Part 1: Using Royal Mail and Zenstores
Royal Mail is the go-to shipping choice for most UK ecommerce businesses. They offer a range of delivery services for domestic and international parcels, with varying levels of insurance, tracking and delivery confirmation available. By setting up Royal Mail with your Zenstores account, you will have access to a wide range of ecommerce delivery services and a reliable way of optimising your dispatch process.
When you’re first selling online you might begin by copying and pasting addresses from eBay, Amazon and other ecommerce platforms onto labels and printing them off manually. But as your business grows and you start to send out more parcels you’ll need to automate your shipping processes to dispatch quickly.
Marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon will monitor your dispatch time, and give your customers expected delivery dates, while if you sell on your own website using Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento you need to offer a quick and reliable delivery service to encourage shoppers to place an order and build your reputation.
Using Zenstores you’ll be able to import all your orders from eBay, Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy and Magento into one place. Then you can create Royal Mail labels for all the services you would normally use with 2D barcode labels, tracked services and BPL/BPR services.
What are 2D barcode labels?
2D barcode labels are available for large letters and parcels, and will be scanned at the point of delivery.
What’s Royal Mail delivery confirmation?
2D barcode labels offer delivery confirmation - the barcoded label will be scanned when it’s delivered and senders can confirm that the parcel was delivered online, using Track and Trace.
eBay and Amazon both track whether orders arrive on time, and with 2D barcode labels you’re able to enter the parcel ID number as the tracking number on eBay and Amazon. This will help to confirm that parcels have arrived within the marketplace’s timeframe, and will count as evidence in cases where a buyer claims they haven’t received an item.
What are BPL/BPR services?
Royal Mail BPL/BPR services are VAT exempt services for sending business letters or parcels 1st and 2nd Class. These services are available through Zenstores’ integration with Royal Mail.
Using Zenstores with Royal Mail
If you print labels and dispatch orders through Zenstores using Royal Mail 2D barcode labels or any of Royal Mail’s tracked services, Zenstores will automatically upload the tracking details to eBay and Amazon (and other ecommerce platforms) when you mark an order as dispatched.
Zenstores also helps with your order management - you can create multiple orders for one account, assign different orders to team members, flag orders and then sort them, add notes to orders and search through them quickly.
