Turn data into decisions:shipping analytics for successful retailers

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: I'm excited to have you here today for our webinar on how analytics and reporting can transform your shipping operations. Whether you're a retailer, a 3PL or somewhere in between, data is one of the most powerful tools you can use to optimise your logistics, cut costs and enhance your customer experience.

I'm Monique Larsen, Head of Sales and Partnerships here at Starshipit. My role is all about helping retailers and 3PLs streamline their shipping with world-class solutions. I have over a decade of courier and logistics experience across New Zealand and internationally, plus experience as an eCommerce business owner, so I've seen first-hand both the challenges of fulfilment and the power of data-driven decision-making.

Also joining us today are two superstars from the Starshipit team: Georgia Kirkham and Geoff Luyk, experts in delivering solutions and creating the best onboarding experiences for our customers. Georgia, let's start with you.

Georgia Kirkham, Starshipit: Thanks, Monique. I'm Georgia Kirkham, Enterprise Account Executive here at Starshipit. I partner with global enterprise retailers to understand their unique products, shipping and fulfilment processes, tech stacks and opportunities to optimise their operations with Starshipit.

Using data is a topic that always comes up when I talk with these retailers, so I'm excited to be here today and talk through best practice.

Geoff Luyk, Starshipit: Thanks, Monique. I'm Geoff Luyk, Onboarding Manager here at Starshipit. My team plays a vital role in the Starshipit journey, ensuring customers are set up for success from day one.

I bring close to 10 years of experience in shipping and eCommerce, working with retailers of all sizes from small start-ups to large enterprises. Throughout my career, I've helped businesses streamline shipping processes, improve efficiency and create seamless customer experiences. I'm excited to share insights that help you make the most of Starshipit's reports and data.

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: Before we dive into today's topic, let me introduce Starshipit for those who might not be familiar with us. Our mission is simple: we help businesses automate and optimise their shipping processes, saving time, reducing costs and improving the customer experience.

Whether you're a growing retailer, an enterprise retail group or a 3PL, we give you the tools to streamline fulfilment, integrate with multiple carriers, enhance the customer experience and take the guesswork out of shipping.

Today, we'll break down how you can harness data and insights to make smarter shipping decisions. Georgia and Geoff will take you through key shipping metrics, how to use them effectively and real-world examples of businesses already leveraging analytics for success.

Why does data matter? By tracking shipping data, retailers can make smarter carrier choices, reduce fulfilment delays and optimise costs. The more visibility you have, the more control you gain over your shipping strategy, leading to better margins, happier customers and a more scalable business model.

If you're not actively monitoring this data, or you're relying solely on carriers to provide reports, you could be missing key opportunities. Letting your carrier provide their own delivery report is like letting students grade their own homework. Keeping holistic insights consolidated and in your own hands helps you make data-driven decisions that truly benefit your business.

Georgia, over to you to dive deeper into average shipping costs and why this metric is so critical.

Georgia Kirkham, Starshipit: Average shipping cost is the first metric I want to touch on. Ensuring you're across this on a regular basis, and able to act accordingly, is key to maintaining healthy profit margins. Healthy bottom lines are more front of mind than ever for retailers coming into 2025.

Shipping costs can eat into profits, but they can also become an opportunity to turn something traditionally considered a cost into something that potentially generates profit. You can break average shipping cost down per package, per order, per carrier, per service and by origin or destination location.

By actively tracking these metrics and trends, you can identify opportunities to reduce costs, potentially by switching carriers for certain services or routes, using the information to inform rate negotiations with carriers, or deciding how much to charge customers for shipping to certain locations and services.

One example is using average shipping data to understand how much margin you might need to add to the price displayed at checkout for premium delivery options, such as same-day delivery, where customers may be more willing to pay a premium. That margin can help cover the cost of free shipping offered on standard deliveries.

You can monitor average shipping cost across services and carriers to ensure there is enough margin in the shipping charge at checkout, such as same-day delivery, to cover the free shipping cost.

Georgia Kirkham, Starshipit: I also recommend diving deep into shipping cost by carrier. This gives you a carrier-specific breakdown of shipping expenses, helping you understand where your shipping budget is going and the percentage of packages being sent with each carrier and service.

This is especially useful when using a multi-carrier strategy because it allows you to identify high-cost carriers and lanes, find more cost-effective solutions and track cost fluctuations over time.

Every carrier is different. Some may be more cost-effective or provide better service for certain routes and freight profiles. Partner with your carriers here. A carrier may have high-volume routes where they want to ensure full trucks and therefore offer very good rates or service, or your product's freight profile may fit a more cost-effective service or weight break.

Using this data allows you to have more informed discussions with carriers and make more informed decisions when optimising carrier selection to match the needs of each package. Those needs could include cost, speed, destination or customer requirements.

Retailers use this information to inform Starshipit carrier routing rules. These rules automatically select a carrier and service when fulfilling an order, so teams don't need to manually make that decision every time they print a label.

For example, your analysis may prompt you to use a lowest-cost carrier rule for certain packages. For other orders going to a specific destination, with a specific order value or freight profile, you may set up rules to assign another carrier or service. This analysis helps you stay agile in how you ship according to carrier service, price and customer requirements.

