This week, we’re continuing our Q&A segment: Lunch with Littledata!
We recently caught up with Casey Armstrong, CMO at ShipBob, to chat about the Shopify world, fulfillment, decision-making during COVID, Shopify analytics, and more.
ShipBob is a tech-enabled 3PL that fulfills ecommerce orders for DTC brands; their mission is to make Shopify stores feel more successful online by providing reliable fulfillment solutions, warehouses near customers to help transit times, shipping costs, and the overall delivery experience.
ShipBob also has a strong Shopify integration.
Tip: Check out Littledata’s top-rated Shopify app for Google Analytics — with advanced tracking for Shopify Plus
Let’s dive right in!
Q: Has ShipBob’s core market changed during the crisis?
Our core market has not changed since the COVID-19 pandemic started, but our core market has grown considerably. The reliance on selling direct-to-consumer and ecommerce has been steadily increasing year-over-year and now everybody who was hesitant or putting it off has to adapt immediately.
“The reliance on selling direct-to-consumer has been steadily increasing”
In addition, buyers are creating habits and becoming more comfortable buying online. This will impact retail forever. There is no going back to the percentage of retail occurring offline in the US.
Q: Are you still seeing a big uptick in AOV when customers migrate to using ShipBob’s fulfillment solution?
This varies greatly by merchant, but by offering free shipping, fast shipping, or fast and free shipping, we have seen merchants see increases in AOV from 17% and up to 98% in extreme cases.
Q: If you were personally to start an ecommerce business in North America right now, what would you sell?
Happiness 🙂
Q: What’s the most common misconception ecommerce businesses have about fulfillment, or just 3PL solutions in general?
The biggest misconception is that they have to be doing a lot of volume. That is not the case. In fact, ShipBob was built to democratize fulfillment for all ecommerce merchants.
We have customers that are doing 50 shipments per month and customers that are doing well over 50,000 shipments per month. They both have access to the same fulfillment center network, run by the same warehouse management system, and they see everything in the same merchant application. Plus, we charge $0 for all of our software, including all integrations and our analytics tools.
Q: Are a number of your Shopify merchants selling by subscription? Which apps are they using?
Yes, we have a lot of merchants utilizing subscription offerings, so they can increase customer LTV and have a more predictable revenue stream. The most common applications we see now are ReCharge and Bold Subscriptions.
Tip: See how you can track your subscription data with complete accuracy.
Q: Any tips for merchants who might be new to ecommerce?
Know your numbers: COGS, customer acquisition costs, and fulfillment costs. Sounds basic, but if you don’t know your numbers, you can’t efficiently scale your business or know which levers to focus on!
Quick links
- Littledata’s partner program for Shopify Plus agencies and tech partners
- Free ebooks about how to improve Shopify analytics
- Headless Shopify tracking with Littledata
