The rapid growth of the ecommerce marketplace has enabled online businesses to broaden their product offerings and expand their reach to new markets. With fewer consumers shopping in physical retail stores, the opportunity for ecommerce continues to grow.

Forbes forecasted 20% of all retail purchases to occur online in 2024, with ecommerce sales expected to increase 9% year-over-year. This means that ecommerce businesses are tasked with providing a seamless online shopping experience, backed by strong logistics and fulfillment services, to meet rising demand.

So, what trends do ecommerce merchants need to understand to prepare their businesses for surges in consumer shopping this Peak season?

• Consumer demand for faster and more affordable shipping
• The growing impact of social media on the ecommerce marketplace
• The importance of a streamlined returns management process
• On-demand inventory and demand management across major channels

Stay Ahead: Consumers Demand Faster, More Affordable Shipping

As more consumers turn to the ecommerce space for regular retail purchases, trends are pointing to major behavioral shifts that online businesses need to understand to boost sales and achieve scale.

For many consumers, online shopping is becoming a habit: up to 34% shoppers are making an online purchase every week. To capitalize on this opportunity, merchants should consider bolstering their marketing efforts, including social media marketing, email marketing, and customer referral campaigns to reward your most loyal customers. And remember: personalization is key. The more customized your promotional offerings are, the more likely buyers will choose your brand and complete a purchase.

As online shopping numbers surge, trends also indicate that consumers are becoming more discerning and evaluating more options than ever before making a purchase. This is largely because consumers are presented with more options and more advertising across the ecommerce landscape. This shift manifests itself in a cart abandonment rate of roughly 70% as customers search for the best deal, along with the fastest, most convenient shipping options.

These points underscore the need for ecommerce businesses to present complete and transparent pricing information, and establish fast, affordable shipping as a core decision factor for consumers. If your online business is working with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, be sure to ask about fast shipping options that can offer customers nationwide 2- and 3-day shipping. Merchants can boost sales up to 25% when they advertise fast delivery speeds.

We recommend that merchants partner with a dedicated 3PL partner to help them optimize demand planning and forecasting to strategically place best-selling inventory in regional fulfillment centers. For example, Flexport’s Ecommerce Fulfillment leverages a network of fulfillment centers across the U.S. to allow merchants to ship faster to high-demand areas, accelerate online sales with fast shipping options, and reduce strain on demand planning.

Social Commerce Continues to Drive Growth and Influence Purchase Behavior

It’s no secret that the social commerce space is growing rapidly. In 2023 alone, an estimated 106.8 million Americans made a purchase on social media platforms, accounting for roughly $108 billion. Ecommerce businesses face a huge opportunity to accelerate sales by establishing social commerce storefronts across major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube.

The most popular product categories for social commerce include:

• Clothing, apparel, and accessories
• Electronics
• Health and beauty items
• Food and drinks

In the months leading up to Peak season, we recommend mapping out your social media and social commerce strategy, and leveraging historical data to understand which products to promote. To start, consider offering discounts for new referrals via email and social media. Reward your most loyal customers with discounts for spreading the word about your brand to their personal networks, driving new purchases. Nielsen reports that 92% of consumers trust referrals from friends and family more than traditional marketing, and up to 77% are more likely to try a new product.

Don’t discount the value of working with influencers, either. Social media influencers have built trust with their followers by sharing expertise on specific topics that may be relevant to your business. This presents an opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience of prospective buyers. Nearly half of social media shoppers claim that they’ve made an online purchase because the product was promoted by an influencer. If you discover influencers that speak with authority to your target market, consider reaching out to establish a partnership and tap into their audience.

If your ecommerce brand is considering a major push across social commerce platforms, social monitoring tools can help you identify emerging trends, track demand shifts, and move or replenish inventory to meet potential sales spikes. This will enable merchants to strategically place inventory close to customers, and inform their demand planning strategy ahead of Peak season. As you build out your social commerce strategy for Peak, remember to communicate with your supply chain partners to ensure your business is sufficiently stocked to meet customer expectations.

Does your ecommerce brand need help outlining its social commerce strategy for Peak? A trusted 3PL like Flexport can help your online store integrate with major social commerce platforms, so you can view your inventory position, set up auto-replenishment, and stay in stock—all from one platform.

Streamlining Returns Management Can Be a Major Differentiator

The returns management process continues to be a major factor for ecommerce brands’ success during Peak season. Retail returns grew by just over 2% year-over-year, exceeding $627 billion in 2023, and accounting for about 8.5% of total sales. For ecommerce brands, however, the rate of returns actually spikes to 17.6% and accounts for $247 billion in merchandise.

With this in mind, it’s obvious that online stores need to emphasize smooth returns and exchange processes to improve their shopping experience and retain customers. Because these returns and exchanges can become tedious for businesses and consumers, many online retailers are leveraging 3PLs to reduce friction.

Flexport Returns, for example, works as your dedicated returns management partner, enabling greater control of your returned inventory, and can be managed all under one roof. By directly integrating with major returns partners like Loop, ReturnGo, Narvar, and more, Flexport Returns can restock inventory within 3 business days. This eliminates tedious back-and-forth with buyers and manual returns inspections, saving your business time and money during Peak season.

By leaning into a 3PL’s advanced shipping and fulfillment infrastructure, returned items are moved back into inventory quickly, while reducing back-and-forth with buyers. This leads to an improved customer experience, and reduces the strain on business’ internal resources during the busiest months of the year.

On-Demand Inventory Management Across Major Sales Channels

In a modern logistics infrastructure, you need the flexibility to adjust to rapid changes in market conditions and consumer buying habits. Ecommerce merchants should focus their demand planning efforts on meeting sales needs across multiple channels, enabling them to sell when and where there are surges in consumer demand—especially during Peak season.

Accurately mapping your inventory needs and ordering SKUs accordingly enables ecommerce merchants to avoid costly reserve storage fees when they’re overstocked, or strained supply chain operations if they’re understocked. Understanding these trends can make all the difference when your operational resources are especially strained during Peak season—and also ensures you maximize your sales by remaining in stock.

If your ecommerce brand needs help with on-demand inventory management and planning, a trusted 3PL like Flexport can help. Services like Flexport Reserve Storage integrate your inventory needs across multiple channels, allowing you to send products across our nationwide network to high-demand areas. Whether you’re using Flexport Fulfillment, FBA, or your own warehousing, this ensures your best-selling products are always in stock, without having to worry about delays or stock-outs. You may also consider automating this process with products like Flexport Replenishment, which allows your business to manage stock levels within fulfillment centers and replenish inventory across multiple sales channels.

All of these products can also be combined with other Flexport services to provide a one-stop shop for all of your logistics needs. Because of our expertise and expansive fulfillment network, we can offer competitive rates to handle everything from storage to inventory management to fulfillment. If you’re already working with a Flexport team member, we can help advise you on your demand plan. Here is a form for current customers to submit their critical information.

Ready to Get Started? Flexport Can Help.

At Flexport, we strive to provide merchants with the logistics support they need to tackle Peak season. Our fulfillment experts can help you refine your shipping, tracking, and returns procedures, so you can focus on building a memorable brand experience that will drive sales and delight your customers.

Talk with a fulfillment expert today to learn more about Flexport’s competitive shipping and logistics services.