Online shopping has become a major convenience for many consumers. The ability to buy online is a great luxury that many of us use as an alternative to shopping in stores. It's a process that can be tracked through a route that starts as soon as customers submit their orders.

The after sales process works much like the process before purchase when the item resides in a shopping cart. The shopping cart item will move right along with the customer as they travel from one page to the next. The item stays in place until the customer reaches their final destination and completes payment. Phase two begins once the payment is made. It is in this phase that the package bares a unique order number - this order number moves from the computerized list to the warehouse and to the shipping floor.

Companies that sell products online will generally have employees in place to handle the orders that are received instantly and need quick fulfilment. These orders - sometimes referred to as alerts - are moved from automated computer processing to the human realm as the order receives an order number and is placed in a priority according to status.

Items are shipped in order of priority. Customers that choose overnight shipping methods are flagged and put at the top of the list of orders to be processed. These are the first products that are pulled from the warehouse once the order has been placed. The other orders are pulled from the warehouse after the overnight orders have been taken care of. This is important because these items are on a tighter time schedule. They must be handled as first priorities.

The packages are visually inspected for any obvious damage once they are pulled from the pallet inverters & stackers in the warehouse. It is at this point that the package is scanned internally as "ready" before it is picked up be carried. During this time the internal scanner registers the package in the company's system as an order that is being processed. A customer that has made a purchase may see a status that says that the package is scheduled for delivery. The status changes to shipped once the package is picked up.

The order already contains an internal tracking number for internal use, but it will also receive a tracking number from the transporter once it is ready to be shipped. This is typically the number that will be used by those that want to track the location of the package as it moves - you and I. At this point it is out of the company's hands, but customers can still track it. Companies provide users with shipping information from the carrier. This allows the user to see exactly where the package may be from time to time and to get an idea of when it will be hitting their doorstep!