Wix eCommerce | How to Plan for Holiday Order Fulfillment in 2020

Hi everybody. So today we're going to talk about how to plan for the holiday order fulfillment. And we know. So we know that COVID 19 has completely shaped this shopping holiday season this year. And this is exactly what we're going to address. We're going to give you some best practices to prepare your supply chain that was obviously affected. We're going to show you a few essential tools to manage holiday season fulfillment and we have beautiful guest speakers. We have a top weeks merchant, which I'm going to introduce to you in a second and the CMO of Shipop, who I'm going to introduce to you in a second. We're going to have a live Q and A. So please feel free to write in the comments whatever you want to know about. We have a great team of people answering your questions and I will also address some of your questions live. So please feel free to do that and a little extra activation that we have today. We would love for you to share some holiday tips with us. We know that some of you are merchants who are already selling and it's not your first holiday season. So please, if you have some experience, share with us your holiday tips and those 10 best tips. We will announce those winners with the best tips and give you an Ascend plan for free for a year. Ascend is a customer management and marketing tools suite of tools made by Wix. It helps you manage everything in one place and it's a great thing to help you market your business and manage it through this holiday season. So please share your tips and again, as I mentioned, great people. A team of people here with us will be reviewing it and I'll announce the winners at the end. So without further ado, let's meet Ashley. I'd like to show you Ashley's website. Hi Ashley. Ashley is the proud owner of Rewax and Unwind. I'd like to show you her website, her beautiful website. It's a candle making. Ashley, please tell us a little bit about your business.

Sure, absolutely. Thank you guys for having us. We are so excited to be here, Relax and unwind. Truly started as a candle making party studio. We're located in New York and New Jersey and we exist to give guests the opportunity to come and hand pour their own scented candle using natural wax with their friends and over a glass of wine of course. So during the pandemic we temporarily had to close our doors and pivot and so currently we just recently opened up our studios again. But now we are really truly focusing on our virtual events and selling candle Making supplies as well as candle making kits.

Perfect.

So happy to have you here with us. Thank you for joining. Now I'd like to introduce you to Casey. Casey, would you like to tell a little bit about Shipbob and what you do?

Casey Armstrong over here at Shipbob, we are an E Commerce 3PL. We have 10 facilities across the world including. So we have eight in the United States, we have one in Europe and we have one up in Canada. We'll actually be opening up two more facilities by the end of this month as well and a few more international locations next year as well. Very happy to be here, Casey.

That's amazing. But we know that some of the people in the audience are just at the beginning of their journey with Wix and they're just starting their journey business. Can you say a little bit about what is even explain what exactly is 3PL?

Yeah, definitely. And I know we're going to get more in depth a little bit later, but with a 3 PL and what we help provide with our distributed fulfillment network is we help you provide, let's say that two day, three day shipping experience that Amazon and the other billion, or I guess in Amazon's case, trillion dollar companies are providing their customers. And so with, with our job at shipbob and as a 3PL, you'd actually ship us your inventory. Whether, let's say you manufacture in your house or you manufacture it in the United States or you manufacture it overseas, you ship it to us, we store your goods as orders come in to Wix, that talks directly to Shipbob, then we pick and pack your orders and then ship them out directly to your customers.

Beautiful, thank you. And again, thanks for joining us today. So this is exactly the challenge that we're talking about. Like how do you manage shipping in this weird, I guess, and different holiday seasons. So thank you for joining us today. I also have Ido and Zev here. So Ido.

Hi everyone, I'm Ido. I'm from the WIX product team and I'll be guiding you today through our challenges now to tackle them around the world of fulfillment.

Amazing. And Zev here with us too. He's our business.

Hi everyone. Happy to be here. I'm Ze'. Ev, I'm part of the business development team here in WIX stores.

Great, thank you guys. So a little bit about Wix. So we have over 165 million users worldwide, more than half a million active stores. We're in 190 countries and we keep, I mean thanks to you guys, we keep innovating features all the time. So we are going to bring here a lot of data both from what we see and what we learned from you, from our merchants. And I hope we can help you because this is exactly the purpose. So how is this? Holiday sales season is different. So the impact of COVID 19, I mean I can't even see. I look at your websites every day and in every website what I see is, you know, this informative COVID 19, you know, kind of like

just like

a message that shipping may be delayed. So why is that happening? I mean we know the world is going crazy and things are shifting and this is exactly the reason why we want to help you and give you some tips and advice on how to make sure that you get everything on time. So COVID 19 has its impact on both shipping but also on consumer trends. On retailers. We're going to see fewer in store sales, right? We're not gonna see what we used to see. Like Black Friday is not going to be the same either. In Walmart, Sense Club, Target, they all, they don't want us to come in store. So Cyber Mondays are going like Cyber sales are going to be the strong, different game this year we're seeing that US consumers spent over 146 billion of dollars in the first quarter of 2020 alone. So where could this go? Right? It's already, we're already seeing a year over year of almost 15% growth. And based on our data at Wix, we see that the sales like half a million WIX online stores worldwide are already selling online. And it's a growth, it's a year over year of almost 500%. So it's crazy of monthly revenue. So it's going up and it's crazy and we're seeing a growth and it's definitely changing. So I would love for you guys to tell me, maybe Ashley can tell us a little bit about how COVID 19 has changed your business.

