Background
BlogEcommerce – Are You Keeping Up?

Ecommerce – Are You Keeping Up?

By Gary Stokes
April 6th, 2019

We spend a lot of time in ecommerce fulfillment centers, working on conveyor handling control systems. As a result, we’re interested in observing trends and understanding where our end clients’ businesses are headed.

We came a little bit late to this, but efulfillment service wrote a fascinating report about a year ago that summarized some very interesting trends in ecommerce fulfillment.  You can find their report here: State of Ecommerce Order Fulfillment:

The report included the following information:

  • More than 50% of the consumers in the US have an Amazon Prime account and Amazon has an 80% share of sales from online marketplaces. Over 75% of Americans shop on Amazon.
  • Ecommerce spending will top $4 trillion by next year.
  • Over 75% of online shoppers want same day shipping even on weekends and after hours.
  • Only 42% of consumers think that 3-4 day delivery is fast.  Two years ago 63% thought that 3-4 day delivery was fast.
  • Only 25% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for same day shipping, and 98% won’t pay more than $3.00 for it.
  • The most important issue for 74% of ecommerce buyers is free shipping.
  • For online retailers, the average cost to fulfill an order is 70% of the average order value.

The report contains a lot of other useful information about the ecommerce business, so we recommend you download it and read it.

One thing is clear. Competing in ecommerce is getting harder. It takes smarts and commitment.

It also requires smart investing, and it’s clear that automation will become more and more important. Consumers want their items fast and they want to pay as little as possible to get them. Warehouse automation has to be a big part of the answer. Pendant is always ready to help.

Help me compete – here’s my RFQ