Light things and heavy things, on the platform you are on now or the one you move to. We do it as an ecommerce agency Chicago brands use remotely, which is how nearly all of it happens now.
The single biggest reason a full cart gets abandoned is the cost of getting the thing to the door. Not the price of the thing. The delivery.
Which makes it worth asking whether your store can work that cost out. So we looked at 81,252 items across 31 catalogs and checked something simple: does the store know what each one weighs?
For 34,029 of them, no. Four in every ten things these stores sell have no weight recorded at all, and a carrier bills by weight. On your store it is the first thing we would open, which is not where an ecommerce agency Chicago brands hire usually begins.
In short
Ecomm Wizards is an ecommerce agency Chicago brands hire to design, build, move and grow online stores. We work on the platform you are on today. We start with what is losing you orders, which is often nearer the checkout than the storefront.
Chicago makes and ships heavy things. Food and drink, furniture, parts for other people's machines. Cases, pallets, boxes that two people carry.
And your customer's idea of normal delivery was set somewhere else, by companies shipping paperbacks and t-shirts for nothing. They are not comparing you to another furniture brand. They are comparing you to the last parcel that turned up free.
That is the squeeze. Any ecommerce agency Chicago founders hire meets it on the first call, which is why we would open your shipping setup before your homepage.
Henchman
NEOM Wellbeing
Dryrobe
People do not leave because the product costs too much. In Baymard's research into why full carts get abandoned, the top reason is extra costs being too high: shipping, tax and fees together. It beats every other reason on the list.
Which means the delivery figure is doing a lot of work. It is the last number a customer sees before deciding, and it arrives after they have already chosen what they want.
And a store can only charge what it can calculate. Live carrier rates need a weight on every item. Without one the store falls back to a flat figure. A flat figure is wrong twice: too low on the heavy orders, which you pay for, and too high on the small ones, which you lose. Any ecommerce agency Chicago brands trust should be able to tell you which of those is happening to you.
Search ecommerce agency Chicago and not one page that comes back has a measurement on it, so here is ours. We read 31 catalogs of food, drink, home goods and furniture and checked every item that actually ships for one thing: whether anyone had recorded what it weighs. On a single store it takes an afternoon.
| What we counted | Across the 31 catalogs |
|---|---|
| Items we checked that actually ship | 81,252 |
| With no weight recorded | 34,029, or 42% |
| The middle store's share missing | 17% |
| Stores missing more than half | 8 of 31 |
| Stores missing none at allSo it is plainly doable. | 5 of 31 |
| The worst store | 1,539 of 1,539 |
| Catalogs whose middle item is over 10kg | 6 |
| Of those six, missing most of theirsOne sells items averaging 91kg and has weighed 5% of them. | 4 |
You would expect the heavy catalogs to be the careful ones. They are not.
Of the six catalogs where the middle item weighs more than ten kilos, four are missing most of their weights. One of them sells things averaging ninety one kilos and has weighed one item in twenty. Another has 24,090 items averaging fourteen kilos and has weighed one in eight.
The other two weighed everything. Same product, same kind of catalog, opposite result, which tells you this is a habit rather than a hard problem. Five of the 31 had nothing missing at all.
An hour will tell you which group your catalog is in, and any ecommerce agency Chicago brands shortlist can do it.
Almost nobody chooses it. Stores end up on a flat delivery figure because the data for anything better was never there, and it at least works.
It costs you at both ends. The orders that are heavier than your average eat the difference, and the small orders get quoted a figure that talks the customer out of it.
And it hides. Neither loss shows up as a line anywhere, which is why this runs for years. Both halves sit in your own order history, which is the first place an ecommerce agency Chicago brands keep will look.
Want the same count run on your own catalog? Tell us the store and we will send what we find.
Get in touch with usWhat we do
Every row links to the store it was done for, and none of it assumes you are starting again. Between them they are what an ecommerce agency Chicago companies hire is asked for.
Design and build
Most ecommerce website design Chicago brands pay for stops at the storefront. The last three screens are where the orders are won.