Yes, absolutely. So unfortunately, COVID 19 did some damage to our business at the beginning. Excuse me. And not only did we have to temporarily close our in store studios, we had to think, you know, very quickly and kind of pivot our business like I said earlier. So our cash flow was shifted and it was some challenges that came with that. So prior we were buying from manufacturers, we were buying high volume, we were getting volume discounts is what I'm saying. And of course the manufacturers have minimum order requirements. But with the closing, the temporary closing of our business, we had to now buy from distributors which obviously had their markup and that really affected our business. It kind of slowed it down. It just, you know, overall, like it affected the labor, the operating cost, and that came with some challenges. But we have prevailed and we are pushing through.

Thanks so much for sharing. So how has this affected your business supply chain process? Or maybe you can tell us a little bit about that because I know that. Sure.

Yes. So the supply chain, we've gotten that down path now. So it's been several months and we're able to push through. But a little bit about our supply chain is that there's kind of like two divisions. I run the division with the corporate events making, the candle making, a kit, kits for virtual corporate events. And then there's another team that runs like all things wholesale. So candle making supplies, private label candles, all of that fun stuff. So then we gather the orders either on the phone or online on wix, and then we send it directly to our production associates. And so we send it to them through WIX workflow. So everything is kind of streamlined. All of the information is there, and then they have the opportunity to go and build the boxes and then ship them. So I will say that we started doing all of this in our home because we had to close down our doors temporarily. And then we were in a storage unit, like literally a personal storage unit, but we had to make a way. And then now we're in a smaller kind of facility where we are able to ship those boxes out and we use the wix, the order dashboard. That really helps us stay in line and understand like where our packages need to go. And so I think now we're ready for a fulfillment center. So I mean, it's a great opportunity that Casey's on board because we've already kind of spoken to ship Bob.

That's so cool. That's amazing. And thank you for sharing this kind of tips because again, I know that a lot of our people from our audience are just building their business. I mean, you can definitely start from your, you know, from your bedroom and grow. And it's so beautiful. We're so inspired to see merchants like you, Ashley, and see how you're growing your business with us. It's very, very inspiring. So just like Ashley mentioned the supply chain and how it affects the ship, the fulfillment and shipping process is very important these days. And we would like to share, I would like Ido to share with you a few tips and solutions on how to do that. So please, Ido.

Hi everyone. Again,

next please.

Sure.

So we have a few tips and solutions that as I see them, they're crucial in order to come prepared to the holiday season, that of course, this is the time of the year that we can come and make a great success to our business if we come prepared and do the right steps. So I will start from the top. So first you need to choose the right supplier. And when I'm saying choose the right suppliers, it doesn't mean that the ones that are wrong or bad, you just need to find the ones that you can work best with them. It means that they are able to handle or pack or assemble the kind of products you sell. It means that you should be able to communicate with them. Because in the end we need to remember the channel start when the order is placed in your business. And then we need to make sure that there are zero fractions from this point until our users, our customers are getting there in their home. And we need to remember that also people in these times are sensitive to the timeline, when they're going to get their orders and how they're going to get it. And so we need to make sure that this experience for them is as smooth as possible. And this brings me to the second point. Basically when I'm saying plan your fulfillment process, it means that we need to make sure we identify upfront our pain points, the weak points, the areas where we don't necessarily handle smoothly or effectively as possible. You need to identify them and not go around the problems, but actually solving them. It means, for example, if we know that we're going to have a high volume of orders in our routine currently is to go over orders, for example, once a day or two, maybe we should handle it, maybe we should mitigate it and do it twice a day, for example. It can be in the small things, not necessarily big changes, but more tactical changes that will help us solve those identified pain points. And when we actually come and build and create our plan towards the OLED scene, we need to communicate with our supply chain partners as early as possible. They need, for example, to know that on a regular basis they get 10 or 50 orders maybe from us. And on the holiday season we expect different volume for orders, can be 100, 200 or whatever the number you expect them to get it. Of course, combined with your marketing strategy, if, for example, do promotions, nevermind on Facebook, Instagram or any other platform, we need to admit they know our plans and they, because they are the professionals on fulfillment, they can then, if they have the full picture, they can then plan their side of the deal and make sure maybe they need to put More staff, maybe they need to prep or box priority before even starting the actual holiday season. This is part of giving them a fair chance to come prepared and do the best job they can.

That's exactly what Ashley mentioned, right? Like maybe you need to change suppliers, maybe you need to order ahead of time.

