As we wrap up 2021, we have compiled the world’s largest collection of eCommerce experts and leaders to share their 2022 eCommerce predictions. Whilst it is impossible to truly predict what the next year will have in store, with this amount of industry expertise we are confident there is something that every eCommerce business can take away and implement in the New Year.
By: Maggie M. Barnett, Esq., COO at ShipHero
Meeting consumers’ growing shipping expectations is critical to maintaining customer loyalty and staying ahead of the competition. 2-day shipping is now the minimum shipping speed that most customers expect. Unfortunately, as these expectations become more demanding, growing eCommerce brands struggle to keep up with them.
Here’s a particularly alarming statistic to give you an idea of where eCommerce shipping currently stands: 75% of consumers expect brands to offer same-day delivery options.
This is a lofty expectation to meet on your own, especially because free shipping is one of the most important purchase-driving factors. So how can eCommerce brands offer faster delivery times? Let’s just say there’s a reason 90% of Fortune 500 companies have partnered with 3PLs.
Third-party logistics providers help eCommerce merchants meet consumer shipping expectations without compromising on revenue. 3PLs have specialized logistics teams that optimize your inventory management, order fulfillment, and returns management, among other benefits. In short, 3PLs handle fulfillment while your team focuses on other areas of your business.
Amazon Prime set the benchmark for consumer shipping expectations with its famous 2-day delivery option. Unfortunately, consumers don’t realize how difficult it is for growing eCommerce brands to offer expedited shipping.
Partnering with 3PLs lets you offer 2-day and overnight delivery so you don’t keep losing customers to Amazon and other megacorps, without driving your logistics costs through the roof.
Building a fulfillment network lets brands offer expedited shipping by reducing travel costs and time. Unfortunately, building a network is costly and demands a larger labor force – merchants have to rent out, or purchase, multiple warehouses and distribute their inventory, and then hire a workforce for each fulfillment center.
3PL providers have their own fulfillment centers with dedicated logistics teams. You can partner with a 3PL and strategically distribute your inventory across their multiple fulfillment centers, reducing shipping times and costs, without incurring large overhead costs.
3PLs have their own specialized logistics workforce that’s equipped to help your business expand at scale. Otherwise, if you’re relying on an in-house team, you’ll need to gradually hire more workers as your eCommerce brand grows and the volume of orders increases.
Additionally, if your in-house team lacks experience, pick and pack errors and other problems increase, ultimately affecting your bottom line. 3PLs, on the other hand, have employees with years of logistics experience.
Logistics, including reverse logistics, demand plenty of human resources and management. Thus, outsourcing your order fulfillment to a third-party frees up your own workforce to focus on growing your business.
Leading 3PLs have their own warehouse and inventory management software with enterprise-level reporting capabilities, including:
And more. Having the right data and analytics just a few clicks away helps eCommerce brands streamline their fulfillment processes and identify problem areas.
3PLs solve the multiple marketplace integration dilemmas by seamlessly integrating with all platforms, and making vital information available on one centralized dashboard.
ShipHero serves more than 10% of Shopify plus stores globally and many Fortune 500 companies. We’re trusted by many leading high-growth DTC brands, which is reflected in our outstanding user reviews – Shopify merchants rated us 4.8/5 and TrustPilot users gave us a solid 4.8/5.
Here are 5 reasons that eCommerce merchants choose ShipHero.
We’ll take care of your warehousing and inventory management, pick and packing operations, shipping, and even reverse logistics. Our experienced, highly trained workforce specializes in efficiently managing logistics operations, minimizing errors, and ensuring orders are always shipped on time.
ShipHero’s leading warehouse management software (WMS) directly integrates with major eCommerce platforms and marketplaces, including BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and more.
After integrating with different platforms, you can view detailed analytics, insights, and reporting from your central ShipHero dashboard. Additionally, eCommerce merchants can set automation rules to streamline fulfillment operations.
Automation rules perform actions in response to “triggers” – for example, a shipping method could apply automatically in response to a matching zip code, or emails with order tracking links can be sent to customers after their order is shipped.
With more than 82% of online shoppers willing to say goodbye to a brand due to a bad returns experience, making the returns process seamless is critical to improving your customers’ experience and maintaining their loyalty. Poor returns management can put you at risk of losing customers to your competition.
Here at ShipHero, we process returns as they come in, which is easy thanks to our direct integrations with marketplaces and eCommerce platforms. We offer done-for-you returns processing, so you can focus on growing your brand while we handle the logistics and reverse logistics.
Additionally, ShipHero supports direct integrations with partners like Returnly and Loop, to make return processing easier and risk-free.
Fast growing eCommerce brands can struggle with managing their own logistics; as the volume of orders increases, you’re forced to expand your workforce and scale your fulfillment operations accordingly.
Keeping up with the high volume is difficult enough (especially during the peak holiday season), but the costs start adding up too as you hire more logistics personnel. However, eCommerce brands can’t afford to delay orders or deliver incorrect items; convenience is one of the primary reasons consumers have turned to online retailers.
