April 2021

If you find yourself looking on enviously at successful eCommerce sites, wondering how you can replicate that success then this is the article for you. At Shipjoy Fulfillment, we work with some of the most successful eCommerce brands and we’ve rounded up some of the best eCommerce tips for you to level up your game. 

Attractive Branding

The first eCommerce tip is Branding. A brand isn’t just a logo or slogan, it’s about what makes your company special, what you stand for, and how you communicate with your audience. Refine and promote your brand so that you’re appealing to the right audience. 

Product Selection

Curating your products should be a top priority. A selection of high-quality, popular products is a must. Your customers will soon let you know if they aren’t meeting their expectations, but by then the damage to your brand (and future sales) has already been done. 

Invest In UI & UX

Your customer should be at the heart of everything you do. This includes the user UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) on your site. People use the internet daily and they know what makes a good user experience. If your site isn’t providing this to them, they have no problem going somewhere else. 

Free Shipping

Who pays for shipping anymore? Multiple studies show that customers expect free shipping and fast delivery times. Of course, at Shipjoy, that’s music to our ears as we specialize in fulfilling these delivery requirements. 

First-Class Customer Service

You know there’s a saying, the customer is always right. Even when they aren’t, how you deal with this speaks volumes. Customers expect responsive, polite, and helpful customer service in all of their interactions with you. 

Sell On Multiple Platforms

It makes good business sense to make your products available on a number of platforms. Being dependent on one platform entirely is a risky move. Imagine if you were getting all of your sales from organic search and then a change to the Google algorithm suddenly cut your traffic in half? Widen your reach by considering platforms such as Etsy, eBay, and Amazon. 

Mobile First 

It is so important to make your site mobile-friendly. Google even uses this as a ranking factor. Most people conduct their lives from their smartphones and you need a flawless mobile site and user experience. If you don’t have one, put this at the top of your to-do list. 

Attractive Images

Good product photography is a must on your eCommerce site. Bad photos can make even the best products look a little bargain basement and won’t do anything to attract customers. Either get up to speed on the latest photography techniques or invest in a professional photographer. 

Nail Your Product Descriptions

These are vital to your site. Not only are product descriptions like your sales brochure for a product, but they are also important for SEO too. Take time to craft these properly. 

A Good Review Is Priceless

The majority of people read customer reviews before they make a purchase. Negative reviews can have a terrible impact on sales, so alongside excellent customer service, encourage your customers to leave you positive reviews. If you’d like to take a look at our customer reviews, head on over to the Shipjoy Facebook page now. 

We hope you enjoyed our top eCommerce tips. If you would like to join the many successful eCommerce companies already using Shipjoy for their fulfillment needs, contact us today to see how we could help you. 

Ecommerce is all about numbers, and not just those sales figures either. There are a number of eCommerce metrics your need to get to grips with to run a successful eCommerce operation. 

These metrics can give you a baseline from which to measure your progress and the data on which to base important decisions. 

Here are twelve of the most important eCommerce metrics to start tracking now. 

1. Revenue

This is eCommerce 101, how much money is your business bringing in. 

1. Conversion Rate

OK, so you know how many people buy from your site, but do you know home many people visit it in the first place. Your conversion rate is the total number of sales divided by the number of site visitors. Your activities need to concentrate on not only attracting visitors to the site but converting these visitors into paying customers. 

1. Transaction Numbers

How many transactions are you completing for various products? With high-priced items, a small number of transactions can still bring in a lot of revenue, whereas low-cost items need higher numbers of transactions in order to be considered a success. 

1. AOV – Average Order Value

Do you know how much the average spend is per transaction on your site? Are people checking out with a single item or filling up their shopping cart? To arrive at this number, divide your revenue by the number of orders in a given period. 

1. Most Popular Products

Do you know what your most popular product is right now? Has it always been a best seller or is it seasonal? 

1. CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost

How much money do you spend attracting a customer to your site and converting them? By adding together marketing costs and costs of sales together and dividing that by the number of customers, you can calculate your CAC. The aim is to get this number as low as possible. 

1. CRR – Customer Retention Rate

Do your customers keep coming back for more or do you part ways after a single transaction? Retaining customers is vital to the long-term success of a business. To calculate your retention rate divide your number of returning customers by the total number of customers (over a given period) and multiply the result by 100. 

1. CLV – Customer Lifetime Value 

From their very first purchase from you to their last, how much is a customer worth to your business. You want this number to be as high as possible, as it means that customers are buying from your over and over and spending more money. To find out this figure, take the average order total and multiply by the number of purchases, then multiply this by the average length of customer lifetime. 

1. Abandoned Shopping Cart Rate

How often have you visited a website and added things to the shopping cart without checking out? It’s pretty common, but it’s a nightmare for an eCommerce business owner. Find out this rate by dividing the number of completed orders by the number of shopping carts created. 

1. Profit Margins

How much profit do you make off each item that you sell? To find out this figure, subtract your costs from your revenue and then divide by your total revenue. 

1. Organic Search Performance

Organic search is key to doing well in your eCommerce business. But what are people searching for when they come across your site? By conducting a thorough SEO analysis, you’ll be able to pinpoint what your target market is looking for and place yours

1. Traffic Sources

When people visit your website, where have they come from? Have they clicked on an ad, types something into a search engine, or found you on social media. It’s important that you know this so you know where to direct your marketing resources. In some instances, you might want to put the budget behind your best-performing sources of traffic or use it to improve the underutilized ones. 