And this starts from understanding very clearly what is our fulfillment process, what is the pain points. And from there on we can then solving them. It can be the tactical small changes that are easy to do. And it can be with bigger changes that of course require more effort. But in many cases, if we expect to have a higher volume, much higher volume than what we used to, it might be the solution for us. But we need to take it into account. And when we price our products, we need to make sure it reflects our business goals. If, for example, we have a product this is an entry product, then on top of that there are various products that are based on this basic product combined to a full experience. Maybe we need to strategically price it lower so people actually buy it. And then we have our foot in the door. We can then come and upsell with more add on items. It reflects very much for the next one. Because based on our pricing strategy and what we aim to sell and what we expect will be the mixture of items we sell, then we need to make sure we order the right amount of inventory. And not only that, we want to avoid cases that we are out of stock. We also need to have a plan when we overstock. And we need to be able to monitor it on a daily basis. Because if we see where other stock on a specific price maybe then we need to adjust our pricing strategy, for example, or we need to have a back door to handle it, for example, to agree with our manufacturing that we can actually return part of the units, or do we have a physical store in our town that we can actually go there and put it to the exhibit and sell it from there. But we need to have a plan not only towards the high season for the holidays, but only to also to the day after. We need to have an exit strategy. And this leads us to the best situation we can be, where we're selling out. And when we're selling out, it doesn't mean that we need to stop and not do nothing. It means that we have other items that are not out of stock. And for those items we need to push harder. And we need also to do advanced marketing strategies in order to maximize the benefits that we can gain. For example, if I know that a specific product is sold out but then from this point on we see an increase of different products from our product catalog. Then we can segmentize those users to the send platform that we have and actually email campaign. Those user wants this item is back in stock, we can offer it to them and come and tell them, look, we know that this product might be relevant also for you, maybe you find it valuable. So we need to make sure that from the top and from the point first point to the seventh one that we have a story ready when we know where we want to get, we know what is the right steps to get there. And if we identify places that we are not on track, we need to solve it or at least come to it with open eyes. Next please.

Amazing, Amazing. No, thank you. Just want to add. Ashley, I think you have something to add to this. I thought you were raising your head.

I'll jump in though. And a lot of this, like you said, it aligns with what Ashley was saying and I love her story where it's, you know, you're growing and rolling with whatever is thrown at you and you go from your house to your own center and you know, those are such inspiring stories. And then just like Ito said with communicate with supply chain partners and since we're talking especially about fulfillment to really nail on that where it's really a two way street and you should really find partners where the conversation is going in both directions because things are changing so quickly. I mean everybody's seen the Amazon news on how they're starting to limit the inventory that you can actually ship in. And so what are you supposed to do with the excess or how are you supposed to manage that? I know that they made some changes earlier in the year and how they were prioritizing certain goods that they shipped. And so I think it's definitely talking with your supply chain partners, your fulfillment providers. Are they going to have changes in what they can receive? Because that will affect what you do higher up in the supply chain which really just creates this like domino effect. Are they going to increase prices on storage? Yes or no. Are they going to increase prices on what it actually costs to ship your goods? Because all of the major carriers have been adding, you know, Covid surcharges as well. And then in the other direction too, it's providing them with that with the most information upfront too. Whether it's a smaller three pl or somebody like shipbob. You know, we're receiving so many goods every single day and so just being as prescriptive as possible so that when so that when your fulfillment partner does receive the goods, they know exactly what it is and they can store it appropriately.

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing this. Ido, yes will tell us a little bit about the tools that we offer to manage this fulfillment during this holiday season.

So it's very important. Everything starts basically in our orders dashboard, orders hub, you name it, everything. Because this is the center of our business. In the end, this is where our fulfillment chain starts. We need to make sure that we understand all the abilities that we have there because we have various ability to support you under the more filters. We have a lot of options. For example, filter by shipping options. That can make your agenda much more clearer because you then know if you filter for example by a specific delivery option coupled with the dates of order that you received, you then know what should be addressed first. This is one example of you can leverage the abilities that we the innovative tools that we give you. On top of that we have bulk actions that can make your life easier. You can bulk update status of the orders, you can import those easy, can export those orders to Excel and then upload it to a different system or even manipulate their Excel to fit the ongoing work you're doing. But we need to remember, we need to be in touch and very strong linked to the orders dashboard. This is where everything is centered. We make sure with you in wix that every order you receive will appear with all the needed data and all the needed information for you guys in order to actually get it to the door of your customer. This is our goal, this is where we want to get in the end. This is around that.

And I know that when we speak to users at the beginner beginning of their journey with wix and they set up a store and everything is beautiful, but then they really not sure about the next step. And this is exactly where we want to help you make it a little bit to simplify this a little bit and for you to understand exactly what happens when an order comes in. So maybe Ashley, you can start like what exactly happens when an order comes into your online store?

