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Assume you’re browsing an ecommerce site and come upon a product you want to buy. You decide to go to a local physical shop of the company to ask a sales assistant whether they can assist you in picking products for your order.
Despite this, few eCommerce retailers provide basic inventory availability on product sites. It adds a lot of unnecessary friction to the consumer experience. This is just one example of why inventory visibility is vital for providing consumers with convenience and creating a smooth shopping experience that increases their pleasure.
We will cover all you need to know about inventory visibility and management in this tutorial. Additionally, why inventory visibility is critical to becoming a successful eCommerce shop.
What is Inventory Visibility and why does inventory visibility matter in eCommerce?
Company managers want to know how much inventory they have on hand at all times and where various SKUs are situated. Inventory visibility refers to the ability to know what inventory is available and where it is kept. SKUs in the fulfilment process include those at the warehouse, at a storefront, and on shop shelves.
When merchants can watch inventory movement across different locations and phases of fulfilment, they can make smarter inventory management decisions. This includes:
- The timing and amount of inventory acquisition
- Keeping inventory in the right place
- Order fulfillment: Where to allocate orders
- Cost-saving tips for shipping and fulfillment
Now that you understand what inventory visibility is, let’s look at why it matters in eCommerce. Certainly, we will explain how it may assist your eCommerce firm in growing.
You will lose sales and profit if your company cannot explain where your shop stock is, how many things you have in your warehouse, and what stock is being used to satisfy the demands of your consumers. Moreover, inventory visibility is critical to achieving the Omnichannel shopping and fulfilment experience that today’s customers anticipate.
In brief, inventory visibility ensures that internal inventory records mirror reality. That way, you’ll have a lot of information on stock, order monitoring, and tracking.
Also Read: What Are Customer’s Pain Points and How to Solve Them (That Actually Work)
Finally, inventory visibility is the most important factor to consider when providing your consumers since it may make or destroy your firm. To satisfy consumer needs and remain competitive in a market where expectations for product availability and delivery speed continue to rise, you must keep inventory visibility in mind.
The Benefits of Good Inventory Visibility
There is no doubt that inventory visibility may be extremely beneficial when serving customers or prospect customers. Here, we’ll go over all of the advantages to show you how it may be a valuable addition to your eCommerce business.
1. Avoid Stock out
The first and most important advantage of inventory visibility is that it eliminates the stress of not having enough stock and having to notify clients that they cannot purchase the goods any longer. Certainly, many shops don’t even know whether they have product or not, and if this is the case, you may obtain an idea by implementing stock visibility into your store.
For example, suppose one of your consumers arrives to your business wanting to obtain a thing he desires without any stress. Nevertheless, when he arrives at your eCommerce site, he discovers that the goods is no longer available. And here is where stock management comes in, as if you know how much stock the business has and can guide them to purchase anything they desire.
You can use the Out of Stock Notification Extension for Magento 2 to notify the availability of the product stock on the front-end itself. With the help of this extension, you can easily manage product inventory and help your users or customers.
Also Read: Preorders: An Effective Way to Increase Ecommerce Sales?
2. Prevent dead stock
Certainly, deadstock is unnecessary and can harm your business. Possessing more stock than you require is riskier than not having any stock at all. Excess inventory indicates that you have products that cannot be conveniently stored in a warehouse or product storage room.
What else? When you have more stock in your warehouse, you must sell it at a low price since aged things do not sell well. Excess inventory implies you have more items than demand, which may be disastrous for your firm. Better still, you have inventory that satisfies your customers’ demands as well as their desires.
Next, examine your inventory to determine whether you have enough or more stock. You must have merchandise that is readily sold out since excess inventory is referred to as deadstock. Moreover, as the term implies, there is no value in dead stock. You may simply achieve this with inventory visibility and ensure better inventory control.
Also Read: What is Dead Stock? How to Get Rid of eCommerce Dead Stock?
If your excess inventory exceeds client demand, you will have more goods than you can sell. Excess inventory at the end of a product’s lifespan will eventually become dead stock, costing you more in storage expenses than it makes in profit.
Investing in inventory visibility can help you make more accurate demand estimates. Having improved insight into your present inventory levels can help relieve the stress of managing your inventory on a case-by-case basis, which may result in surplus stock.
3. Improve Customer experience
O2O (Online-to-Offline) retail improves convenience and flexibility by providing consumers the best of both worlds by combining online and offline buying capabilities.
A merchant’s product catalogue may be perused online considerably faster and simpler than going through every aisle at a shop. Many consumers, however, still prefer to buy their things in person.
Also Read: What is Customer Experience Management? What it is important for eCommerce Businesses?
As a result, hybrid services such as BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store) and curbside pickup have grown in popularity as customers purchase through several channels. Customers also prefer to return things in-store to avoid paying for return postage and waiting in large lines for refunds.
Customers who wish to pick up purchase at the curb should be informed of whether store has appropriate stock – and if not, whether it can be transported from another store within an acceptable timeframe. But, O2O retail services cannot be coordinated without real-time inventory visibility.
Winding Up!
Yet, if you manage the inventory of your eCommerce business or store, you probably won’t have to repent the letter. Because knowing how much stock shop has with aid of stock visibility allows you to effortlessly and effectively service consumers.
Need help in improving inventory management? M-Connect Media can help. We have a range of Magento 2 extensions with you to help your customers with information about the products out of stock and notify them when the product is out of stock. Contact us to get eCommerce consultants for your eCommerce solution needs.
