The Shipwire Platform has seen some major upgrades within the past year. Recently, we dug into our metrics to understand their full impact.
Looking at year-over-year data, something that stood out was average daily sessions. Average daily sessions grew 15.5% from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017, and the uptick can be linked back to our Platform Analytic feature.
Enhancements to Platform Analytics
2016 was a big year for Shipwire Platform Analytics.
We introduced pre-formatted Business Reports (a popular request), which allow users to download data in spreadsheet files. The Business Report features provides better insight into fulfillment and delivery information through the same UI used to manage orders and inventory.
In October, we introduced our completely redesigned Dashboard, which serves as a user’s homepage within the web app. The new Dashboard allows users to aggregate all data — for example, fulfillment, ecommerce and product channel information — into a singular view that includes detailed charts and maps.
Impact to Platform Adoption
The graph below shows sessions by month and indicates when the Business Reports and Dashboard features were released. You can see a lift in the number of sessions following the release of each feature.
Typically, we see a surge in session numbers around November (in correlation with Peak Season for most of our users), but in 2016 the climb began in October as customers started using new Dashboard analytics to prepare for the holidays.
In addition to the number of Platform sessions, we looked at the length of sessions.
Following the release of Business Reports, there was a reduction in session duration, which is what we wanted to see, since one of the main functions of this feature is the ability to quickly export reports into a spreadsheet file (it also makes data manipulation more flexible and accessible to various departments within an organization). Prior to the availability of Business Reports, searching for data within the Platform was a much more manual process and required a longer session.
During the release of the new Dashboard in October and lasting through the holidays, daily sessions increased in length. The Dashboard surfaces real-time alerts for Orders Statuses and Receivings, likely prompting users to manage them and resulting in a longer session (higher order volume and more alerts are common during Peak). As expected, session duration decreased after the holidays, but overall, session duration is higher following these releases than it was previous to them (see left and right ends of chart).
What’s the point?
“Big data” is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the SaaS industry, and the actionable insights that result from it are what we care about. The type of information in this blog and other statistics like it are considered when we make investments in our technology. The logistics industry is not known for being a leader in real-time analytics or user-friendly reporting, but we’re changing that. We’re always looking at major market trends, user feedback and hard data to drive our development decisions and create tools that improve our Platform functionality and user experience.