Georgia Kirkham, Starshipit: Understanding the data around what you expected the shipping cost to be versus what you were actually charged versus what you charged the customer is important. It helps identify where you're in the green for shipping and where you're in the red.

A typical eCommerce retailer should aim to keep freight cost within 5% to 10% of product cost as a general guideline, although this can vary significantly depending on product type, shipping distance and business model.

We suggest tracking expected cost, actual cost and what you charged at least monthly. Keeping a close eye on this information gives you a holistic view of where it's most important to make changes quickly, whether that's the carriers used or what you charge customers. It can also help identify opportunities to make money on shipping.

Geoff Luyk, Starshipit: Shipping and fulfilment are at the heart of every successful eCommerce business. Marketing and product development are crucial, but what keeps customers coming back is a smooth and reliable delivery experience.

Research shows that 84% of online shoppers are unlikely to return after a poor delivery experience. Late deliveries, fulfilment bottlenecks and inefficient shipping strategies don't just increase costs. They erode customer trust.

The reports I'll cover have an operational focus, are accessible through the Starshipit platform and can be exported for further analysis in tools like Excel or Power BI.

Geoff Luyk, Starshipit: Let's start with the pending orders or unshipped orders report. Imagine you're a retailer running a flash sale. Thousands of orders come in within hours, but the warehouse can't keep up. Suddenly, you're sitting on hundreds or thousands of unshipped orders, leading to late deliveries, frustrated customers and poor reviews.

The unshipped orders report is a real-time snapshot of unfulfilled orders. A high number can indicate processing bottlenecks in picking, packing or carrier allocation, potential delivery delays that affect customer satisfaction and loyalty, or inventory management issues where stock is allocated but not moving quickly enough.

High pending orders can have a domino effect across the fulfilment process. Large retailers may check this report multiple times a day, and even smaller businesses should track it at least daily to prevent delays from snowballing.

You can use the report to find patterns. Are certain products causing fulfilment slowdowns? Are regional delays happening due to carrier capacity limits? Do you have enough staff to process orders? From there, you can streamline fulfilment with batch processing, automation or wave picking.

One New Zealand fashion retailer I worked with last Christmas downloaded this report hourly to prevent order congestion and see which of their 10 stores nationwide were experiencing delays. By catching those delays early, they kept orders on track and customers happy through peak.

Geoff Luyk, Starshipit: Delivery speed is no longer a luxury. It's an expectation. Studies show that 69% of customers are less likely to shop with a retailer again if an order is delayed.

On-time delivery rate measures how often shipments arrive on or before the promised date. This can also be known as DIFOT, which stands for delivered in full and on time. Carriers now provide delivery estimates and sometimes guarantees, meaning if a package isn't delivered on time, they may reimburse the cost of shipment.

If this number drops, businesses may face negative reviews. Even when delays are outside your control, customers often blame the brand, not the courier. You may also see increased refund requests, missed delivery windows and lower customer trust, which affects repeat purchases.

Use this report to track carrier performance. If one carrier consistently has a lower on-time delivery rate, it may be time to switch or negotiate better terms. You can also optimise shipping options by comparing standard versus express services, and prepare for peak seasons by monitoring on-time delivery during Black Friday, Christmas or promotional periods.

Use the information as a talking point with carrier partners to help them understand bottlenecks or concerns. Starshipit provides carrier performance tracking so businesses can compare delivery rates across carriers and adjust their shipping mix when one carrier consistently underperforms.

Geoff Luyk, Starshipit: Average transit time tells you how long orders typically take to reach customers once they have left the warehouse. This is crucial because customers expect speed. Amazon has set a high bar with same-day and next-day delivery. Not every business can match that, but reducing transit time can improve customer satisfaction.

High transit times can also lead to cart abandonment. If delivery times look too long at checkout or on the website, shoppers may leave before completing a purchase. Slow deliveries can also increase customer enquiries asking where a package is, plus refund requests or chargebacks.

Use this report to benchmark against competitors. If competitors deliver in two days and you're taking five, you may be losing business. You can also identify slow shipping routes. Some regions naturally take longer, but if transit times are inconsistent, it may be time to test different carriers or improve estimated delivery promises.

Customers are more forgiving when expectations are accurate and transparent. Some larger retailers use Starshipit's reporting tools to compare transit times across carriers and regions, helping them choose the fastest and most cost-effective methods for each area and diversify their carrier mix where needed.

You can also use this information to manage customer expectations. Platforms like Shopify have a simple area for shipping information, and the best examples outline average delivery time frames before checkout, including the difference between standard and express services and which carriers may be used.

Geoff Luyk, Starshipit: Understanding where your shipping is going is as important as knowing how fast it's getting there. Destination breakdown can help you optimise fulfilment strategies. Should you fulfil from one location, or use regional warehouses or stores?

It can also help control costs. International shipping is expensive, and some locations may justify bulk discounts, fulfilment centres or 3PL partnerships. If you're seeing a rise in orders from a new country or city, it may be time to localise pricing, marketing or fulfilment.

