E-commerce quality control is a very important aspect of e-commerce and not paying attention to it can be bad for business. In the e-commerce world, there are many businesses that deliver great quality and, unfortunately, many that don’t.
As a business owner, the last thing you want is for a bunch of bad products to ruin your credibility, damage your relationship with your customers, or worse — hurt your customers. This is where quality control comes in. In order to maintain a good relationship with your customers and protect the integrity of your business, you need to develop best practices for quality control to protect your business and your customers. In this article, we will discuss what we mean by quality control and the best practices for ensuring e-commerce quality control.
What is Quality Control?
Quality control (QC) refers to the ways in which a business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved. It is the operational techniques and activities used to fulfil requirements for quality. In e-commerce, quality control ensures that your products or services meet customers’ expectations. This means that as an e-commerce business owner, your product must be the same as the sample you provide to the customers. One important thing about quality control is that it is used by businesses to examine and test a product or service to make sure it meets the correct specifications and quality benchmarks. This is done by analyzing products and creating benchmarks for product quality and other indicators using statistical analysis and sampling. The thing is, quality control doesn’t just measure only the product, but the way that product is produced, stored and transported.
Quality control in E-commerce will greatly increase the chances of an e-commerce project satisfying user performance requirements for the first time.
What is Quality Assurance Vs Quality Control?
Quality Control and Quality Assurance are terms used interchangeably and are interrelated in many instances. However, they don’t mean the same thing although they are both under the larger umbrella of quality management. Quality assurance(QA) covers all of the quality systems in one way or another, while quality control(QC) is a subset of the QA activities. According to Forbes, quality assurance refers to all the planned and systematic activities implemented within the quality system that can be demonstrated to provide confidence that a product or service will fulfil requirements for quality. Quality control on the other hand refers to the operational techniques and activities used to fulfil requirements for quality.
Therefore, quality assurance is the principle that is put in place to assure the consumers that a particular product will function as it is supposed to while quality control is the technique that is put in place to make sure that those requirements are fulfilled. In a nutshell, Quality assurance can be defined as “part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled. While Quality control can be defined as “part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements.”
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Benefits of E-commerce Quality Control
1. Minimizes Shipping Costs
Shipping a customer’s entire order at once is a sign of good quality control. A customer often orders multiple products in one go, and shipping these products separately is unnecessary and would cost a lot. Most businesses can save money on packaging material and the cost of shipping by combining sold products. However, this doesn’t happen always since they may be in multiple warehouses or on backorder which might make it difficult for you to ship together.
2. Increase Customer Loyalty
Quality control is very important for e-commerce businesses because good and tested products usually go well with customers. This in turn helps businesses build credibility and customer loyalty. When you examine and test your products before selling, this assures the customers that your business can be trusted for quality products. This will not only generate more sales for you as a business, but it will also increase the trust people have in your business. And this will lead to more customers and repurchases and this means more revenue for your business.
3. Protects Brand’s Image and identity
Businesses can protect their brand name and identity by implementing quality control measures to ensure that their business is protected. Ensure that your products or services meet your customers’ expectations and the sample you provide to the customers must be the same as the product you give them. Examine and test your product to make sure they meet the correct specifications and quality benchmarks. Research shows that people remember negative experiences more than positive ones. And memories of bad products and service generates bad reviews and feedback which is not good for business. When people see a lot of bad reviews they will leave your store.
Best Practices for Ecommerce Quality Control
1. Start with a Good Sample
As an e-commerce business, quality control begins with your sample. A sample is a product that has been tested and has fulfilled the necessary requirement. If you rush to sell a product without proper testing, you might end up regretting it as this product might not meet the customer’s expectations.
Make sure to test the sample rigorously and learn from any mistakes along the way. Ensure you communicate with your supplier or manufacturer to keep track of all of the modifications so that you know exactly which changes were made and when. This sample product should represent what you will put out to the public. For an e-commerce business, make sure you do a test order and check the products thoroughly. Check to ensure the products 100% match their description.
2 Research Your Supplier
Before you agree to work with a potential supplier, make sure to research the company to know about the company and their background. Research about businesses they have conducted business with in the past. Reach out to them and ask about the company and their experience working with them. Also research on the company’s profile and experience, workforce, facilities, licences and certifications etc. You can hire a professional auditor to conduct a supplier audit can help you identify any potential problems and manage your expectations.
3. Conduct quality control from time to time
Inspecting and testing your products is one of the best ways to ensure that you meet the quality control features. Regularly inspecting products to make sure it’s exactly what your listing describes will give you the confidence that your product will meet customers’ expectations. As an e-commerce business owner, you have to check for things like specifications, colours and other accessories to make sure everything is intact. is one that it’s compliant in every way and that its’ completely meeting or exceeding expectations.
Conclusion
Quality control is very important not only to e-commerce businesses but to any business. Because there is nothing more important than making your customers happy. A happy customer equals to happy business. There are many ways to get started on quality control. A quick search on Google should give you about hundred ways you can get started. There are online classes, software, templates and YouTube videos on quality control and how you can get started. You can also research various industry associations or trade groups to have an idea for measuring the quality of your products or services that will give you specific goals.
Don’t take any risks with your reputation or your business. Be directly involved in ensuring that the product you sell is the very best. Monitor product reviews for problems, and continually look for ways to improve. It might seem difficult at first, but it will be worth it in the end.