So when an order comes in, we receive like a bunch of notifications. WIX does a great job of allowing us to send alerts. So it comes to me, it comes to some of my counterparts and then in there it's kind of like a status. So it will say unfulfilled until you actually fulfill the order obviously. Right. But also you can it's integrated with United States Postal Service and other shipping companies that imports their own shipping. The tracking which we find to be so helpful. It eliminates a step for us. It is so efficient this orders dashboard because it's just fast, it's easy and for example say I got a label from somewhere else, I can always scan it. We love that function of being able to scan the tracking label because it goes in there and then it sends an email over to the customer of all of the information, what they ordered, when it will arrive. And lastly it also has the option to add additional shipping, additional tracking. So if you're shipping over some several packages to them, they could get those emails and it's just organized and it makes the business owners look so professional. So we love it.

Perfect.

So this is just, this is one example of how you deal with when an order comes in. But I'd like Zev to explain to us what WIX offers to you like inside the dashboard. What do you do next when an order comes. When an order comes in, Zev.

So thanks. So like you explained before Riel, that our users find this other dashboard and this shipping right from their bedroom, right from their home when they're starting and building their E commerce store. And we know that one of the main issues that there are in the E commerce world is the world of shipping. And we try to focus and find what are the main pain points that we can help as wix. And one of those topics is shipping labels. Today what the users can do is or other people that have E commerce stores is to go to the postal office to buy your shipping label there, get the postage, stick it on the box, leave it there and continue to their day. But we find it more and more that what our users need is to do this quickly already from the comfort of their home and have even maybe the delivery man come and take it from their house without them need to go directly to the postal office. And to do that, what we offer our users today is the ability to buy and print shipping labels from our system. So in the United States, for example, the users from United States have through wix a direct integration to usps. What this means is that from our dashboard from the WIX order page, the user can directly buy the shipping label for a specific order, print it and just like that he has his order ready, he can have it if he still wants to go to the postal office, he can arrive there, no need to wait in line or something like this, just to leave the box and continue on his day or schedule a delivery person to receive that package. But we try to help our users save time by this feature. So USPS and the direct integration to Wix give the users up to 70% discount with USPS, which is amazing and we hope that it will help our users grow even further. But even if, as you can see, the flow is very simple here, but even if you find that USPS is not enough for your business or that you're in another market which is not United States and you want other options, then WIX has worked today to connect with other shipping companies or aggregators that are already connected to shipping carriers that you know of, like UPS, FedEx, DHL and other for local countries to give the user the exact same option with a complete dashboard that's connected to wix, which means that once, for example, if you go to a company like Shippo, which they have an app in our upmarket, then you can buy your shipping label with cheapo. All the details are already connected to wix, so everything is derived from there. So you don't need to do any manual work. It's already there waiting for you to buy the specific label to print it. And once that label is ready, a tracking number will automatically be sent to the WIX auto page. And if you set that, then also to your buyer that is waiting to get a notification about where's my order? We really hope that those kind of features of shipping labels will help our users start and grow in the ecommerce world.

Zev, that's amazing. I just want to recap because again, since I've spoken to users and I know that this is a pain point for them, so once an order comes in, I can print the labels from home with the integration within my dashboard, straight to USPS or different providers and I can pay through weeks. Like I don't need to have a few dashboards for everything, right? I can have it all in one place.

That's exactly right. When you're working with usps, you'll do it directly from us. If you want other carriers, then our partners like Shippo can provide that for you.

So I don't need to copy paste from my week's site to a different Excel or anything?

Nothing. Completely automatic.

That's amazing. And I'm sorry, I'm repeating because I know it's like it's a pain and I want people to understand that, like it's all in one dashboard. We're trying to make your life simple as much as possible and if not, there's other integrations that if you want to take advantage of which Shippo is one of them.

Exactly.

So once I did that, I would love IDO to explain a little bit about the order page, about the next step, I would call it.

I think Ashley has a comment and actually has some clarification as well. So go for it, Ashley, please.

Thank you. Casey, is that to add on to what he said is the app, The WIX app has been a saving grace and he's mentioned earlier about, about just doing it in your bed in the morning. Right. I mean, truly, if I have something to do, you know that I can't be by my computer. The app has been a saving grace and you can go through the exact same process as you would if you were on your computer. So for everybody just listening, that is, you know, not familiar with the app, I would actually, you know, try to download it and you can, you know, manually or automate your, your business with the app.

Thank you so much for adding this important information. A WIX mobile app, Casey, please.

