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If your 3PL is used to managing bulk shipments — like fridges, furniture, or palletized goods — stepping into 3PL e-commerce fulfillment might feel like an entirely different game. But with the right systems, workflows, and automations in place, adding e-commerce fulfillment services to your operations can open the doors to unlocking new revenue and winning new customers.

3PL e-commerce fulfillment requires handling hundreds or even thousands of small-sized orders daily. And with ever-changing demand, you need to be ready for anything – like having to fulfill a high-volume of single-item orders after a big sale.

To successfully take on high-volume 3PL online order fulfillment, there are a few key things you need to have in place; 

• Seamless WMS integrations to automatically process orders from online stores and generate shipping labels,
• Optimized workflows to handle your specific e-commerce inventory needs (see the different workflows required for various order types below!),
• Scalable fulfillment strategies to keep up with sudden demand spikes,
• Accurate and automated tracking and reporting,
• Secure e-commerce integrations. 

In this blog, we’ll walk you through how to offer 3PL e-commerce fulfillment services for the most common scenarios using an e-commerce (ecommerce) WMS, so whether you’re dealing with single-item orders, multi-item orders, or bulk identical orders — you can have the top workflows, best practices, and automation tools on hand to streamline your e-commerce fulfillment in seconds.

Offer top-notch e-commerce fulfillment services sooner — see how CartonCloud’s WMS can help you manage high-volume orders with speed, accuracy, and efficiency.

Understanding the Key Differences Between Traditional and 3PL E-commerce Fulfillment

In order to optimize your 3PL fulfillment for e-commerce success, it’s important to be aware of the notable differences between traditional and 3PL e-commerce fulfillment, so you can adapt and manage your workflows to best suit the needs of this fast-moving industry and keep up with demand.

There are 3 main differences you’ll find with 3PL e-commerce:

1. Higher order volume 
2. Shipping with nationwide couriers
3. Lower per-order margins

Unlike traditional fulfillment — where a single order might be a fridge, a bulk food shipment, or a pallet of alcohol — 3PL fulfillment for e-commerce is all about small, fast-moving individual orders placed online — shipped in small shipments, generally to a residential address. 

High-volume orders: These orders often contain a mix of different SKUs, sizes, and styles, all of which need to be picked, packed, and shipped quickly to meet customer expectations.

Direct-to-consumer shipping: E-commerce operates in a B2C environment, meaning you’ll be shipping directly to customers' homes rather than to retailers or distribution centers. This means you need to ship with nationwide couriers such as USPS, FedEx, Canada Post, AusPost, or the New Zealand Post, rather than bulk freight carriers traditionally used for large shipments.

ROI based on low cost, high-volume: In terms of order volume, you’ll typically find that the higher margins per order that offset lower order volumes in traditional fulfillment is different for 3PL e-commerce fulfillment, where per-order margins are much smaller, making efficiency the key to profitability. That’s why it’s essential to optimize your operations for speed and accuracy, so you can get orders out the door fast.

Various e-commerce order workflows: Whether you’re handling single-item orders, multi-item orders, or high volumes of identical products, your fulfillment strategy must be tailored for speed, accuracy, and scalability. 

The bottom line is; faster and more efficiently you can process your orders, the better your service, the happier your customers, and the more profitable your 3PL will be. 

What You Need to Succeed in E-commerce

The first step is onboarding your customer’s online stores for seamless order management. To effortlessly offer e-commerce fulfillment services, you need to have a seamless flow of data between your WMS to online storefronts to automate your orders, as well as connections to shipping aggregators to simplify your shipping step. The more automated and connected your fulfillment process is, the faster you can get orders out the door.

Connecting Your WMS to Online Storefronts

Fast, efficient 3PL e-commerce starts with automatic order creation through seamless WMS e-commerce integrations. Most e-commerce businesses rely on platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce to capture online orders — so integrating your WMS with these storefronts is the first essential step in streamlining your workflow.

Think of CartonCloud integrations as building a bridge between your warehouse and your customers’ online storefronts, ensuring you can:

• Receive orders in real time, so your team can start picking without delay,
• Keep inventory levels accurate across all platforms, preventing any overselling or stockouts,  and
• Provide order status updates when orders are packed and ready for dispatch.

This is exactly how high-volume 3PL warehouses like TNS Logistics have optimized their 3PL online order fulfillment. By integrating their CartonCloud WMS with Shopify and WooCommerce, they’ve eliminated manual order entry, allowing their team to start picking and packing immediately — without any bottlenecks or delays.

“Our warehouse manager now comes in each morning, he can clearly see the day’s orders, [and] the warehouse team can pick directly from the mobile app.” 

“The integration process allows clients from all over the world to send orders to us live, which ensures same-day dispatch, which is really important for our clients." — Matthew Norton, Commercial Manager, TNS Logistics

See how TNS optimized their 3PL e-commerce fulfillment from end-to-end using CartonCloud.

Common 3PL E-commerce fulfillment Scenarios

Now that you understand the key differences between traditional and e-commerce fulfillment — and how seamless integrations can set you up for success — it’s time to tackle how to best handle different order types efficiently.

