Order tracking has become an essential part of managing e-commerce fulfillment and meeting customer delivery expectations. With online shoppers demanding more transparency and predictability around their purchases, implementing a reliable shipment tracking system is crucial for brands with online stores looking to optimize the post-purchase experience.
The good news is that as technology evolves for e-commerce fulfillment systems, providing package tracking functionality and delivery date estimations has become simpler and more efficient. That means it is also important to select the right tracking service to leverage maximum output for your company.
In this post, we’ll explore what e-commerce order tracking entails, why it matters for your business, how to effectively implement order tracking and the key benefits it provides. Whether you handle fulfillment internally or use a 3PL, a robust tracking system can reduce logistics costs, minimize customer inquiries, and give you greater visibility into your order lifecycle.
What is E-commerce Order Tracking?
Before diving into its importance, it is necessary to first define the scope and definition of order tracking. Order tracking in e-commerce refers to the monitoring of package orders from the time it is placed until successful delivery.
It involves tracking shipment status, providing estimated delivery dates, and sending proactive shipping notifications to update customers throughout the order lifecycle. From the moment an online order is received, through fulfillment, and until the customer’s doorstep, tracking gives visibility into each step.
For e-commerce fulfillment services, key tracking capabilities include order confirmation, shipping notifications, delivery ETAs, and status alerts if exceptions arise during transit. Implementing tracking allows brands to closely follow each order and keep customers informed.
Why E-commerce Order Tracking Matters?
E-commerce order tracking is central to delivering an ideal post-purchase experience to customers, which defines the success of an e-commerce fulfillment business. There are several key reasons why e-commerce tracking should be a priority.
Reduces Customer Inquiries
By providing automated delivery updates to customers, e-commerce tracking significantly reduces the volume of WISMO (Where Is My Order) tickets to your support team. This saves substantial time for fulfillment staff fielding repetitive questions about order status that tracking information resolves proactively.
Streamlining order communication allows your business to reallocate support resources to other customer experience priorities.
Provides Visibility & Control
Comprehensive e-commerce tracking gives managers real-time visibility into order status as orders move through your fulfillment workflow. This enables you to closely monitor processes within the warehouse to rapidly identify and resolve any bottlenecks or order management issues.
With deep logistics insights, operational managers can take a proactive approach to optimizing workflows, staffing, and inventory planning to meet demand.
Meets Customer Expectations
Research shows that almost all customers expect delivery date estimates and proactive notifications when shopping online. E-commerce tracking enables your business to meet these expectations around predictability and communication.
This prevents customers from being caught off guard by unexpected delays, which could otherwise result in negative reviews. By keeping customers informed, tracking brings transparency that today’s online shoppers demand.
Optimizes Workflows
Robust data analysis from an e-commerce tracking solution allows you to identify patterns and areas for improving your fulfillment workflows and inventory management. With data on fulfillment and order delivery time, delays, staffing needs, and more, managers can easily pinpoint supply chain process bottlenecks and save operational and shipping costs.
Tracking provides the visibility to optimize everything from inventory picking and packing to package transit by carriers and returns management for systemic gains.
Enhances Customer Experience
Parcel tracking gives customers confidence throughout the post-purchase experience by setting clear delivery expectations and informing shoppers.
This leads to happier repeat customers and loyal brand advocates. Furthermore, swift resolution of any delivery hiccups enabled by tracking leaves customers with a positive lasting impression of your brand’s commitment to customer service.
By making delivery predictable and transparent for customers, tracking directly impacts customer satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value.
How to Set Up Order Tracking For Your E-commerce Business
Once you recognize the immense value of order tracking, the next step is properly implementing a robust order-tracking system for your business and exploring its benefits for your e-commerce business. Follow the steps below to fully utilize this powerful tool.
1. Choose an Order Tracking Software
Selecting the best order tracking software to centralize your tracking needs for different channels and carriers is crucial for effective order fulfillment. Generally, order tracking software will provide features like real-time shipment updates, exception monitoring, custom notifications, API integrations, etc. Except for the special tracking needs, the most important element is the accuracy and timeliness of the tracking information. Also, 24/7 technical support for a software solution can’t be compromised. A system crash will not only lead to disruption in your operations but more fatally, a sea of customer complaints and a crisis of brand trust will follow.