And yeah, if I could clarify. So the shippo option is if you want to print labels, and as Ashley mentioned, as Ev mentioned, it's a great solution. They're a close partner of ours. Shippo is a great company with Shipbob, we do not print the labels for you to print out. We take care of it all for you. And so if you want to pick and pack and fulfill on your own, then you would utilize a WIX and Shipbo integration. And if you want to ship us all of your goods and not even think about it, that's when you would utilize a ship, Bob. And so, I mean, and to give a quick story there, like, that's how the company was founded. So the founders were actually running their own startup, which was broadly in the e commerce space and they were having to ship goods every single day. And so they were going to the post office every single day and it was taking so much time and they were seeing the same people every single day. And that's like when the light bulb went off and they're like, there's got to be a problem here because I don't want to be at the post office and John and Jane don't want to be at the post office. And that's actually how we started acquiring our first customers as well, which was talking to other people that they'd see all the time at the post office and saying, would you rather just outsource all of this? And that's how shipbob started. So anyways, just wanted to clarify that we don't print the labels for you to utilize. We do that all on our side.

Thank you so much. For clarifying this. So super super cool. Let me remind you that we have our promotion going so if you would like to share us with your holiday tip and how you do shipping, how you do fulfillment, what have you learned from you know, the last couple of months that been crazy for you? If they were, please share your tips. And again you can win and send yearly plan which will give you marketing and customer management tools. Again all within Wix. It's a send by wix. Everything is in your dashboard. Okay, so going back to Ido, I would love for you to teach us about the order page and show us a little bit how that works.

Sure thing. So this is like where we're getting to the innovative part. This is where we try to keep everything in one place. Like most of the actions and as Casey mentioned, even part of the action are seamlessly happening in the order page will always be synced with those integrations. We will always be enriched with the data or actions happening on our partner side. But even though even if we take put it on the side, we have many more abilities that you can use and utilize in order to make sure that your orders dashboard reflects the status of your fulfillment chain and supporting in order to get everything in time and keep your customers happy. So remember under your more actions you have many abilities going from update statuses if something was fulfilled and all the way to printing your orders. You can go one back to your top thanks and even cancel a refund or create an invoice if you didn't create it automatically. 1 Once the order was created. And not only that, under your order activity in the bottom you can add specific notes, personalized notes that you want following a chat with a customer that asks for something specific requests that you want to document and you don't want to forget. And on top of all of that, you need to remember on the order summary that the section you see now on the products to ship is basically breaks. And we see it and we also show it later on that as long as based on the fulfillers that you use working with, you will have different sections. For example, if part of the order is fulfilled by Shibbo, you will see their section of fulfilled by Shiba. In part of this is print of demand items, they will always break under a specific dedicated section. And for each section you can then have dedicated actions such as adding tracking numbers, print packing slips or even the printing label. All of that is hold under the section based on the fulfiller of the specific items grouped together in your order page. And this leads Me to our latest addition to the order page. If you can continue please.

Sure. Yeah.

Cool, cool. It's leading me to what we call the edit order. And basically it allows you now to edit the order info section. It allows you to edit the email address and the shipping address. As we know, in many cases customers doing mistakes or they have a changing intent. For example, I don't want to ship it to my home address. I want to ship it COVID 19 ended and we actually want to ship it to our office servers in order to support it seamlessly. We don't want to cancel and replace the order, even issue a refund for it. We can now easily edit those sections into inside the order page in just two simple steps. Continue please. So from the left you can see the edit the shipping disorder. So it's very important. Any field that you want to add, change or even remove. For example, if the company name is not relevant anymore because it's now in a home office. So then I can do it easily. I will just update it. Click the save button and here I go. Same goes to the email address. If for example I have a typo and the customer is calling me and saying I didn't got an order confirmation email, I have an issue. I don't know if you actually got my order and then you can see that there's a typo and now you can easily update the email address. Not only that, you can even resend right from here, resend the order confirmation to the new email address and just click the update and you will get a success toast telling that everything went well hopefully. And if something went wrong, we will also tell you why. And each action you will do from the edit perspective will also be documented on the history activity section. And it will be easier and very efficient if you have a team working on it. So the different team members can actually track the changes were done and even know when it was done and what was changed. So it's very important and we aim to add much more editing abilities to our orders to our other system in the near future. So stay tuned about that. And this leads me to our fulfillers.

What is it exactly? What are Custom fulfillers?

