For the past two decades, Sherpani has focused on creating innovative, yet stylish backpacks, day bags, and luggage for women who love to travel. Sherpani started primarily as a wholesaler, selling to big box stores and on Amazon.com. In the past few years, the Boulder, Colorado-based company saw an opportunity for growth by selling directly to consumers (DTC) through its own ecommerce site, Sherpani.com.
To find success on its site the way it had in the wholesale space, Sherpani has been focused on two goals: ensuring a good shopper experience on its site and a good delivery experience for the customer. “All of those elements, when they work well together, can really build brand trust and give customers a positive experience with the brand,” says Alexis Beuning, Sales and Brand Manager for DTC sales at Sherpani.
However, that key piece Alexis calls out—“when they work well together”—was missing from Sherpani’s DTC success story. The company was challenged with finding a strong logistics partner to manage its website sales and offer the free, reliable shipping that consumers expect, which could ultimately impact conversions on its site. So when the team heard that Buy with Prime uses Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment to fulfill orders with free, reliable 1–2 day shipping and is helping merchants increase shopper conversions, the team saw it as an opportunity to improve the shopping and delivery experiences for its customers. And improve it did—since launching Buy with Prime, Sherpani.com has seen a 23% increase in its shopper conversion rate.
Improving checkout and delivery
Adding Buy with Prime has helped Sherpani with its goal of improving the shopper experience on its site, streamlining the checkout process by letting Prime members use the payment and shipping information in their Amazon accounts. Alexis credits the improved experience for some of the site’s shopper conversion uplift after adding Buy with Prime, recognizing that a faster, smoother checkout process can be the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart. “You don’t want to create too many barriers between someone clicking on a product page and being able to check out,” Alexis says, “so making that process as painless as possible for shoppers is something we strive for.”
Buy with Prime has also meant an improved delivery experience, giving Prime members free 1–2 day shipping on eligible products, transparent delivery times, and easy returns. “How you ship wholesale orders is very different than how you ship DTC orders, so it’s been challenging to offer consistent, fast, affordable shipping to shoppers,” Alexis explains. “It wasn’t always cost effective to offer free shipping on ecommerce site orders, but now we can for products offering Buy with Prime. Customers know that their orders will be fulfilled in a timely manner and when they can expect to receive them.”
On the business side, using Buy with Prime allowed Sherpani to further streamline fulfillment and consolidate inventory for its ecommerce site. As an Amazon seller, Sherpani already had inventory at Amazon fulfillment centers, but now it can fulfill both Amazon.com orders and Buy with Prime orders on Sherpani.com using one pool of inventory.
Offering an experience shoppers trust
In addition to an increased conversion rate, another benefit that the team has noticed since adding Buy with Prime is a higher percentage of customers new to the brand. In fact, following a promotional campaign, 87% of Buy with Prime orders were the customer’s first order from Sherpani.com.
“When we launched Buy with Prime, we were excited to leverage the different features and services that came with it,” Alexis says. The team created an awareness campaign using the Buy with Prime promotions feature, offering coupon codes for several products, and adding messaging from the marketing toolkit on its blog about Buy with Prime being available on Sherpani’s website.
Alexis attributes some of the overall shopper conversion uplift and the greater share of new customers to the added trust Buy with Prime brings to Sherpani’s ecommerce site. When Prime members see the Buy with Prime button on product pages, they know that they’re going to get the easy checkout and fast, free delivery that they know and love.
“Buy with Prime gives shoppers a sense of trust when coming to our website, especially if they’re new, because it shows that as a brand we have a certain amount of credibility by being able to offer the option to check out using Buy with Prime,” she says. “It helps provide a sense of legitimacy to our brand, which helps instill confidence in the shopper.”
Building a brand community
In addition to scaling, another reason Sherpani is focusing on its ecommerce site is to stay close to its brand story and messaging. “By selling directly to consumers on our website, we’re able to control the messaging surrounding our brand and have direct relationships with our customers,” Alexis explains.
Maintaining control of the brand and being able to share the brand story directly with consumers helps Sherpani ensure a consistent brand experience and build a sense of community with its customers. Relationships with its end customers are important to the company, and growing them “is something we’re able to achieve through the DTC space and our ecommerce site,” says Alexis. “When someone shops at Sherpani.com, we want them to feel like part of our community, and we want to do our best to keep nurturing those relationships with customers after they’ve converted on our site.”
Because merchants get to keep customer and order information after their customers have completed an order using Buy with Prime, the Sherpani team can use segmentation and email marketing for brand building and post-purchase outreach personalized for Buy with Prime customers.
Sherpani implemented the Klaviyo for Buy with Prime app to refine its approach to abandoned checkout recovery, specifically reaching Prime members. Using Klaviyo‘s email marketing automation, the brand can send personalized reminders and follow-up emails to shoppers who abandoned their Buy with Prime checkout. Since implementing the app, Sherpani has observed increases in placed orders, open rate, and click-through rate, Alexis notes. “During the month of August, placed orders were 30.7% higher through our abandoned checkout flow using the Klaviyo for Buy with Prime app compared to the abandoned checkout flow not using the app.”
Sherpani also launched Google Analytics and Social Ads for Buy with Prime, which uses Meta conversion tracking tools. “We’re constantly evaluating how our ads are performing, so the fact that Buy with Prime orders will be accurately attributed is important to us,” Alexis says. With these capabilities the team can be intentional about how they engage with customers, “which helps us bring folks into our fold and make them feel like part of the community.”
