Growing ecommerce businesses oftentimes will reach a point where order volume is increasing faster than they can scale fulfillment. This leads to fulfillment errors, disorganized inventory and order management processes, and inefficient shipping. That’s why many businesses turn to a third-party logistics (3PL) partner for help. 

Tech-enabled 3PLs have the tools, resources, infrastructure, and professionals to scale fulfillment quickly, but not all 3PLs are created alike. ShipBob is a 3PL with a growing fulfillment center network that doesn’t just take care of order fulfillment for you, but helps you ship more efficiently, reduce shipping costs, and deliver packages faster.

We support our merchants by offering what is known as ‘distributed inventory.’ By splitting inventory across multiple fulfillment centers, you can reduce the number of shipping zones each shipment must travel through, so packages make it to their destination faster and at a more affordable price.

“Last July, Prymal reached $40,000 in revenue. After switching to ShipBob just four months later in November, we are reaching $160,000 a month in revenue — that’s 300% growth. We’re also saving $8,000 per month in fulfillment costs.” 

Courtney Lee, founder of Prymal

ShipBob’s Columbus fulfillment services

Fulfillment touches on so many different parts of your business, from order management and inventory management, to shipping orders. ShipBob streamlines all of this into a single, straightforward fulfillment logistics process. Here’s how it works: 

1. Connect your store to ShipBob’s proprietary technology.

2. Ship your products to one or more of our fulfillment centers.

3. ShipBob is notified automatically when orders are placed at your store, and orders are routed to the fulfillment center located closest to the customer.

4. Our professionals pack and ship the order, with tracking info forwarded to the customer. 

Order and inventory management

Many ecommerce businesses lack an order and inventory management software to help keep inventory and orders organized. This leads to fulfillment errors, poor warehouse management, and inefficient shipping. Partner with ShipBob and you get built-in order and inventory management tools:

• View inventory counts at each fulfillment center
• Set reorder points so you’ve always got enough product in the right place
• Search for orders from your dashboard
• Track the progress of shipments

Incisive reports and analytics

Consolidating your order management, inventory management, and fulfillment into a single platform puts all your most valuable data in a single place. ShipBob’s free analytics tool offers full visibility into the entire fulfillment process along with real-time data on our fulfillment performance, transit times, demand forecasting, and your total costs. Get answers to questions like: 

• Which states do I ship the most orders to?
• Which orders haven’t been delivered yet?
• How much inventory do I currently have on hand at each ShipBob fulfillment center?
• What were my historical stock levels at any point in time in any location?
• How many days do I have left until a SKU will be out of stock?
• By when do I need to reorder inventory for each product?
• What is the average cart value and shipping cost by shipping method and order?
• How much money would I save on shipping if I changed the fulfillment center locations my inventory is in?
• And much more

Two-day shipping

The shorter transit distances and reduced shipping costs you get with distributed inventory lets you offer two-day shipping to all your customers no matter where they live. 

What makes ShipBob the best 3PL in Columbus

ShipBob’s goal is to optimize your shipping in a way that truly changes your business. Our ecommerce clients derive a number of benefits from being able to offer fast, cheap shipping to their customers. Here are a few.

Shipping margins improve

Using a national network of fulfillment centers instead of a single Columbus fulfillment warehouse gets you better shipping rates. Bed and bath brand Bathorium decreased their shipping costs by 70% after partnering with ShipBob, while increasing delivery speed at the same time. 

“ShipBob was the obvious solution for us. They align very well with Shopify and don’t have older, archaic technology like other 3PLs.”

Greg MacDonald, CEO & Founder of Bathorium

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Cart abandonment goes down

One of the main causes of cart abandonment is shipping options that are too expensive or take too long. Speeding up delivery times and bringing down costs makes customers more likely to spend. MyCalmBlanket, a company that sells weighted blankets, saw their cart abandonment decrease by 18% after partnering with ShipBob. 

“With ShipBob’s 2-Day Express Program, we’ve seen an 18% reduction in cart abandonment.”

Founder of My Calm Blanket

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Average order value goes up

Average order value (AOV) goes up for the same reason cart abandonment goes down: customers spend more when there’s fast, cheap shipping options. Rainbow OPTX partnered with ShipBob and saw a 24% increase in average order value once they started offering two-day shipping. 

“It was kind of like magic — my orders were imported into ShipBob from my Shopify Plus website and started getting fulfilled right away. I didn’t have to do anything. And since then, we’ve grown 115% and experienced 2.5 times more order volume — all fulfilled by ShipBob.”

Noel Churchill, Owner and CEO of Rainbow OPTX

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Seamless integrations with the biggest players in ecommerce

ShipBob offers direct, pre-built integrations with top ecommerce platforms including Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, WooCommerce, and more. 

Merchants of all sizes can easily connect their online store to ShipBob’s technology and leverage leading ecommerce apps, or utilize the Developer API to have ShipBob fulfill  orders automatically and reliably. 

Knowing the right time to outsource fulfillment to a 3PL

Many ecommerce businesses come to a point in growth when orders are flowing in faster than they can efficiently and accurately fulfill them. The results can be damaging: delayed shipments, fulfillment mistakes, messy warehouses, and frantic fulfillment teams. 3PLs can solve all of this for your ecommerce business, and more. Here are some common clues that your business might be ready: 

• You don’t have the manpower to keep up with order volume
• You lack the drive or interest in building your own distribution system
• Your fulfillment team is making too many errors and you’re losing sales
• You are using one Columbus fulfillment center and cannot offer your customers outside of Ohio fast shipping

Ready to get started with a 3PL? Click below to request a quote from ShipBob.

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