So Custom Fulfillers is basically a long tail basically around. It can be from two perspectives. It can be from the point of view where I as a small business don't have a tech support to my business and I can't integrate with a fulfillment provider easily or seamlessly to an API or any other tech solution. So this is where the custom fulfillers get into the picture and I will show it in a bit how we're doing it. But basically it's allow us to create a simple link and assign product to a specific fulfiller and then just let them know whenever I received an order. But this specific page you see now as you can see it's under our store shipping. This is where you're getting your access into. This is our very first step in the suite of fulfillment services and solution that we aim to provide to you, to our users and hopefully it will leverage to work efficiently with your customers. You can see this is quite just the first step and we aim to enrich it much more in the near future. When I come and want to actually set a custom fulfiller as I said in be from the side that I don't have the tech abilities as a merchant or from the side of the fulfillment, I'm working with a small warehouse. Even in the back of a store they don't have any tech solution to do. And this is where exactly custom fulfillers come to support. As you can see, when I create a custom fulfiller I just need to have two fields, I need to name it my own terminology and I need to have a dedicated email address basically where I want to forward the orders I get. And when I do that then I just need to have a simple selection where basically and how I want to trigger the notification of a new order. I can do it automatically when an order is paid or even when order is paid if I'm using offline orders or I pay in cash. But I still want to let know the fulfillers and I can just manually send it to our order page. It will be one of those action in the grouped items under the specific custom fulfiller I just created. Once I set up a fulfiller then I need to assign the products for the portfolio. It will happen just in the next step after you click Save. And then once I receive an order with those assigned products then as I can see if I receive an order fulfilled by XPS in this case you will see that it's grouped under this fulfiller and it will make my life much easier and and seamlessly without the need to actually go and call and phone or text on every order I get, the system will do it for you. And this is again for those kind of integrations that are not able to do slick 0 fraction but we try to minimize them and work seamlessly for you on your daily walk and support you as much as we can through the upcoming holiday season.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Ido by the way, we've been seeing your comments and I know that a lot of them are about marketing. So please join us for the next webinar. It's all about marketing for the holidays season. So it's in October 1st I'm gonna show you the link once we finish, but we will answer all of your marketing questions there. So please join. Join us in two weeks from now. And I've seen a lot of questions about gift cards too. So it's actually going to happen very, very soon. So stay tuned and wait just a little bit more. So let's continue. I'd like Casey to tell us about how you do fulfillment with Shebop. And I think Casey, just because we're running a little bit out of time, we can maybe try to do the

beginning of maybe I can run through them quickly. And a call out too on the marketing front is, I think, especially when there's so much unknown right now in the world with from inventory levels to shipping speeds is you can actually utilize a lot of your fulfillment capabilities if you have confidence in it as a marketing, as a marketing method as well. Because especially with the holidays coming up and with really Christmas kind of being the bookend for the end of the holiday season, it's can you actually fulfill those on time? And so I know a lot of people are starting the promotions early, but it's also I'd say being upfront that either you're seeing delays or maybe you're able to ship on time or that you actually have the inventory in stock. And so we just have seen a lot of customers utilizing that to differentiate from their competition. So as I mentioned, with shipbob, we're tech enabled three plus. Not only are we the technology layer, but we actually have the fulfillment centers around the world. And you know, I just had a quote here from a customer. The reason why I love this one is that she felt like she couldn't grow until she was able to outsource it because she was spending so much time on picking and packing on the fulfillment side. And then she was actually able to shift her focus to the marketing and sales side. And then the fact that her CPA or her accountant even said, thank God you switched to ship, Bob. It's not often that your CPA is complimenting you on your business. So that's another reason why I enjoyed that one.

And then how do I know when I can actually how big do I have to be in order to start working with you?

Perfect question. That takes us to our next Slide. I think actually we'll get to that one in a sec. Especially if you want to go up a little bit. I'll just run through the stats really quickly.

This one?

No, two more. So this is our internal data from Q4 of last year where not only did we see over 40% of all the orders come in Q4, but if you look on the revenue side, we actually saw 45% of all E commerce revenue and that's from our customers. So their GMV or their revenue come in Q4. And so that just really highlights the importance of really nailing your holiday promotions and all of your Q4 where not only is there so much order volume concentrated in such like a short small window, but but you're actually seeing people, the average order value increase as well because they're often buying multiple products for gifts and for the holidays. And so it's just really nailing down that strategy. And what I found actually pretty interesting as well is 47 of the top 50 revenue days were in just November and December, which then shrinks the window even smaller where it's just really the 60 day sprint across the entire year that's so important. We can skip that one. And then actually if you want to, if you want to go up, actually go up one more slide. Just a nail on this as well. So this is also where it's talking with your 3 PL and hopefully they can be transparent with some of the carrier speeds. And so something that we put out at shipbob if you go to carriers.shipbob.com we actually update every single week. We're fully transparent with the transit speeds from all the major carriers. And so that way you can see who is doing well and who's not. So we use that data to identify which carriers we're going to utilize for our customers. But even if you're fulfilling yourself, it's worth going there and seeing. Okay, well maybe carrier X is cheaper, but they're taking much longer. I think it's beneficial for me to utilize carrier Y because the shipping speeds are so much better or they're close to their pre Covid level. So I would check that out. And then just another call out too with the second bull at 29% that's the order volume that we've seen on top of the peak volume last year. So I already called out that 40% of orders happened in Q4 last year. Well, we're seeing holiday peak traffic, we're seeing above peak traffic or peak sales from last year. And so you know, just Just another data point, you know, to behind this whole E Commerce boom.

Amazing.

