3PL onboarding: the ninety days nobody plans for
The integration is the easy part and it is the only part on the plan. The data, the physical move and the exceptions are where the quarter actually goes.
CATEGORY
Operations posts
Everything we have written on operations — 31 posts, newest first.
31 posts on operations
CategoryOperations
Half-year review: the metrics worth reporting upward
Six to eight numbers, each with its definition written next to it and a decision attached. Most ecommerce board packs are twenty charts and no decisions.
Modelling made-to-order and lead times in Shopify
The hard part is not taking the order. It is making one number — how long this will take — true on the product page, in checkout, in the confirmation email and on the phone.
Peak planning starts in May
Not because the work takes six months. Because anything structural needs a full trading cycle in production to prove, and there is no staging environment that generates your November.
The free store audit: what a senior engineer actually looks at
Most free audits are a crawler’s output with a logo on it. Here is what can genuinely be established from the outside, what cannot, and how to tell the difference.
Product bundles: inventory, pricing and the four ways to build them
Stock belongs to the components, price belongs to the thing the buyer adds to the cart. Get those two right and the build is a detail; get them wrong and you oversell for a season.
The staging strategy for a store that never stops trading
Shopify has no staging environment and is not going to grow one. What it has is enough — if you know which of the four available environments each kind of change belongs in.
Fulfilment SLAs and what your storefront should promise
Your warehouse contract and your product page are two different promises, made by two different people, to two different audiences. The gap between them is your support queue.
Order routing across warehouses and a 3PL
Shopify already decides which location ships which order, and its default is better than most of the logic people build to replace it. The work is in the inventory numbers underneath and the exceptions the default cannot express.
Returns data is product data
A return is a customer telling you what was wrong with a specific variant, at their own expense. Most stores file that under logistics and never let it reach the people who buy and describe the products.
Gift cards, gifting and the January returns wave
January returns are made in November. The levers that change the outcome are a return rule set before the orders arrive, and an exchange offered before a refund.
Support volume as a product signal
Every ticket is a customer paying you in their own time to report a defect. Most stores treat that as a cost to reduce rather than the cheapest research they will ever get.
NEXT STEP
Free store audit
A senior Shopify engineer reviews your storefront, theme performance and checkout, then sends a prioritised list of fixes.