Singaporean locals looking for the perfect brew – any time of day – know  Homeground is the destination for superbly prepared, full bodied coffee that’s roasted and brewed with care and passion.

Although they’ve been operating a digital store for the last three years, their cafe on Joo Chiat Road was always the main source of revenue and sales as they were able to serve both high quality coffee and food items, all within a captivating and serene ambiance. 

Unfortunately, the global pandemic that soared through Singapore earlier this year drastically impacted in-store sales for Homeground. This case study explores how Homeground pivoted their business model from relying solely on in-store coffee and food sales, to building a strong eCommerce presence with Shippit.

What happened when the lockdown hit

When Singapore went into lockdown, Homeground decided to scale their eCommerce operation on the Shopify platform and increase the number of items they had available for online customers. 

Increasing their number of SKUs coupled with a robust social media engagement strategy helped them maintain sales at a time when shoppers weren’t permitted to visit their physical cafe. 

Before Homeground started using Shippit, they tried two shipping and logistics solutions but they found the customer support and Shopify integrations difficult to help them scale. 

Customer support with other solutions was slow

Upon launch, Homeground was disappointed with the level of customer support they received from competitor shipping solutions when two big orders were delivered to the wrong address. 

Director of Homeground, Elysia Tan states:

“We tried to get assistance with a competing platform, but the customer service team took a long time to help us and didn’t get a refund for a while – it was a big parcel”

Given the global climate of uncertainty, Homeground moved on from other vendors because they felt it was too risky to associate their brand with such an unreliable delivery experience. 

Competing solutions didn’t integrate seamlessly with Shopify

Homeground’s next bet for eCommerce success was to integrate their Shopify store with a fulfilment solution, however, it didn’t quite work as they had hoped. 

Elysia states; “there is an EasyParcel integration with Shopify but you still have to key in details manually.”

Homeground would have to spend hours in the day manually entering order details and street addresses into the competing solution as the information wasn’t syncing through as intended. 

For eCommerce, preventing address errors is critical to customer satisfaction, so this was a major pain point for Homeground and one of the biggest reasons they decided to switch to Shippit. 

Major pain points before using Shippit:

• Customer support.  Competing solutions were slow to respond to delivery investigation requests

• Manual data entry. Competing solutions didn’t integrate easily with Shopify 

• Customer retention. Bad delivery experiences were impacting their return customer rate. 

How did Shippit help grow Homeground’s online sales

Homeground were looking for a solution that integrated with Shopify to help them solve the issue of manually entering in address details. Address details are so important in the delivery experience, so Homeground really wanted to:

• Eliminate manual address entry completely
• Reduce all address mistakes
• Despatch and deliver on the same day

Shippit’s Shopify integration eliminated manual data entry

Homeground were impressed with the amount of time they were able to save per order when they switched to Shippit. 

Shipping has a powerful integration with Shopify that uses all the information required to fulfil and deliver all online orders. 

Homeground experienced an increase in customer satisfaction and retention

With access to new, faster courier services, Homeground was able to use quicker fulfilment features and seamless tracking updates to share better delivery experiences and  increase their customer retention rate.

Elysia states that majority of their shoppers are happy with their experience and they’re impressed with the speed of delivery:

“I would say the biggest advantage is that we can have recurring customers and customers coming back.”

More time to focus on other things

Homeground were able to slash 2-4 minutes off fulfillment times for each order. Shippit automatically syncs all the order information from Shopify,sends tracking information back into Shopify and automates tracking notifications saving Elysia and her team a lot of time. 

“If you have to manually send an email and manually update order details  it takes a lot of time.

We can now work on our pricing strategy rather than wondering if people will come pick up the parcel or manually copy/pasting order information.”

Homeground were also able to expand their product offering by increasing their SKUs from 65 – 150-180 in a matter of months. 

No hard coding required for setup

With little knowledge on programming and hard coding, Homeground needed a solution that was fast and easy to set up. 

Elysia’s states that they were up and running in just a few minutes;

“I think it was really fast and easy – it was just a click of a few buttons and we didn’t need anyone to do any hard coding.

We’re trying to scale our eCommerce operations, so if it required hard code it would have taken too much time – it’s actually very easy and fast with Shippit 

Major advantages of using Shippit:

• Saved Homeground time. No more adding address details manually.

• Increased customer satisfaction. Access to faster courier services and better tracking updates increased Homeground’s retention rate.

• Fast setup. Homeground were able to start shipping in a matter of clicks. No hard coding required.