And then so when, when is my business big enough? And yes, this is definitely the number one question we get. And again, another way I would frame it is the question I put there is, you know, is picking and packing orders preventing me from growing my business? And sometimes the answer is no and sometimes the answer is yes. I think there's also value in picking and packing because you understand like what that process looks like. You know, you're, you're creating this relationship might say more with the customer. I would say, you know, looking up who these customers are, you know, like what. Not just, you know, simple demographic data, you know, like gender and location and race and age and all that, but like look them up online. Like there's so much information available online. Like what are they posting on the social networks? Like what are they like, like why are they buying from you when there's just seemingly unlimited choices out there. But you know, when is it big enough? So again, like we've, I shared that message from Courtney. We have another customer. He said that he was staying up till 2am picking and packing boxes. You know, throughout the entire holiday season. I see Ashley smiling. So she probably can, you know, it might be hitting home for her. We hear that all the time. And then for this example, this guy, his first two orders were people to help him pick and pack boxes. And he's like, why am I still spending all of my time and money on this when I can just hand this off? And he was actually, and he was based in Southern California. So by utilizing, you know, a company like Shipbob now he's able to utilize multiple fulfillment centers which allowed him to ship faster and more inexpensively to his end consumer. And then he was able to get these people he hired for picking and packing. He was able to bring people on to help him with marketing and sales and really accelerate the growth. And so again with outsourcing, it's own, a lot of it too is. And just like Ido mentioned earlier, like if you do sell out, hopefully what you're doing on the marketing front is putting you in that position to succeed. And so what happens if you do see that holiday rush? What happens if maybe you launch that crowdfunding campaign and it beats your wildest projections? What if, you know, hopefully these things subside but Covid continues to push on. Or maybe this is the new norm from like a buyer's perspective with the E Commerce surge. How are you going to manage that volume moving forward? And so Having somebody who can scale with you. And again, just, just these carrier relationships and the carrier data is extremely important and then just benefits of different shipping options. And so that could just be from ground to air. A lot of people will mention, oh, we can do, we can deliver it there in like a set period of time. We have to really get into the pricing. Is that ground or air? Anybody can ship two day via air. It's just going to be extremely expensive. And so that's where the distributed fulfillment center network really comes into play.

Amazing.

Anything else you'd like to add before you have to leave us?

I don't know if you're going to be sharing these slides, but yeah, I mean time, money, that's what it all comes down to. People are trying to optimize for time and money and there's some examples there. Let's see maybe if you go to my last slide. Sure, yeah. So just some of the key takeaways again I'd say understanding what you need. So unlike pure technology, what I love about a solution like Wix is if Ashley's running her successful e commerce business and they're doing well, maybe me, Casey, I launch tomorrow and I'm just getting started. We both get the same software and that's going to really help us, you know, scale and grow our businesses. On the fulfillment side, it's what do you need from your fulfillment provider? So things like locations, different capabilities. You know, we had a, you know, are you shipping oversized goods like sofas or are you shipping candles? Because that might be a completely different provider or maybe the partner you're talking to can ship both. The technology side. So again, everybody's been highlighting the transparency that you get, you know, through wix on what's happening across your entire business. And that's just something that of course we find important over at Shipbob as well. And you know why we were excited to partner with wix is just, it's the data going in both directions in real time. And so you have full transparency into your entire operations. You're not having to pick up the phone or send emails or wait for like an Excel spreadsheet. Everything is there in real time. And then you can actually action off of that as well. And then last is just testing what your customers want. Another question I get often is like, well, should I offer free shipping or two day shipping? But the right answer and the unfortunate answer is it really depends. I don't know what your margins are, I don't know what the cutoffs are for getting your Customers to pull the trigger to order more. But looking at things like what is the average order value, what is the average inventory count or item count per order and looking at some of those triggers and seeing, you know, how can you start testing different things, let's say like a minimum cart value for free shipping to try to increase that average order value. There's a lot of stuff within like the logistics and fulfillment space that you can use from like a marketing standpoint to differentiate and also to increase average order value, which is, you know, one of the most important factors of any business. So I will leave it there.

Casey, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. I think we can learn a lot from this and especially that there's no, you don't need to be so big in order to enjoy a fulfillment and outsourcing fulfillment center because eventually it can save you time and money. So thank you for that. I do want to continue. I know, Casey, you have to leave.

But yes, thank you very much for having me and I'm sure we'll all talk soon. Take care.

Thank you.

Bye bye. So we've got a lot of questions from our audience and I think Ashley, this one could definitely, you can probably answer that. So how can I make my customers shopping experience even easier? Maybe you can help them there.

Yeah, absolutely. So I personally have some accountability business partners and I ask them straight up, I say, hey, can I for an example, I will say I want you to go on my website and buy organic coconut wax and I want you to tell me if it is easy or not. Okay. And then they'll give me feedback and so they'll write the pros, the cons and then I will immediately go on the back end and I will do it or one of the staff members will do it and I literally just ask somebody else. I just keep it as simple as possible.

Great, great advice. I got a few questions ahead of time for those who when you registered that you gave us and maybe Ashley, you can answer that too. There was a question about if you have any brands or recommendations for eco friend packaging for the holidays.