Takeaways

We hope you found this run-down of important eCommerce metrics useful. At Shipjoy, we work with some amazing businesses, by helping them with their fulfillment and logistics needs. If you’d like to know more about the types of companies we work with, head over to our Facebook page and read some of the great reviews that our customers have left.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you, then get in touch with a member of the team today. 

Running a successful eCommerce business takes a lot of work. When you’re starting out, it’s common to do everything yourself from marketing to fulfillment. While that can work for a while, you’ll soon find that scaling eCommerce fulfillment can become a costly drain on time and expenses. 

Eventually, you will reach a tipping point where it’s no longer efficient or cost-effective to run fulfillment in-house. This is where an outsourced fulfillment partner like Shipjoy comes in. 

In-house Fulfillment Issues

For those who are running their fulfillment in-house, there are a number of issues that are frequently encountered. These include: 

Delivery Time Slippage

Customers today expect seamless, quick delivery. When you’re wearing too many hats, and the orders begin to build, then delivery times begin to slip. Your ability to focus on other areas of the business is affected. 

Slow delivery times lead to a reduced level of customer satisfaction and an increase in customer communications as they try and track down their deliveries. 

Order Errors

Working under pressure, with limited resources, will inevitably lead to a higher error rate. Scaling eCommerce fulfillment without investing in new technologies and staff is a sure-fire way to make mistakes.

Inventory Chaos

You need to have the right levels of inventory to be able to fulfill and customers efficiently. A chaotic system can lead to disruption in your order fulfillment and disruption to the entire supply chain. 

Inefficient Processes & Technology

Specialist fulfillment services like Shipjoy leave and breathe logistics. That’s why we invest in the very best in terms of storage, inventory management software, and optimization that improves every aspect of our business. As a business owner, fulfillment is only one aspect of your business and you cannot be expected to invest the same amount of time and resources. 

When Should You Fulfil Orders In-House

There are some businesses that do benefit from keeping their fulfillment in-house. The most common reasons for this include: 

• Small order volume
• Custom products

Advantages Of Outsourcing

Take your inventory, storage, and shipping headaches away by outsourcing your eCommerce fulfillment to a specialist company. You can relax, knowing that your customers are receiving their orders, while you can focus on your business. 

Benefits of outsourcing include: 

Inventory Management 

At Shipjoy, you have real-time access to a sophisticated inventory management system. Plan and replenish stock at the touch of a button. Provide your customers with tracking information.

Faster Shipping

Our fulfillment centers are distributed around various different locations, allowing you to speed up deliveries and reduce costs. 

Reduced Costs

You only pay for the fulfillment and distribution services you use. Storage, equipment, labor, and software are all taken care of by Shipjoy. Our size means that we are able to negotiate great rates with the world’s leading shipping carriers. 

Accurate Order Fulfilment

We are experts and pride ourselves on our accuracy and efficiency. We are constantly working to improve and refine our processes all the time so that you and your customers are getting the very best. 

Ready To Outsource? 

Take the first step to outsourcing your eCommerce fulfillment with Shipjoy. Take advantage of our leading-edge fulfillment capabilities to delight your customers. Our clients trust us to help them run their business. Take a look at some of our fantastic reviews online and then get in touch with Shipjoy today. 

From ordering inventory and subsequently storing it to picking and packing orders for distribution to customers, there’s a lot that goes into managing your business’s retail supply chain. As the complexity of supply chain management grows, the more time-consuming and costly it becomes for retailers. 

There are, however, lots of things you can do to optimize your supply chain in 2021. And when you do that, you can focus on other things, such as growing your business. We’ll discuss all that and more in this article, so keep reading to learn more.

What is the Retail Supply Chain?

The supply chain is the process of logistics that dictates the flow of goods from the supplier to the end customer. And these supply chains are made up of many different companies with different relationships and approaches to the work they do, from packing, picking, shipping, and carrying to managing returns, inventory management, and plenty more besides.

The Impact of Covid-19 on the Retail Supply Chain

There’s no doubting the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the world and how businesses operate. Supply chains of struggles in the retail sector, and inefficiencies have become rife.

There are ways to adapt, however. Consumer demand is changing and that means online shopping is the norm, this is something that retailers need to adapt to. New buying habits that are formed now will more than likely stick post-pandemic and retailers need to be ready for that.

The fulfillment of orders in a fast and reliable way that works for the customer matters more than ever. Customer expectations are high and retailers that don’t offer speed and certainty will be left behind.

Forecasting demand by tracking stock levels through the use of inventory management software is another way to stay efficient. It can help optimize everything from storage to replenishment and carrying costs. It’s also true that greater automation in the inventory management system is key as new automation options emerge.

How to Improve Retail Supply Chain Management

When it comes to improving the management of your retail supply chain, there’s a number of approaches that can be taken. The most significant is the choice to work with a third-party logistics provider to help improve the supply chain across the board.

The benefits of doing so include outsourced warehouse management, the ability to benefit from inventory data that are updated in real-time and leveraging existing fulfillment center networks, and remaining competitive within your business’s sphere of operations. All of these things will boost efficiency and keep costs in check.

Improve Your Retail Supply Chain with ShipJoy

If you think now is the time to improve your retail supply chain, it’s time to start working with ShipJoy. When you outsource to us and let us help you with optimizing your logistics and retail supply chain, your team will be freed up to focus on other tasks necessary to the success of your business. Grow it by putting your faith in our trusted and experienced team of professionals.