One critical challenge that ecommerce businesses face is finding ways to ship products fast without overspending or taking a loss. This is easier said than done without a system of distribution and infrastructure in place. Your customers are likely located across different regions in the US, so how do you offer fast deliveries to all of them without breaking the bank?
The solution is to distribute your inventory. ShipBob is a 3PL (third-party logistics) provider that uses a national network of fulfillment centers, including one just outside Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, to help ecommerce businesses lower inventory carrying costs and speed up transit times.
This makes shipping to the West Coast, the South, and even internationally very affordable. See where your customers live, then distribute your inventory to the fulfillment center(s) closest to them. ShipBob offers a global footprint with fulfillment centers in the US, Canada, and Europe.
When your customers place an order, it ships from a nearby fulfillment center instead of always having to ship from a Philadelphia fulfillment center — a huge help when you have customers across the country.
Faster shipping and lower inventory carrying cost is only a small part of what ShipBob can do for your business. Keep reading to find out the rest.
What is a 3PL?
Scaling order fulfillment processes requires warehouses, fulfillment teams, packaging materials, industry expertise, and technology that connects and streamlines it all.
This is what a 3PL can provide for ecommerce businesses. Rather than build up an entire distribution system yourself, you can leverage a 3PL and grow rapidly. A 3PL can:
- Provide more ecommerce warehousing space and a much larger geographic footprint
- Speed up delivery times and reduce shipping costs
- Provide software for managing inventory and tracking customer orders
- Expand your shipping reach and give you better rates
How ShipBob works
ShipBob has worked with thousands of ecommerce businesses to fulfill millions of orders by keeping things simple. To start, you sync your store with our platform and ship your products to our fulfillment centers.
Once your store is hooked up and we have your inventory, we’ll get a notification any time orders are placed. Our proprietary technology routes the order to the optimal fulfillment center, where our professionals pick, pack, and ship the order. Ecommerce order tracking is sent to the customer to keep them in the know.
3PL fulfillment services in Philadelphia
ShipBob has tools for each step of the ecommerce fulfillment process, from storing and organizing your inventory to providing insightful analytics and reports.
Centralize orders and inventory
Putting all the most important order and inventory management details into a single place makes it easy to keep your business organized and retrieve information fast. You can:
- View order metrics in real-time
- Search for specific customers or orders
- Track orders as they’re picked, packed, and shipped
- Follow a package after it’s been shipped
- Track inventory levels at each fulfillment center
- Forecast inventory and use automatic reorder point formulas
Get guaranteed customer support
ShipBob is there with you every step of the way to keep retail fulfillment running efficiently and accurately. Get in touch with our on-site reps if you have a location-specific question, your account manager (if you’re an enterprise customer), or our general support channels.
Use data to improve your business
All the order and inventory information flowing through our platform creates inventory reports and analytics that can help you optimize your business. With ShipBob you’ll get critical insights into customer behavior and ideas for supply chain optimization that will inform and improve your strategy moving forward.
ShipBob is Philadelphia’s best choice for 3PL provider
Rather than make empty promises, we like to show the tangible results we’ve helped obtain for customers. Here are just a few examples of how we’ve helped businesses grow their revenue and customer base.
Speed up order turnaround
In-house fulfillment processes are often inefficient, which is a major obstacle for ecommerce companies trying to ship a lot of orders out faster. ShipBob is built for fulfillment, and our technology enables rapid turnarounds and faster order processing. Doris Sleep, a luxury pillow brand, prioritized fast shipping and partnered with ShipBob. They are able to ship 99.7% of orders placed before noon (local time) on the same day and focus on their core business — not shipping.
Increase delivery speed
ShipBob speeds up not only the fulfillment process (from when an order is placed to when it’s shipped), but can also help reduce transit times as well. Our partnerships with major carriers and shipping platforms, along with our distributed inventory model, results in faster transit times for each order. Canadian luxury bath brand Bathorium was able to significantly increase shipping speeds with ShipBob, even while reducing shipping costs by 70%.
Improve critical revenue metrics
Shipping options have a huge influence on metrics like cart abandonment and average order value. Give your customers better options and you’ll likely see an uptick in these metrics. For instance, tutu brand iloveplum partnered with ShipBob to enable 2-day shipping. The result? A 97% increase in average order value and 267% increase in sales.
ShipBob works with your tech stack
From ecommerce giants like Amazon to the most prominent mail carriers, ShipBob works with all the big players in the ecommerce and logistics industries. Here are some of our partners.
Ecommerce platforms and online stores:
Shipping carriers and freight solutions:
- UPS
- USPS
- DHL
- Freightos
- ShipStation
- And more!
Packaging vendors:
If you’re trying to scale your ecommerce order fulfillment, working with a fulfillment company such as ShipBob can greatly help. Whether your business needs warehouse management, returns processing, lower shipping costs, or just a third-party logistics partner in general, we’re here to help!
Learn more about how ShipBob can help your business. Get in touch today!
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