Yes, absolutely. So we have four options that we personally use. So we use logo packaging tape and we get it from sticker mule. And not only is it like grand brand exposure because our logo is on the outside of the box, but it's also like reinforced gummed paper tape and it's water activated. So that's very eco friendly and it's cost effective. The second one is we always use the cardboard boxes for shipping and we buy that from Uline or Staples or whatever supplier is within our budget. And so we want to make sure that it's made from 95% of post consumer content. And so that's number two. Number three is a biodegradable void fill. So right now we're using like an organic corn cornstarch which is really cool. I love technology when it comes to, you know like biodegradable packaging but it's basically non toxic and it decomposes in water but it makes sure that our glass it does not break. And then lastly we use protective insulation. So we either use the green bubble wrap which is like the 40% recycled and up to 20% of post compost or we will use the Giami wrap packs. Are you familiar with that? Okay, so it's kind of like tushy paper with craft paper and it just, it's a new technology that you can wrap your glass in so that nothing is breaking. So those are the four different things that we use especially in our candle making kits.

Amazing, amazing. Really, really good tips. Thank you. I'm seeing another question about curbside pickup. Maybe idob you can explain us a little bit about how you do that with wix.

So yeah, so again you need to access to the store shipping and then go to the selected region where you want to enable the pickup option and there you can do that from two perspectives. The first approach can be just offer pickup and then choose pick up all the option and you can then define what is the properties where you want to explain what you want to expose from guidelines, estimated time to get your order if you do pickup or you can even edit as an additional option over your main shipping method. It can be that you do flat rate but you also offer pickup. This is like the two ways to decide that we currently support it. We hope again we hope to have some more updates around that in the upcoming Q.

Perfect. Perfect. I'm seeing some questions about cart abandonment and I know Ashley, I think you're using it right so maybe you can share some tips or how you use that.

Yes, absolutely. And I will also share like little tips that we use if you. We realize that customers are not buying but we use the shopping cart abandonment automation. It is fantastic. If somebody leaves something in their cart and then they get distracted or they go away or they just ultimately don't end up buying then an email will be sent to them with the actual product and it says hey, did you forget something? You know so that is so helpful. Majority of people tend to come back and buy. But also one thing that we are doing is utilizing WIX lightboxes to capture people's emails specifically on that page. So for an example, if I'm dealing with corporate, so I'm going to use that. But corporate clients have their own lightbox that goes into their own form and then an automation is populated to send them an email specifically for corporate events saying maybe they don't want to book right now, but they want more information. They want to get to know if they want to build a resource. So that is a great way to get people that are just on your website kind of like looking that don't buy to remarket to them. Another thing is utilizing the reporting and analytics tools and so you can see like where are your customers coming from? That has been amazing for us. So we have determined that they come from Google, they come from Yelp and Facebook and all of these other sites. That is fantastic traffic for us. But just maybe we want to buy an ad on Google and so that will increase traffic back to our WIX store. And then lastly, like how, like how long are they staying on a page, right? And so that's kind of what I spoke to a little bit earlier of seeing is it easy to use your website? You know, why are people falling off? Are they just going on there and they're not finding what they want? Are they staying for a really long time understanding their, you know, moves? Basically.

Great tips. You should join us for next. For the next webinar too. All about marketing. So yeah, definitely. So guys, I want to thank you so much, all of you for giving us all these tips and advice and solutions. I want to introduce you to our community. I don't know if it's pretty new, but the conversation is actually continuing there. There's a forum which we urge you to visit. So things that we discussed here you can discuss over there with people like you, with merchants, with WIX merchants. Melissa, who's leading the community actually has her birthday today. So she could have joined us if, you know, if it wasn't her birthday. But it's a great community and I think it could be a helpful resource for you guys in your journey. We also have our weeks E Commerce landing page with new features and all the payment solutions and the marketing solutions that we offer. So definitely check that. We have our weeks e commerce blog and we have our weeks e commerce where you can sign up for our webinars or you can watch an online course. We have courses about how to build an online store about SEO, about email marketing about how to create a winning product page. A lot of topics, even about pricing strategy that we mentioned before. So definitely check these out and I hope we can help you just a little bit because I know it's crazy time. And thank you again. Your tips were amazing and I want to announce the winners. I actually read a few of them and they're super, super cool. We don't have enough time to go over them, but those that gave us these winning 10 tips will get we will send you. We will get in touch with you and send you a coupon for an Ascend plan. So the winners are Casey Cornell, TD Gifts, Thu Wai Ba, Jodi Cohen. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing anything. Kali Krebs, May K, Matt Perry, Harsh Khatri, Becca Bomarito, and Tangie Earls. Again, sorry if I'm mispronouncing any names, but we will be in touch with with you. So thank you so much, guys. Thanks, Ashley. Thanks every do and come join our next webinar. Bye guys.