I've seen customers use this report to identify cost-heavy regions and adjust shipping prices to make sure they are not losing out. They can expand efficiently by using a 3PL or local fulfilment centre, or negotiate better shipping rates when larger volumes go to certain destinations.

A common real-world use is identifying order growth in Western Australia. For many Australian retailers, Western Australia is a long way from the east coast, and that distance affects carrier cost. Some retailers have used this data to open a store in Perth and fulfil orders locally.

Shipping and fulfilment aren't just back-end operations. They are key drivers of growth and customer satisfaction. By leveraging pending orders, average delivery time, transit time and destination breakdown reports, you can reduce delays, optimise workflows, improve customer experience, increase retention and cut costs by making smarter shipping and carrier decisions.

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: There are so many good points there, and I want to second Geoff's comment about managing expectations. Research indicates that fast delivery is desirable, but reliable delivery is just as important.

If you manage customer expectations by setting realistic delivery windows, it goes a long way to gaining repeat purchase. Working with carriers in partnership is also important. They may not be aware of a delivery area that consistently underperforms, or there may be an opportunity to get goods into their network earlier to reduce potential delays.

Now, where can customers find these reports in Starshipit? Log into your dashboard, head to the main menu and go to Analytics. There are two options: Shipping Summary and Shipping Performance. Shipping Summary shows order volume split by platform and carriers. Shipping Performance lets you analyse the performance of integrated courier services at a glance, including average shipping times and early, on-time or late deliveries across multiple carriers.

If you want to dig deeper into the raw data, select Reports from the main menu. You'll find reports such as packages sent, shipments per workstation, shipping price report, delivery performance report and others. You can pull these on demand in CSV or Excel format, run personalised analysis with pivot tables, or schedule reports to send to you and other stakeholders at desired intervals.

These reports help take the guesswork out of fulfilment and support data-driven decisions with confidence.

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: That wraps up the session on leveraging analytics for smarter shipping decisions. Let's take some questions.

Trevor asks whether Starshipit integrates with other BI tools like Power BI or Google Data Studio. Georgia, I know that comes up often with your enterprise customers.

Georgia Kirkham, Starshipit: Yes, it can. Starshipit has an open API, so you can use that to build shipping data into external reporting tools. Some retailers also schedule CSV reports with raw data from the reporting section of Starshipit and feed those into their BI tools.

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: Another question asks whether you can segment data to see which products or regions have the highest shipping cost. Geoff, do you want to answer that one?

Geoff Luyk, Starshipit: Definitely. The way I do it is by downloading the packages sent report, which shows what the carrier quoted and, depending on the platform, what was charged on the eCommerce website. Then I build a pivot table and break it down by destination.

You can break it down by postcode, state, city or even address level, although not many people need that much detail. It's about working with the raw data and breaking it down in a pivot table or similar tool.

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: The next question asks whether automated reporting can be set up so reports do not need to be manually created. Georgia, can you reiterate that answer?

Georgia Kirkham, Starshipit: Yes. You can schedule reports in the reporting section and have them emailed to whichever email address you want. I believe they can be set up daily or weekly.

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: There is also a question about removing orders that have an error write-back or skew the results. We may come back to that one afterwards with the exact steps, but it should be possible to identify those statuses in the data. For Michelle's question about Aramex performance analytics, if you download the shipping performance report, the data is there, including estimated delivery time frames and whether shipments were within those time frames. You can also filter by courier.

Monique Larsen, Starshipit: To recap, the first metric is average transit time: how fast packages actually arrive, whether there are delay patterns, and which routes or carriers are causing slow deliveries.

Average shipping cost asks whether you're spending more than you should, whether freight expenses are eating too far into margins, and whether customers should contribute more to shipping costs. It may be time to explore carrier options that balance cost savings with reliable service.

On-time delivery rate shows which carriers consistently meet delivery time frames and whether delays are affecting customer satisfaction and return rates. Carriers are partners and an extension of your business, so use your data and customer feedback to help them identify operational blind spots.

Carrier breakdown asks whether all shipping partners are pulling their weight, whether you're over-relying on a carrier that underperforms, and whether there is an opportunity to diversify your carrier mix for a better cost and service balance.

Destination breakdown shows where your customers are and how that affects costs. It can help you decide whether fulfilment locations are aligned to key shipping zones, whether secure drop-off points may help reduce costs in out-of-zone or rural areas, or whether carrier strategy should change for high-cost destinations.

Pending orders show whether fulfilment delays are adding unnecessary time to delivery, whether warehouse or 3PL bottlenecks are slowing dispatch, and how you can speed up order processing to improve delivery times.

By consistently monitoring these metrics, you can turn shipping from a cost centre into a competitive advantage, optimise spend, improve delivery performance and create better customer experiences.

If you're already a Starshipit customer, explore the Reports and Analytics sections in your dashboard. If you're new to Starshipit and want to see how it works for your business, you can sign up for a free trial with no credit card required or book a demo with our team.

Thank you for joining us today. We hope this session has given you valuable takeaways and left you as excited about the power of data as we are.