What problems do merchants face in taking backorders on Shopify?
Shopify allows merchants to take orders on future inventory also known as pre-orders and backorders. But there are many challenges that merchants face when they actually start taking pre- backorders on Shopify.
Shopify’s native functions lack the following capabilities when it comes to taking pre- backorders:
- Lack of real-time inventory availability
Shopify’s order management system lacks the real-time inventory, order, and return management capabilities that most established businesses require in today’s competitive retail environment. Without real-time visibility and availability across channels and locations, brands struggle to fulfill orders and keep up with rising customer expectations eg. brands take orders online and are often forced to cancel them due to stock shortages. Retailers are required to put in a lot of manual efforts to overcome Shopify’s lack of inventory synchronization capabilities across multiple channels. Or, they fear frustrating customers as a result of inventory unavailability.
Shopify also does not track when products are going to be restocked nor does it manage backorders. So your customer service team cannot provide them with an expected delivery date. Since, your customer service representatives also cannot help customers when they call in to inquire about the status of their order, they have no visibility into whether the order is being routed, picked up, packed, or shipped.
2. The text of “Add to Cart” button confuses customers
Many retailers make the mistake of showing the regular “Add to Cart” button on the product detail page (PDP) for pre-order and backorder products. This creates a confusing experience for customers because they decide to buy a product based on the assumption that it’s a standard order and will be delivered at a standard delivery timeline. So when customers later find out that their order is actually a pre-orders/backorders, and it will take 2–3 months to deliver this order, they end up canceling their online order.
To solve this problem and prioritize a seamless checkout process, merchants should replace the “Add to Cart” button with “Pre-order” and “Backorder” buttons respectively, and display the expected delivery date on the PDP itself. This sets correct customer expectations and reduces cancellations.
3. Inability to communicate expected delivery dates
Providing a good pre-order experience requires communicating accurate expected delivery dates. Retailers receive advanced shipment notifications from their manufacturers and that data is stored in their ERP. However, taking that data from the ERP, calculating lead time, and then communicating it to the customers takes a lot of work. To make matters more complicated, pre-order inventory can be received in multiple shipments, so each pre-order batch can have a different expected delivery date. Retailers need an easy way to calculate the expected date as well as a quick way to communicate any changes to the customer. This challenge is caused by lack of visibility into future inventory in legacy systems and thus prevents retailers from promising that inventory in an efficient way.
4. Overpromising Pre- Backorders
One of the main challenges retailers face when offering pre-orders is to ensure that they do not receive more orders than the expected future inventory. Unless retailers have the right technology in place, their eCommerce platform will keep taking orders for out-of-stock products irrespective of the expected future inventory. This will lead to retailers taking orders that they cannot fulfill. To avoid this situation, the merchandiser would need to manually keep a watch on the number of online orders vs the future inventory in the Purchase orders. If not, the retailer will have to cancel customers’ orders. Once again, this challenge is caused by the lack of transparency and visibility into future inventory.
5. Balancing Inventory Allocation between Stores and Pre-Orders
Until the inventory is received, open pre-orders are waiting to be fulfilled. If the retailer has an in-store presence in addition to an online one, merchandisers also want to allocate some of the inventory to stores so customers can experience the product in person. Legacy order management systems will allocate all available inventory to pre-orders, leaving nothing for the stores, a process that simply doesn’t work for an omnichannel brand.
The Solution:
Merchants can take backorders or pre-orders on Shopify without facing the above-listed issues. This is possible if they have a robust order management system in place.
The complete solution to these problems, as well as how to take backorders on Shopify, can be found here- Top Challenges Before Offering Pre- BackOrders On Shopify And How To Overcome Them
