our team is available to help you face this crisis in the best possible way. Good luck and keep going!

Image: bongkarn thanyakij (Pexels)