Shippo releases new report on ecommerce costs, ad spend, shipping times, and more

With many businesses continuing to move its products online, how does your industry stack up?

With many businesses closed due to COVID-19, ecommerce has probably never seemed more attractive. Not only does it give you an option when businesses are closed, but it is also a great way to stay indoors and slow the spread of the virus.

Ecommerce sales make up over 16% of total retail sales in the US, with Amazon accounting for over a third of those sales. Because of this popularity, things like ad and shipping spend are important factors to analyze when a brand decides to either sell online for the first time or increase its presence.

Now, a new report from Shippo, a company that helps ecommerce brands integrate shipping with their systems, and CoEfficient Labs, which assists brands with Facebook Ads, looks at what some of the top companies in the world are doing when it comes to ecommerce. 

The report looks at things like ad spend, average shipping times, most impactful product ranges, and the effects on sales in relation to website loading times.

Image Credit: Transport Executive

There's a lot to glean from the information, but let's look at some of the highlights. 

So, first, let's just look at the products in the report. These include apparel, beauty, electronics, health & wellness, jewelry, and sports & outdoors. The average Alexa ranking for websites that sell these products ranges between approximately 30,000 and 60,000.  

When it comes to the average costs of these items, jewelry is (obviously) at the top, with an average of $575.27. The lowest is beauty products, at an average of $30.98.

Now, when looking at shipping spend, some interesting figures start to emerge. Take beauty products for example. While having the lowest cost, they have the highest shipping spend, with an average shipped spend of 11.76%. This takes into account shipping vs average order value (AOV). Health & Wellness comes in second at 10.59%, but one can assume that deals with just the overall weight of these products.

Shipping times, on the other hand, are pretty uniform across all industries. All industries average a shipping time right around the three-day mark.

Pivoting to ad-related stats on different industries, beauty products are back in the lead, with the average number of social media ads breaking the 200 mark. On the opposite end, electronics sellers are averaging 54 ads. When it comes to the percentage of companies running social ads, all industries have averages of over 80%, with jewelry hitting 100%.

One interesting find is that slower websites may not affect sales as drastically as one might assume. While bounce rates are definitely high for websites that take longer than three seconds to load, the industries in the study all averaged mobile load speeds greater than four seconds.

Overall, it's a pretty interesting report for those interested in ecommerce. There are some good takeaways here and if you deal with ecommerce, it offers some solid insights in regards to pricing, ad spend, and more.

You can find the full report here.