Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform, renowned for its digital storefront capabilities and intuitive interface. However, when it comes to managing complex omnichannel retail scenarios, especially in-store fulfillment, Shopify alone falls short.
In today’s competitive omnichannel landscape, offering fast delivery options like same-day and next-day shipping is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Retailers using Shopify local delivery features often aim to provide their customers with this convenience. While Shopify provides a basic local delivery feature to cater to these demands, its limitations quickly surface as businesses scale across multiple locations. Offering in-store pick-up is another option, however, managing forced shipping along with in-store pick-up orders becomes challenging, creating friction in operations.
In this blog, we’ll dive into the key challenges retailers face with Shopify’s native fulfillment options for local delivery and in-store pick-up. We’ll also discuss how HotWax Commerce offers solutions that address these gaps, empowering Shopify retailers to meet the demands of modern fulfillment while maintaining a streamlined in-store experience.
Fulfill Online Orders using Shopify Local Delivery Feature
Many Shopify retailers use the local delivery feature to offer customers the added convenience of choosing a faster delivery method for their online orders. Customers opt for local delivery because they trust that a nearby store will fulfill their order, ensuring the quickest possible delivery. This is especially critical for time-sensitive purchases, like those meant for special occasions, birthdays, or events—where same-day or next-day delivery is essential.
While this approach can work in certain scenarios, several limitations become apparent:
For retailers using Shopify eCommerce without Shopify POS, the absence of a dedicated fulfillment software presents challenges. Store staff are forced to manage the fulfillment through Shopify Admin, which is far from ideal as retailers prefer not to grant backend access to store associates.
However, this scenario isn’t the primary concern.
The main challenge arises even when retailers fully embrace Shopify’s ecosystem, using both Shopify eCommerce and Shopify POS. Despite having these systems, Shopify local delivery capabilities often become limiting, particularly in scaling operations across multiple stores.
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Store Location Limits: Shopify local delivery is only available to retailers with 20 or fewer locations. Enterprise retailers with more than 20 stores are excluded from using this feature.
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Checkout Restrictions: Another eligibility criteria is that custom checkouts must be deactivated. This requirement leads to various issues, which we’ll discuss in the next sections.
Let’s dive deeper into limitations of using shopify local delivery:
Fig 1: Shopify Local Delivery
I. No Support for Fulfilling Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Orders using Shopify Local Delivery
Expanding reach through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon is a common strategy for retailers. This multi-channel approach helps capture a broader customer base and drive sales. However, managing and fulfilling orders across these platforms presents challenges for Shopify retailers.
As discussed earlier, one of the key requirements to use Shopify local delivery is disabling custom checkout. Shopify determines local delivery eligibility during the checkout process, but this logic only applies to orders processed directly through Shopify’s checkout. Since orders from non-Shopify platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon don’t go through Shopify’s checkout, the local delivery option is not available for these orders.
For example, if a customer places an order through Instagram, they won’t have the option to choose local delivery at checkout, even if a nearby store could fulfill the order. This limitation prevents retailers from fully leveraging Shopify local delivery features across all their sales channels, potentially missing opportunities to offer faster delivery to customers and improve their overall shopping experience.
II. No Support for Fulfilling Orders Placed Using Accelerated Checkout Methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay in Shopify Local Delivery
Many customers prefer accelerated checkout methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, or PayPal. However, just like orders from non-Shopify platforms, Shopify local delivery doesn’t support orders placed using these methods. This is because these payment options bypass Shopify’s standard checkout, where local delivery logic is applied.
III. No Support for Order Splitting in Shopify Local Delivery
Shopify takes aggregated global inventory in consideration to display product availability, allowing customers to add items to their cart even if they are available at different locations. However, Shopify local delivery doesn’t support order splitting, requiring all items in a cart to be fulfilled from a single location.
For example, consider a customer purchasing a Tennis Bracelet (available at the Times Square store) and a Charm Necklace (available at the Central Warehouse). If both items were at the Times Square store, local delivery would be an option at the checkout. But since Shopify local delivery doesn’t allow splitting between locations, only regular delivery options like standard and express are shown.
Added complication: Shopify determines the optimal location for fulfillment based on retailers order fulfillment priority. In this scenario, once the customer places an order, Shopify allocates the entire order to the location with higher priority.
For example, if the Central Warehouse is prioritized over the Times Square store, the entire order would be routed to the Central Warehouse—even though one of the items isn’t stocked there. This leads to overselling, as Shopify routes orders to a location with insufficient stock for all items.
