Fulfillment is a crucial focus area. How can sellers optimize their profits in this regard?
"You have different costs for packages with varying dimensions. It's possible that the marketplace may not always invoice the correct dimensions, which can quickly lead to a difference in profit margin. Therefore, it's crucial to carefully check which package sizes are being billed and if they align with what you have accounted for in your pre-calculation.
These variations can simply arise due to boxes being compressed during shipping, resulting in a longer size and therefore being classified in a different category. However, human errors also occur. It is therefore important to always compare your pre-calculation with your post-calculation to check for any discrepancies.
Furthermore, it is crucial to closely monitor the inventory costs. The expenses associated with inventory on the marketplace (such as through LvB or FBA) can skyrocket if you have slow-moving stock lying around. Therefore, it is essential to have a thorough understanding of the well-being of your inventory."
What strategies can sellers employ to excel in marketplace marketing?
"If we take bol.com as an example, they operate with ACOS and TACOS. ACOS represents the advertising costs per sale, while TACOS refers to the total advertising costs. In reality, it's wise to consider both and include TACOS as a cost component when determining the selling price of your product(s)."
Returns can be inevitable at times. What strategies can sellers employ to minimize the impact and avoid losing out on profits?
"Returns may occur, but you want to minimize them as much as possible or at least cover the costs of returns in some way.
By incorporating return rates into your pricing calculation, you can proactively prepare for these costs based on historical data and avoid potentially incurring losses."
What smart shipping tips do you have?
"It is valuable to compare the shipping costs between fulfillment and/or self-shipping. You can do this by examining the distribution of your orders throughout the day. If the majority of orders come in before your own warehouse's cut-off time, then it's best to handle those deliveries yourself! Anything that comes in after this cut-off time can be handled through marketplace fulfillment. This can be easily managed using EffectConnect's LvB switch, which automatically switches from our own warehouse to fulfillment once our warehouse's cut-off time is reached. This allows us to fulfill our delivery promise and maximize the potential of this cost component. Implementing this strategy can lead to significant additional profits!"
Are you also searching for the profit boosters for your organization?
So it's important to consider the aspects mentioned above. Are you already doing this, but still working with averages for these cost components? That could be costing you!
This means that some of your products may be priced too high, while others are priced too low. But you can actually set the optimal price for each product!
Fortunately, there's an easy solution to this. By using integration software that allows you to work with custom attributes, you can specify that these cost components are customized values that can vary per product.
With EffectConnect, you can easily add these values in one pricing rule using the Repricer. The software will automatically calculate this for you. This way, the specific costs of each product will be taken into account in your pricing calculation, without having to create lengthy pricing rules.