Every day, millions of packages are shipped worldwide. Order fulfillment may seem mundane, but the truth is, it’s become a fundamental aspect to human life since the rise of eCommerce. We decided to take a look at how order fulfillment looks by the numbers.
Overview
1. 87 billion packages were shipped in the year 2018. (Source: Statista)
2. USPS adds 4071 addresses to its delivery network every single day. (Source: USPS)
3. Cardboard waste from the US eCommerce industry results in the loss of one billion trees each year. (Source: Fast Company)
Customer Expectations
4. Customers look up their order tracking page an average of 3.5 times per order. (Source: Tracktor)
5. 68% of people prefer to have their packages shipped to their house. (Source: Statista)
6. 38% of online shoppers abandon an order simply because a package may take longer than a week to arrive. (Source: eConsultancy)
7. 40% of shoppers consider the post-purchase experience to be the most memorable part of the brand experience with 73.6% of shoppers saying that delivery is the most important to the overall shopping experience. A further 75% of shoppers state that clear communication is key to a good delivery experience. (Source: Convey)
8. 51% of shoppers want real-time visibility into the status of their orders. (Source: Retail TouchPoints)
9. 63% of consumers expect a standard delivery to arrive within three days of ordering. (Source: Retail TouchPoints)
10. 94% of consumers blame retailers for a poor delivery. (Source: Dropoff)
11. 80% of consumers want same-day shipping. (Source: Invesp)
12. 94% of shoppers have taken an action to qualify for free shipping. However, free shipping’s importance has been on the decline over the past 5 years. (Source: UPS)
Merchant Challenges
13. 64.4% of merchants have a single distribution center. (Source: Saddle Creek Logistics)
14. Merchants face a variety of difficulties with fulfillment, the first of which is the processing time for outbound orders and secondly is system integration. (Source: Saddle Creek Logistics)
15. 39.4% of merchants outsource at least some of their fulfillment operations. (Source: Saddle Creek Logistics)
16. 24.7% of merchants say that delivery costs are the biggest challenge their supply chain faces.(Source: Eye for Transport 2018 Supply Chain Study)
17. Transportation management systems can improve freight savings by as much as 8%.(Source: Forbes)
18. Since 2012, net asking rents on distribution centers have risen 5.6% each year. (Source: JOC.com)
19. Up to 12% of merchants are unprofitable due simply to distribution costs. (Source: Logistics Bureau)
20. Human error is the number one cause of fulfillment issues. (Source: Stitch Labs)
21. Almost 50% of warehouses track order cycle times (the time between receiving and shipping an order) manually. 19% don’t track them at all. (Source: Logistics Management)
22. The top 20% of merchants have a rate of 99.8% for on-time shipments. The bottom 20% of merchants only hit 94% or lower. (Source: Warehousing Education and Research Council)
Cara Wood
Cara is the digital marketing manager here at ShopPad. She's passionate about eCommerce, marketing automation, and great wine. When she's not hard at work innoventing new marketing automation techniques, you can find her trying to stop her beagle from getting into the trash.
This article was originally published by our friends at ShopPad.