Retailers are then forced to manually manage split shipments, adding complexity and causing fulfillment delays. As a result, customers miss out on the fast delivery they expected, and the retailer risks damaging trust and losing future business.
Fulfill BOPIS Orders using Shopify Pick-Up In Store Feature
Retailers often want to offer pick-up options at specific store locations without enabling shipping from those stores. Here are two common scenarios where offering only pick-up, and not shipping, is preferred:
Scenario 1: Small-Format Stores: Retailers with small-format stores in residential neighborhoods or urban areas face unique challenges. These stores are designed for local convenience, focusing on serving nearby customers rather than managing logistics for shipping. Limited storage space, the absence of shipping label printers, and a lack of designated loading areas make shipping orders impractical. For these locations, offering in-store pick-up is a more effective strategy, allowing store associates to handle fulfillment based on store-specific schedules and customer needs.
Scenario 2: High-Traffic Urban Stores: In bustling urban environments, managing both in-store and shipping orders can be overwhelming. While offering in-store pick-up can drive sales and improve customer satisfaction, handling shipping orders from these high-traffic locations can strain resources and affect service quality. Urban stores might choose to focus solely on pick-up orders, offering same-day options and optimizing for cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. This strategy can lead to increased sales, better inventory turnover, and enhanced customer experience, while avoiding the operational complexities of shipping.
Forced Store Participation for Ship From Store in Shopify Pick-Up In Store
Shopify's pick-up in store feature introduces a challenge for retailers who wish to offer pick-up without enabling shipping from certain store locations. The core issue lies in how Shopify requires retailers to configure store participation for pick-up orders.
Let’s see how:
Fig 2: Shopify Store Fulfillment
Steps involved:
1. Enabling Store for Online Fulfillment: To allow any store location to fulfill online orders, retailers first need to enable the “Fulfill online orders from this location” setting in Shopify Admin. This setting is essential, as it makes the store eligible to participate in fulfilling online orders. Without activating this option, the store cannot process either shipping or pick-up orders.
2. Setting Up Pick-Up at the Store: Once the store is marked as eligible for online fulfillment, retailers can then set up the option to allow customers to pick up their orders from that location. This additional setup is intended to offer the flexibility of pick-up.
3. The Unintended Consequence - Forced Participation in Shipping: The challenge arises when enabling the first setting (“Fulfill online orders from this location”) automatically makes the store eligible to receive shipping orders, even if the retailer’s intention was to only provide pick-up. Since both settings are interdependent, there’s no way to offer pick-up without also enabling the store for shipping.
For example, let’s say a retailer wants to configure their Times Square store exclusively for pick-up orders:
a. First, they must activate the “Fulfill online orders from this location” option.
b. Then, they proceed to set up pick-up options for this store.
However, by enabling that first setting, the Times Square store is now also eligible to receive shipping orders. Even if the retailer only wants to offer pick-up, the store will still receive shipping orders as part of its fulfillment responsibilities.
This forced participation can create significant logistical issues for stores that aren’t equipped for shipping, leading to operational inefficiencies and strained resources. Shopify’s setup limits the flexibility to manage store roles, resulting in suboptimal fulfillment experiences and potential delays.
Many retailers try to circumvent this issue by deleting all their shipping rates and then enabling pick-up. This adjustment ensures that customers are presented only with the pick-up option at checkout if no shipping rates are set. But this workaround introduces another problem:
Imagine a customer has added a product to their cart intending to have it delivered to their home. Now, if that item is only available at a location where only pick-up is allowed, Shopify still allows the customer to add the product to their cart considering aggregated global availability. However, at checkout, the customer is unable to proceed because the location with inventory can't ship the product and only offers pick-up. This leads to frustration and a poor customer experience, as the customer is unable to select shipping as the delivery method at checkout.
This issue underscores the limitations of Shopify's forced participation model, where retailers cannot tailor store roles to meet specific fulfillment needs without impacting the customer experience negatively.
Overcoming Shopify’s Limitations: Fulfill Online Orders using HotWax Commerce’s Store Fulfillment
Unlike Shopify’s basic local delivery, HotWax Commerce enables retailers to ensure fast fulfillment of orders across multiple sales channels, including Instagram, Facebook, and Amazon. It also handles fast checkout orders, strategically splits orders, and allows retailers to choose locations for BOPIS, Ship From Store, or both. This end-to-end control over in-store fulfillment processes provides a robust solution for addressing complex omnichannel retail scenarios.
