Multi-location Shipping from One User Dashboard

It’s vital that your B2B eCommerce platform modules have the option of letting customers enter information for their multiple locations. This allows them to send the products they buy from you to as many different locations as they have, an aspect that can be very appealing to customers who want to keep their purchasing and shipping as simple as possible. 

B2B shipping software must allow them to enter multiple locations to distinguish between aspects of their company such as corporate office, warehouse, distribution center, mixed-use, etc. This can all be controlled by a single user dashboard where the user can enter as many different shipping locations as necessary. These multiple locations can also serve various account profiles within the same user dashboard, so a single enterprise customer can send you dozens of customers. 

Split-Shipping 

Split shipping is a common aspect of B2B shipping, but not as common as split-shipping with split-location. It gets even more complex when you are using different shipping services (UPS, USPS, FedEx, LTL) where a single order is broken up to be sent by multiple shippers to multiple locations. 

The top B2B eCommerce platforms — like the CEF eCommerce framework created by Clarity — can take care of these difficult shipping situations automatically. This not only reduces the chance of error, but it also saves considerable time compared to customer service, salespeople, or your shipping department entering this information manually. 

Digital Support

One of the primary reasons to offer your customers self-service when inputting their B2B shipping options is so that they can self-serve. If they have twenty locations, it just makes sense that they will input all of those addresses themselves, especially if most of those addresses are for future orders. (It’s also possible for a good B2B eCommerce platform to accept all of this information from CRM or ERP integration.) Self-service also cuts down on the amount of time your own customer services reps have to do data entry. 

When customers need help inputting their multi-location shipping data, it’s important to have help at the ready. Training videos and walkthroughs are an excellent option to help customers self-serve. Of course, you should also have the ability for them to get in touch with customer service if they are having trouble, often via chat. 

Keep It Simple

It’s vital to make sure that creating multiple shipping locations is as simple as possible. The UX/UI involved with the shipping options — and throughout the entire user dashboard — needs to be intuitive to a customer. Having any trouble could make them leave and investigate your competitors. 

Of course, this means it has to be as simple as possible on the front-end...anything the customer can see. Conversely, the back-end might look very different during development. Making something simple on the front-end means making it even more complex on the back-end. B2B shipping is ab excellent example of an eCommerce solution where this often proves true.