If you’re running an ecommerce business, chances are you’re on Shopify. With over 1.75 million active merchants and 700 million buyers, Shopify is a great place to be. And setting up a Shopify store is pretty straightforward—but setting it up the right way will make it far easier to manage your orders and delight your customers. 

In this article, we’ll dive into the details of order management on Shopify. You’ll learn: 

• The basics of order management—what it means and why you should care
• How to manage orders using Shopify order management features 
• Some expert tips and tricks for managing your orders more efficiently and easily on Shopify 

What is order management? 

Order management is the end-to-end process of receiving an order, processing it, fulfilling it, and shipping the product to the customer. So it’s the whole 9 yards—taking payment, managing inventory, sorting out the shipping, handling returns, all that jazz. 

For instance, let’s say you sell handmade candles on your Shopify store. A customer buys a candle, and then: 

• You get a notification about the order.
• You check that the payment went through.
• You update your inventory to reflect the purchase. 
• Then you pack up the candle, print a label, and ship the package. 
• You send the order tracking info to the customer so they know when they’ll get their candle. 
• Finally, you get a notification that the customer received their candle—and maybe you send them a form to get their feedback. 

That whole process is what we mean by order management. And, to make sure you make the most of your Shopify store, it’s worth figuring out ways to optimize and improve each stage, to make the whole process as seamless as possible. 

How do you manage orders on Shopify? 

Shopify actually makes it pretty easy to keep your orders in order (badaboom.)

Shopify includes order management tools in every plan. The workflow for managing orders through Shopify goes like this: 

• Receive Orders: Your customer places an order on your Shopify store. 
• Verification: You verify the payment and check the order details
• Order Status: Shopify updates the order status in your dashboard, with stages like “processing,” “fulfilled,” or “shipped.”
• Stock Levels: Shopify automatically adjusts your Shopify inventory levels to reflect the order. 
• Packaging: Then you need to prepare and pack the products for shipment.
• Labeling: You can print shipping labels directly from Shopify. 
• Shipping: Shopify integrates with various shipping carriers so you can ship your packages easily. 
• Tracking: Shopify sends your customers tracking numbers to monitor their shipments.
• Customer communication: You’ll also need to keep your customers informed about their orders. 

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Plus, the Shopify order management system (OMS) comes with a bunch of handy features, including: 

• A dashboard, so you can view all your orders in one place
• Filters to sort your orders by delivery method, destination, status, payment status, and much more
• Routing tools, to automatically ship each order from the best location 
• Editing tools so you can modify orders before they ship (for instance, if a customer sends you a message with a request for a change in the order) 
• Automated communication tools, so you can set up automated emails and updates to confirm orders, confirm shipping, share tracking information, or ask for feedback. 
• Order splitting tools that let you break large orders into multiple shipments, or split up an order so you can ship one product from one location and another product from a different location 

How to make Shopify order management even easier

So far, so straightforward. But how can you tighten up your order management even further? 

Here are a few quick tips for each stage of the order management process: 

Shopify order placement tips 

First off, it’s worth focusing on how to get more of those orders in the first place. We’ve done a deep-dive into conversion rate optimization (CRO) on Shopify, but here are a few quick pointers: 

• Minimize cart abandonment 

Nearly 80% of carts get abandoned—meaning that your customer added a product to the cart but never bought it. To reduce the number of abandoned carts, you could try: 

• Accepting alternative payment options—like Shopify’s own ShopPay or GPay. 
• Letting people split the purchase across multiple payments—you can do that with ShopPay, for instance
• Sending an automated follow-up email when someone abandons the cart
• Try free shipping (here’s a whole blog post about how even small businesses can offer free shipping) 
• Highlighting your returns policy 

• Organize your products for efficiency

Make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for. Some quick tips for getting more orders via your Shopify store: 

• Group similar items together into collections
• Write clear, detailed product descriptions
• Use high-quality product images 

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Shopify order processing tips 

Once you’ve boosted your orders, it’s time to think about how you’re going to process them efficiently. Here are a few tips: 

• Group similar orders together (for instance, all orders of the same items) and process them in batches  
• Use digital pick-and-pack lists (here are more pointers on improving picking speed) 
• Optimize your warehouse layout, if applicable (here’s our guide to improving your warehousing, if you need it) 

Shopify inventory management tips 

Of course, all these orders flying in and out can create a fair bit of chaos. To keep your customers happy, you’ve got to keep your inventory organized. If you want to get into the details, here’s a full guide on how to manage your Shopify inventory, but in summary: 

Set up inventory tracking

Track your inventory in Shopify by heading over to the Admin page and selecting “Products.” Under “Inventory”, make sure that you’ve checked “Track Quantity.” 

If you’re dealing with a complex Store setup, lots of SKUs, or multiple sales channels, you may need specialized inventory management software, like SkuVault Core. 

Set up low-inventory alerts 

At current writing, you need to choose another app to set up automatic alerts to notify you when Shopify stock is running low. For instance, you can use Linnworks to handle this for you—not just in Shopify, but in all your other sales channels too. 

Speaking of which: 

Sync your inventory across channels

Unless you’re only selling via Shopify, you’re going to need to manage your orders across multiple sales channels. Instead of managing Shopify orders on Shopify, Amazon orders on Amazon, and so on, it makes more sense for most ecommerce businesses to create a centralized hub where they can manage all their orders and track inventory, no matter where it was sold. 

And that’s exactly what our platform, Linnworks, does. It automatically syncs all your channels with the latest inventory available whenever a new sale comes in. That way, you can forecast demand, avoid stockouts, track inventory across multiple warehouses, and process your orders efficiently. 

Conduct regular audits  

You’ll also need to regularly check on your inventory if you want to keep tabs on what’s where. To audit your Shopify inventory, we’d recommend you set a schedule for regular checks, pick your preferred inventory audit process, do a physical count, and finish up with a post-mortem to look for what you can improve. Here’s an inventory audit checklist if you need one. 

Shopify shipping tips

Finally, you’re ready to ship your order to the customer. To make the shipping process go as smoothly as possible, we’d recommend you: 

Use routing automations

If you have more than one warehouse, Shopify now lets you automatically route your orders from the best fulfillment location, based on a set of rules you set up. For instance, you might want to split orders and ship them from multiple locations, or always ship from the closest location to the customer. 

Consider your best shipping options 

If you use Linnworks to handle your shipping, you also get access to our network of over 70 shipping partners. You’ll save money by always getting the best shipping deals. Plus you’ll also save a ton of time because you can automate your shipping workflows. Even better, we won’t just handle your Shopify shipping, but also your shipping from every other sales channel you work with. 

Send automated notifications 

Finally, don’t forget to set up automated notifications so your customers always know where their packages are. You should be able to do this in your Shopify admin page—just make sure you enable the box “Send notification email to the customer”. The shipping notifications will go out automatically after the order is fulfilled. 

Make managing your Shopify orders a breeze with Linnworks

If you’re ready to take your Shopify order management up a level, you might want to check out Linnworks. Our Shopify integration lets you automate every aspect of order management, from stock optimization to shipping and fulfillment. Plus, with SkuVault, you can also sync quantities, sales, and products easily across all your sales channels, including Shopify, to help speed up your workflows and avoid overselling. 

To see it in action, book a demo with our team today.