HotWax Commerce is designed to fulfill each and every order in the most optimal way. It performs order routing and allocates every order to the best fulfillment location, ensuring that customers receive their orders in the least amount of time while retailers incur the lowest possible costs.
Customers Get the Benefits of Fast, Local Delivery – Even Without Shopify Local Delivery at Checkout:
Even if customers are not choosing the Shopify local delivery option during checkout, HotWax Commerce ensures they still receive the benefits of local delivery speed and efficiency. After orders are downloaded into HotWax Commerce, our sophisticated order routing engine automatically routes the orders to the best fulfillment location, whether it’s a nearby store or another optimal location. This approach guarantees that every order, regardless of how it was placed, is intelligently fulfilled to meet customer expectations for fast, reliable delivery.
I. Fulfill Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Orders In HotWax Commerce
HotWax Commerce provides flexibility in optimally fulfilling orders from various sales channels, whether it’s Shopify, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, or others, making the same fast delivery benefits available across all channels.
Fig 3: Fulfill Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Orders In HotWax Commerce
The main differentiating factor between Shopify local delivery and HotWax Commerce’s Ship From Store is, Shopify evaluates local delivery at the checkout, which binds that the checkout should be of Shopify. Whereas, HotWax Commerce performs allocation after an order has been downloaded and is in the brokering queue for allocation.
Added flexibility:
A. Channel-Specific Prioritization: Retailers can prioritize order fulfillment based on the sales channel they were captured from. For example, a retailer might prioritize Shopify orders over Instagram or Amazon orders over Facebook, depending on their business strategy.
B. Location-Specific Fulfillment: Retailers can define which locations fulfill orders based on the sales channel. For example, all Amazon orders could be routed to a particular warehouse or store, ensuring that fulfillment aligns with operational goals.
II. Fulfill Accelerated Checkout Orders In HotWax Commerce
In HotWax Commerce, fast checkout orders are fulfilled just like any other order, whether customers use Google Pay, Apple Pay, or other fast checkout methods. As long as the order is legitimate and authorized, HotWax Commerce ensures fulfillment from the most optimal location.
III. Split Orders When Needed
HotWax Commerce provides a sophisticated solution for handling order splitting, allowing retailers to address scenarios where items in an order are not available at a single location. HotWax Commerce offers the flexibility to configure order splitting as a last resort. Let’s see how:
Fig 4: Shopify Store Fulfillment
HotWax Commerce offers Multi-Retry Inventory Allocation Rules, enabling retailers to set multiple, recursive allocation rules. Retailers can initially configure rules to avoid splitting orders. If an order cannot be allocated after multiple attempts, order splitting can then be allowed. Retailers can also selectively apply splitting based on order urgency, such as splitting only urgent orders while keeping standard orders intact.
IV. Choose BOPIS, Ship From Store or Both
HotWax Commerce provides a more flexible solution for managing store fulfillment, allowing retailers to configure which locations participate in BOPIS, Ship From Store, or both. Here’s how HotWax Commerce optimizes these processes:
Fig 5: HotWax Store Fulfillment
A. Facilities App: The Facilities App in HotWax Commerce allows retailers to control fulfillment options for each location. Retailers can toggle fulfillment strategies like Ship From Store, BOPIS, or both, ensuring each location operates according to its capabilities and requirements. This flexibility helps optimize fulfillment processes based on each store’s specific needs.
B. Fulfillment Capacity Management: Even when retailers allow a store’s participation in Ship From Store, HotWax Commerce recognizes that not all stores can handle the same volume of orders. Factors such as facility size, staff availability, and foot traffic influence a store’s capacity to fulfill orders.
Retailers can set fulfillment capacity limits for each location, ensuring efficient workload distribution and preventing overburdening. For example:
i. No Orders: Set the limit to zero if a store cannot handle any orders.
ii. Unlimited Orders: Set the limit to unlimited for stores that can handle any number of orders.
iii. Defined Order Limits: Set a specific limit, such as 100 orders per day, for stores with a defined capacity.
This approach ensures that stores are not overburdened and that fulfillment is managed effectively, improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
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While Shopify offers a robust platform for eCommerce, its limitations in store fulfillment are evident when managing large-scale omnichannel retail operations. HotWax Commerce provides a flexible and scalable solution with advanced fulfillment features that bridge the gaps left by Shopify, empowering retailers to meet customer demands efficiently and profitably.
For retailers aiming to scale across multiple stores, streamline in-store operations, and enhance flexibility in order management, HotWax Commerce OMS is the best choice.
Contact an expert today to see how HotWax Commerce can help you optimize your store fulfillment strategies.