Ecommerce development
Shipping logic, product data and integrations are where ecommerce custom web development Chicago brands actually need help.
Migration
The design gets the attention. The redirect map is what decides whether the rankings you already have survive the move.
Growth
We would rather find the one thing worth fixing than hand you a list of twenty.
Not sure which of these four applies? Tell us about the store and we will name the one we would start on.
Get in touch with usThese four do not change with the size of the job. Worth putting the same list to every ecommerce agency Chicago brands talk to before you choose one.
Everything is measured on what you run today. If replacing it is not the answer, we say so and name what is.
We measure what we are asked to fix before we touch it, and again afterwards. You get both figures, not a description of them.
The code, the accounts and the data are in your name. If you leave, there is nothing to ask us for.
If it has to change, you see it and agree before anyone acts on it.
Then you are paying for it, which is fine if you know what it is costing.
Most stores offering it cannot separate the orders where it works from the ones where it does not, because the weights are not there to do it with. That is the same gap, hidden on your side of the ledger instead of the customer's.
It probably is, and it may well be fine. Five of the 31 catalogs we read had nothing missing.
The quick test is in your own admin. Open the last ten products anyone added and see whether each has a weight. New products are where it slips, and those ten will show you more than any ecommerce agency Chicago brands meet can in a first call.
That is fine, and not the first question we would ask. Every platform needs the same thing to quote a real rate, and every one falls back to a flat figure without it.
If moving would help we will say so, and if not we will say that too.
On a light catalog it often is, and we will tell you so rather than making work.
On a heavy one it is not. The store in our count with the heaviest products had weighed one item in twenty, so every order it ships is quoted from a guess. We found that in one read of a public product list, and an ecommerce agency Chicago brands recommend will find yours as fast.
We run the same count on your catalog and put it next to a year of your orders. That shows two things: how many items have no weight, and what your flat rate has been costing you on the heavy ones.
Usually the second number is the surprise. It is not a figure anyone reports, so it just sits there.
Then you get the choice. Fill the gaps and switch to live rates, which is a few weeks of catalog work. Or leave them and set the flat rate against what your orders actually weigh, which is the honest answer at low volumes. Any ecommerce agency Chicago brands hire should be willing to recommend the second one when it is right.
The first conversation is about what is actually losing orders. It costs you nothing, including when the answer is that we would change very little.
Get in touch with usMore often than anything else, because the extra costs are too high once shipping, tax and fees are added. It beats every other reason, and it lands after they have already chosen what they want from you.
For any rate that comes from a carrier, yes. Without a weight your store cannot ask for a real quote, so it falls back to a flat figure. In our count, 42% of items had none.
Usually because the weight is missing and your store treats blank as nothing. The rate comes back too cheap, the customer is delighted, and you pay the difference to the carrier without seeing it.
Sometimes, and the honest answer needs numbers you may not have yet. You need to know what each order actually costs to send before you can decide which ones you can afford to absorb.
Filling in missing product data and switching to live rates is a few weeks. A full build is months, and most of that goes on the parts nobody demos, like your product data and the systems it talks to.
Yes. We work on whatever your store runs on now. The first job is finding out whether the platform is the problem or something sitting on top of it, and often it is not the platform.
Four jobs, broadly. Making your store look and move the way a buyer expects. Writing the parts a theme leaves out. Carrying it onto another platform when it no longer fits. And finding what stops people buying.
Yes, and remotely is how it runs. There is no office in the city to visit. Where you sit does not change how the work is scoped, built or handed over.
Usually, and often it is the quickest route. We can scope and hand over, or take the parts nobody on your team has time for. We will not quietly replace somebody doing a decent job.
Rarely. Product data and shipping rules are fixable without touching the rest of the site. We will say when a rebuild is really the answer, and it is less often than you think.
Next step
The same count we ran on 81,252 items, run on yours.
Put your store address in the form, and you get back:
You get the findings and nothing else attached to them.
Free, and nobody chases you afterwards.
A developer replies within one working day. Not a salesperson.