For these reasons, many fast-growing eCommerce brands turn to ShipHero. Our fulfillment services let eCommerce brands consistently offer 2-day and overnight delivery options as you scale.
ShipHero has a network of fulfillment centers for eCommerce brands to distribute their inventory across. A distributed inventory is vital to fulfill orders faster and keep delivery costs low – when customers place an order, it’s shipped from a center closest to them.
Additionally, our integrated WMS uses real-time carrier rate shopping to minimize shipping costs. Thus, offering customers free shipping options becomes more feasible.
ShipHero’s Bulk Ship process helps brands keep up with large order volumes by streamlining the pick and pack processes. This feature is especially useful during the holiday season when your order volume spikes dramatically.
ShipHero’s industry-leading WMS arms eCommerce merchants with detailed analytics, reporting and insights. You can instantly access real-time inventory data (including inventory valuation), access team reports, or pull up order information.
Our inventory management and shipping software monitors your inventory levels in real-time and automatically notifies merchants about replenishment needs. You can also set automatic reorder points to prevent shortages or overstocking.
Online consumer expectations have evolved rapidly in recent years, especially because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumers are expecting better shopping experiences, expedited shipping options, lower shipping costs, and hassle-free returns.
Meeting all these expectations on your own is challenging, which is why many leading eCommerce brands have partnered with ShipHero. We’re not sales-focused; our primary goal is to help our partners achieve their fulfillment goals and grow sustainably.
So start growing your brand with ShipHero today.
If you’re new to ShipHero Fulfillment, please schedule a meeting today with our experts to learn more about how we can help you get your orders picked, packed and delivered with our fulfillment service. No setup fees, simply pay as you go. ShipHero works to ensure that organizations invest in the solutions that match their needs, to improve productivity, revenue and success.
Click HERE to Schedule a Meeting Today
Maggie M. Barnett, Esq., COO
About the author: Maggie M. Barnett, Esq., is the COO of ShipHero. She is responsible for planning and executing the overall operational, legal, managerial and administrative procedures, reporting structures and operational controls of the organization. Barnett’s greatest strengths are leadership, risk mitigation, change management and a passion for business transformation. She is known for her expertise in delivering operational excellence and an ability to provide guidance and mitigating risk. Her leadership of ShipHero is grounded in a servant mentality, always doing the right thing for our stakeholders. Her passion for ShipHero comes from the ability to drive operational excellence throughout the organization impacting the lives of our employees, customers, and partners.
ShipHero, a New York-based e-commerce software and fulfillment provider, announced it raised $50 million from Riverwood Capital. The deal values the company at $225 million post-money. The investment represents the first institutional money ShipHero has taken on: The company scaled to a $30 million revenue run rate on just $435,000 raised from friends and family years ago. ShipHero has two primary lines of business: software-as-a-service and e-commerce fulfillment. Today, Shiphero’s software paltform accounts for about $13 million in annual revenue, and its fulfillment business generates approximately $20 million in annual revenue.
By: Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO of ShipHero
At a glance, selling on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and others seems like a golden ticket for new and growing eCommerce businesses. The idea of selling products on the biggest marketplaces in the world should, in theory, increase your sales and grow your company. But there’s always something brands overlook when it comes to selling on marketplaces: order fulfillment.
How can you fulfill orders across multiple marketplaces that have their own shipping policies or customer expectations? With disparate data coming in from so many systems, it can be tough to fulfill orders and ensure you have enough inventory for all of them.
Marketplace fulfillment comes with its fair share of drawbacks that you should be familiar with before finalizing your decision. Fortunately, eCommerce brands can overcome these challenges with some help. There’s a reason almost 90% of Fortune 500 businesses are using 3PL providers instead to fulfill their orders.
eCommerce marketplaces have lowered the barrier of entry for new brands and contributed to the eCommerce industry’s rapid growth. However, the model isn’t flawless. Here are some of the most common problems eCommerce brands face with marketplace fulfillment:
No direct integrations with marketplaces
As your brand grows, integrations are vital to maintaining a seamless workflow. However, switching between different platforms to obtain crucial information is time-exhaustive and inefficient, inviting delays and possible errors.
Additionally, direct integrations are vital for streamlining fulfillment operations – they’re necessary to gain real-time order information and update inventory data according to recent orders.
Hard to sync inventory data between multiple marketplaces
Many sellers list their products on multiple marketplaces to reach a wider audience. However, this practice makes it difficult to sync your inventory data. If orders are fulfilled at different marketplaces, you’re prone to losing track of inventory counts, leading to shortages or overstocking.
Lack of centralized data to see which channels are performing best
Performance monitoring is critical for growing eCommerce brands; you need to identify areas of improvement and learn from your successes. Unfortunately, eCommerce marketplaces don’t offer centralized data, including key performance analytics and fulfillment insights.