E-commerce fulfillment isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. You may be processing bulk orders with multiple different products, handling an influx of single-item orders triggered by a viral product trend — or offering a range of services to a diverse customer base. 

Each scenario requires a tailored approach to ensure speed, accuracy, and efficiency — and with CartonCloud, each can be optimized with a specific workflow tailored to your picking needs.

Let’s dive into some of the most common e-commerce fulfillment scenarios you’ll encounter and how to optimize your workflows using CartonCloud’s powerful WMS.

Scenario #1: Large volumes of identical single-orders

Oftentimes in 3PL e-commerce fulfillment, you’ll be dealing with multiple orders of the same product in high volumes — especially during peak sales periods like during cyber sale season, after a product undergoes a big promotional sale or even if a product goes viral!

For peak periods like these, you need a WMS that can process hundreds of the same product type with speed and accuracy, so you can get each order out the door on-time.

Recommended solution: Use CartonCloud’s Split Pick and Pack wave to pick multiple orders of an identical product, all in one go.

This feature allows you to search and group all identical orders that contain a quantity of 1 — making it easy to filter and process orders right away. Here’s how to do it:

• Search for all identical orders within the system
• Pick all the items in one streamlined pass through the warehouse
• Bring them back to the packing station and print shipping labels in bulk using the CartonCloud mobile app
• Generate consignment labels automatically through your shipping aggregator integration for a smooth dispatch process

This approach ensures that you can cut down on picking time and ensure every package gets out the door as fast as possible.

Scenario #2: Single-item orders for different products

A typical day in 3PL e-commerce fulfillment often means processing a high volume of single-item orders — but with different products in each order. 

Unlike the previous scenario where all orders contain the same item, this time, each order consists of a single item — with varying SKUs, colors, or product type — like Stanley tumblers in multiple colors or different phone case designs.

Recommended solution: Instead of picking orders one by one, you can optimize efficiency by creating a Split Pick and Pack wave pick to grab your orders in one trip, and streamlining your packing step with Pack by SKU.

In this scenario, your picking process stays the same — you’ll gather all orders into a large tote or trolley and bring them back to the packing station. The key difference here is using Pack by SKU on the mobile app at the packing stage — which takes the guesswork out of finding which order an item belongs to.

Instead of manually searching for which order an item belongs to, you can just simply scan the product barcode and CartonCloud will instantly pull up the first unshipped order that needs it. Once scanned, the system marks the item as ‘packed’, helping you to get orders out the door faster. 

See how Core Logistic Services streamlines their online order picking using the CartonCloud mobile app, helping them find the exact product they need, and even print off labels for dispatch.

Scenario #3: Multi-item/ bundled orders

Sometimes, you’ll find that customers purchase items in bundles, sets, or have multiple products in one order. These can include subscription boxes, fitness sets (like resistance bands, water bottles, and workout gear), or curated skincare kits. In these situations, you need a picking and packing method that lets you efficiently gather multiple orders at once while keeping the items together for easy packing.

Recommended solution: For high order volumes of multiple items, use Pick to Tote to grab and sort orders in one trip.

This method streamlines your picking process by using a trolley with dedicated totes, allowing you to:

• Pick multiple orders in one go,
• Keep each order separated in its individual tote, ensuring no cross-order mix-ups,
• Customize the number of orders picked based on trolley capacity.

Here’s how to best use Pick to Tote:

• Adjust your Pick to Tote settings to match your trolley capacity (e.g., if your trolley holds 30 totes, set a 30-order limit).
• Move through the warehouse picking items for multiple orders at once, placing each in its assigned tote.
• Once picking is complete, grab the tote, scan its barcode, and prepare the order for dispatch.

By using Pick to Tote, you can handle large volumes of orders efficiently, reduce unnecessary time picking in the warehouse, and speed up fulfillment — without compromising order accuracy.

Automating Shipping with Integrations

Once orders are packed, the next priority is getting them out the door as quickly as possible. When your WMS is already connected to your preferred shipping aggregator, you can generate shipping labels right at the packing stage, cutting down fulfillment time even further.

CartonCloud integrates seamlessly with leading shipping platforms like Shippit, StarShippit, Sendle, and Macship, allowing you to:

• Automatically create shipping jobs once an order is packed.
• Instantly transfer shipping details to the carrier — no manual entry required.
• Generate shipping labels on the spot — just print and dispatch!

By automating this step, you can reduce errors, eliminate delays, and get orders shipped faster — without any extra admin work. You can learn more about how to level up your 3PL online order fulfillment using integrations here.

See These E-commerce Workflows in Action

Want to learn more about unlocking new revenue with e-commerce fulfillment services? Watch our free webinar with CartonCloud Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Vincent Fletcher, where he walks through each typical 3PL e-commerce fulfillment scenario in detail — showing you how to offer 3PL e-commerce fulfillment using both the CartonCloud mobile and web app to streamline high-volume orders.

Ready to scale your 3PL with e-commerce fulfillment? Book a free personalized demo with our team and experience CartonCloud’s powerful, user-friendly software in action!

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