[ARCHIVE: This article documents the Big Logistics Test 2023 / E-shop Test 2024 project. The event has taken place — the information is historical.]
Originally published on LinkedIn in December 2024.
Bye Big Logistics Test 2023, Welcome Big E-shop Test 2024
Together with Skladon and Retino, we at Shopsys are preparing for one of the most important steps of our Big E-shop Test: testing more than 200 e-shops during the peak holiday season.
Soon our team will sacrifice a large part of their weekend for a proper "shopping spree". We'll follow an exact protocol and shop at all these e-shops, checking key customer experience practices. But that's just one of the three areas we analyze every year:
1️⃣ Customer experience: As described above, this step is just getting started.
2️⃣ Logistics: How quickly we receive orders, in what condition, and how well the delivery communication works.
3️⃣ Returns: How easy is it to return a product? And do they give us our money back in the time they claim?
In the end, we'll create a detailed report on the customer experience state of e-shops, which we plan to present publicly at Czech Online Expo 2025. If your store is one of the nominees, you'll receive an individual report comparing your e-shop against the benchmark created from the entire study. This way you'll find out how you're doing and what you can improve. And if the test doesn't apply to you, you'll be able to download the complete report with anonymized data to find inspiration for your e-shop and achieve better results.
Why are we doing this?
Of course, it's a marketing and sales activity that helps us find new customers. It would be hypocritical not to admit that it's important to have a return on investment when we put so much effort into it.
But the main reason is much more transparent: we want to help our small e-commerce community do their work better. Our vision is to transform the complexity of merchant systems into absolute simplicity for shoppers.
Preparation phase
Over the past few weeks, we've been working hard to compile the list of e-shops we'll be testing. Together with our partners, we've created a mix of current clients (we want to show them their strengths and areas for improvement), companies we'd like to work with, and other top e-shops that are stars in our ecosystem and set trends.
This year for the first time we allowed companies to register themselves on our website. We wanted to make the entire selection process fairer. Missed it? No worries! You'll have another chance next year. The Big Logistics Test is becoming the Big E-shop Test.
My favorite questions
Within the three areas of analysis, we track many parameters. Here are a few of my favorites:
Cart:
Does the e-shop recommend relevant add-on products when I add a product to the cart?
What carriers does it offer and at what price?
Does it guarantee delivery before Christmas?
Delivery:
Packaging condition – is it damaged?
What type of filling material does the package contain?
Is what I ordered actually in the package?
Returns:
Do they ask for a reason for the return?
Do they offer an extended return period?
Do they refund the postage?
There are of course many more parameters, but this gives you a quick idea of the depth of the audit we conduct!
While I'm genuinely excited about this year's analysis, the main protagonist on our side is our CMO Petr Krakowczyk. He coordinates the entire project and oversees the quality and correct execution of the analysis. I'm already looking forward to his talk next year – and even more so to the moment when we share the results with the entire Czech e-commerce community and especially with those who aren't satisfied with the current state and want to take their business to the next level.
agency in CZ and SK