Without the correct data, it’s challenging to monitor your brand’s success or lack thereof. Additionally, having access to meaningful insights helps brands streamline their marketing and customer support efforts.
Many eCommerce brands offer customers multiple fulfillment options, including various delivery options (including overnight and 2-day delivery), order pick-up, or mail-order delivery.
Unfortunately, the more options you offer, the more difficult keeping track of orders becomes. For example, if customers have arranged to pick the order up, you’ll have to keep track of whether the order was picked or if there’s been a rescheduling.
Amazon’s latest Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) option seems to offer eCommerce merchants the best of two worlds – you get access to the exclusive Prime label but retain autonomy over your fulfillment operations.
Unfortunately, while SFP fulfillment is an excellent idea, in theory, Amazon’s stringent requirements make it challenging to qualify for the program. To maintain the exclusive SFP status, your Prime trial orders must have a cancellation rate of less than 1%, a minimum 99% on-time rate, and all orders placed before 2 pm have to be fulfilled and shipped on the same day.
While marketplace fulfillment comes with its fair share of drawbacks, you can streamline and optimize the fulfillment process with some help.
Merchants can integrate advanced inventory and warehouse management system software with marketplaces to organize all relevant data, analytics, and insights in one place.
The right fulfillment software gives you access to order details in real-time, helps monitor sales and performance metrics, and reliably monitor inventory levels and forecast demand.
Work with a 3PL that offers fast shipping speeds
Meeting the shipping expectations of modern consumers is increasingly difficult, but third-party logistics providers help you provide expedited shipping options without incurring high costs.
Given that 43% of abandoned carts are due to high shipping charges, and 54% of consumers under 25 declared same-day delivery as their top purchase driver, growing eCommerce brands need to step up their logistics game.
Distributing inventory across multiple, strategically-placed fulfillment centers helps eCommerce brands simultaneously provide faster shipping times and reduce last-mile delivery costs. This is because, with a distributed inventory, you can ship products to customers from the fulfillment centers closest to them.
ShipHero’s leading warehouse management solution and fulfillment services help growing eCommerce brands optimize marketplace fulfillment. Our fully integrated system syncs your inventory and eCommerce store data, and you can set automation rules to streamline tedious processes.
ShipHero helps eCommerce brands grow sustainably with our:
ShipHero’s outsourced fulfillment services take the pressure of order fulfillment off your hands, so you can focus on growing your store. We’ll manage your inventory, pick and pack orders (and ship them, too), and take care of reverse logistics regardless of how many marketplaces you’re selling on.
Thanks to ShipHero’s leading warehouse management system and team of fulfillment experts, fast-growing eCommerce brands like yours can keep up with evolving consumer expectations. With our network of distributed fulfillment centers, you can offer customers 2-day and overnight delivery options without incurring high last-mile delivery costs.
Our highly trained workforce and advanced software collectively minimize pick and pack errors, reducing wrong order requests and protecting your bottom line.
Whether you’ve partnered with Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, or another marketplace, ShipHero’s warehouse management system integrates directly with your marketplace and centralizes all the relevant information.
You can view inventory data in real-time, access team reports, view order history, and access key information like actual shipping costs for each order, all from one central dashboard.
Your returns process dramatically impacts customer loyalty, and you don’t need to take our word for it. A report revealed that a positive return experience affects brand loyalty in 95% of online customers, and over 65% of online shoppers consult a brand’s return policy before making a purchase.
To meet consumer expectations and help our eCommerce partners secure customer loyalty, ShipHero offers done-for-you returns management and reverse logistics services. ShipHero integrates with your marketplace and manages returns as they come in, preventing delays and improving customer retention.
Marketplace fulfillment comes with its fair share of drawbacks, including a lack of integrations, disorganized data, analytics, and stringent requirements to qualify for more recognized fulfillment programs.
Thus, many growing eCommerce brands partner with ShipHero to overcome these challenges and optimize their marketplace fulfillment. With ShipHero, online retailers can offer expedited shipping times, minimize pick and pack errors, manage returns easily, and centralize their real-time inventory and order data.
Optimize your marketplace fulfillment with ShipHero today.
Schedule a meeting today with our experts to learn more about our inventory management and shipping software built for eCommerce brands & 3PLs looking to run their best warehouse and how ShipHero works to ensure that organizations invest in the solutions that match their needs, to improve productivity, revenue, and success.
Click HERE to Schedule a Meeting Today
Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO
About the author: Aaron Rubin is the Founder & CEO of ShipHero. He is responsible for planning and executing the overall vision and strategy of the organization. Rubin’s greatest strengths are leadership, change management, strategic planning and a passion for progression. He is known for having his finger on the pulse of ShipHero’s major initiatives, his entrepreneurial spirit, and keen business acumen. His leadership of ShipHero is grounded in providing excellent customer service that drives improved business operations. His passion for ShipHero comes from the culture and his ability to have an impact on the lives of employees, customers, partners, and investors.
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