2. Get Shipment Tracking Data Via the Tracking System
The tracking number is a unique code assigned to each package once it enters the shipping process, allowing both the sender and recipient to monitor its status and location at various stages of the delivery journey. However, different carriers use various formats for their tracking numbers, making it challenging to manage packages fulfilled by multiple carriers.
In such cases, a multi-carrier order tracking system becomes essential. Leveraging big data analysis, it can automatically detect and track tracking numbers from different carriers, ensuring seamless package management.
You can directly import tracking numbers or synchronize orders from your eCommerce platform using API integrations. Once the API is implemented, the system automates the rest, seamlessly pulling tracking data from your carriers and providing a comprehensive view of all your shipments and orders from a single dashboard.
3. Set Up Order Confirmation and Shipping Notifications
Clear communication between customers can improve their post-purchase experience. Therefore, sending an order confirmation with their tracking number to customers when the order is processed from online shops is a must. With this, customers can track their orders by themselves, which reduces WISMO calls to a great degree. If you want to offer your customers a more seamless tracking experience, you can also set up additional email or SMS shipping notifications to alert them when their orders ship and reach key transit milestones. Order tracking software automates this process efficiently. It not only provides real-time package status but also supports customization features that can be integrated with brand marketing.
4. Offer Branded Tracking Experience
Although shipping notifications can meet the tracking needs of some customers, impatient customers or those with valuable or urgent packages, especially in cross-border trade with long shipping times, will not be satisfied with just notifications. They want to monitor the entire journey of their shipment. In such cases, a tracking page becomes crucial. Customers will repeatedly visit this page to reduce their anxiety. Therefore, if your website does not have a tracking page yet, you should implement one immediately. Of course, this is just the basics.
By creating a branded tracking page featuring your logo and marketing elements, you can enhance customer engagement, strengthen brand recognition, and potentially increase sales through added promotional opportunities.
5. Monitor Delivery Exceptions
Order tracking software effectively addresses a crucial issue of the shipping process which is the delivery exception. With automated notifications, both you and your customers are immediately informed of any exceptions as they occur. This allows you to take swift action to resolve the issue before it leads to customer complaints, ensuring a smoother and more satisfactory delivery experience.
6. Analyze Tracking Data
Analyze the large quantity of collected tracking data to observe KPIs like on-time fulfillment rate, estimated time of arrival (ETA) accuracy, customer complaint rate, and more. This helps you optimize your workflows and delivery routes so that you select highly qualified carrier partners and do more with fewer resources.
7. Integrate with Customer Support System
Connect your helpdesk/ticketing system to your order tracking system. This integration allows customer service agents to quickly access shipment information, reducing response times and improving overall customer support.
By implementing a centralized tracking system, you can gain end-to-end shipment visibility into the e-commerce order lifecycle. This allows you to identify and resolve any shipping issues proactively and keep customers happy with a transparent delivery experience.
E-commerce Order Tracking with TrackingMore
As customer demands rise, order tracking has become essential for e-commerce success. To maximize value, partner with a proven shipment tracking solution provider like TrackingMore that offers rich features tailored to modern e-commerce tracking needs.
TrackingMore is an exemplary real-time order tracking software that offers comprehensive features such as a centralized shipment dashboard and internal alerts to manage and handle delivery issues, especially exceptions. It also provides customizable shipping notifications for enhanced customer communication and brand tracking pages for a seamless shopping experience. With robust API integrations, TrackingMore ensures seamless connectivity with over 1,200 carriers and eCommerce platforms.
Trusted by leading e-commerce brands like SHEIN, DJI, and AliExpress, TrackingMore provides these brands with the visibility, control, and exceptional delivery experience needed to thrive. It goes beyond being just a simple tracking tool, offering comprehensive solutions to enhance logistics and customer satisfaction.
Ready to transform your e-commerce order tracking experience?
Sign up for a free trial to experience TrackingMore firsthand. Or contact our experts to evaluate your tracking needs and discover cost-effective solutions that exceed your expectations.
The TrackingMore team shares insights on logistics tracking technology, industry trends, and e-commerce logistics solutions to help businesses streamline shipment tracking and enhance customer post-purchase experience.
