eCommerce has changed a lot since the early days of online retail, and pre-ordering and back-ordering have opened considerable opportunities for e-merchants and even bigger ones for software providers in such fields as inventory, order or warehouse management, and dropshipping. Let’s take a closer look at these two terms.
Pre-order or “I Want to Be the First to Buy It!”
Say you can’t wait for the release date of a product. Whether it is an electronic device, an interesting book, a pair of Jordans, a new watch, or a computer game, you want to get it as soon as possible. In this case, placing a pre-order is a way to make sure you’ll be first in line to get it.
For e-retailers, pre-orders make it possible to accept customers’ orders before the official “for sale” date arrives. This function is meant to accumulate sales, generate buzz, and introduce the product to an even greater number of people.
Backorder or “Don’t Have It in Stock? But I Want It Right Now!”
“Yes, it is the one I’m dreaming about! What? It’s out of stock?” It is another situation you have probably faced at least once. Popular items may sell out quickly, so to avoid losing sales, disappointing customers, or driving them into the arms of competitors, many e-retailers use the handy trick called back-ordering. A backorder is an order for an item that is temporarily out of stock; it allows a store to keep selling goods even when they are in shortage. Placing an order for an item that is on backorder guarantees that it will be shipped to the customer as soon as the vendor replenishes the stock.
What e-retailers have in stock doesn’t have to limit their sales. The ability to take backorders is important for any eCommerce business, especially during peak shopping seasons. It makes it possible to sell products that aren’t in stock, pre-sell upcoming items, and oversell inventory while knowing that new supply is on its way.
Backorders and pre-orders are valuable not only for e-retailers but also for eCommerce software providers, since being able to retrieve and use data on them is an excellent opportunity to win more customers and drive more revenue. How exactly? Find the answer in the next section.
What Backorders and Pre-Orders Mean for B2B Solutions
More and more eCommerce vendors are recognizing the advantages of backorders and pre-orders, simply because these are among the key features customers expect to see in online stores today. As more stores offer these options, demand grows for the support of software providers such as inventory, order, and warehouse management tools, as well as dropshipping platforms. A well-built B2B order capture system supporting preorders and backorders removes the need for e-retailers to manually track back- and pre-order processes, helps ship products on time, and ensures proper fulfillment — allowing merchants to focus on growing their business rather than chasing order data.
For this reason, many software vendors are now positioning themselves among the best B2B ordering systems for preorders and backorders, competing on how easily and reliably they can pull this data from merchants’ stores.
Some Pet Peeves Here
The challenge waiting for software providers is that, to help an e-retailer, they need to be integrated with the shopping cart platform the merchant’s store runs on. Without a connection to that platform, they can’t retrieve information on back- and pre-orders, or on products and customers, needed to provide first-class service.
The number of shopping cart platforms on the market is huge, and integrating with many of them is difficult because each one stores data differently. Building a separate integration module for every platform would cost a B2B provider a lot of time, money, and effort. The more practical approach is to find a way to integrate with numerous shopping carts at the same time, whether that's a general-purpose eCommerce marketplace service or a dedicated integration API. But how does that actually work?
How, Actually?
API2Cart is a unified API solution that helps eCommerce software providers overcome the challenge of building separate integrations for each platform, removing the need to pick and choose which one to start with. Thanks to its unified API, the service allows B2B software owners to integrate with 70+ top leading shopping platforms through a single integration. These include widely used platforms such as Magento, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, 3dcart, BigCommerce, X-Cart, and others. This way, API2Cart enables B2B providers to pull back- and pre-order data, along with related product and customer information, from merchants’ stores across different platforms and process it within their own systems — effectively becoming a reliable B2B order capture system supporting preorders and backorders without the cost of building and maintaining dozens of custom connections.
Making a decision like that can be tough, but if the opportunity sounds like something you would give a try to, schedule a free call with our expert. They will provide you with all required information and help you leave your doubts behind.
