New Zealand Post set to expand cross-border e-commerce service
New Zealand Post has hailed the initial success of its two-year-old cross-border e-commerce delivery service, YouShop. The service allows New Zealanders to shop via British and American websites, and have items sent to an address within those countries. New Zealand Post then forwards the parcels back home from there.
The company has said that 100,000 customers are now using the service.
The success is leading New Zealand Post to work on setting up a delivery address in China within the next two months.
New Zealand Post’s executive general manager for e-commerce and customer solutions, Sohail Choudhry, said the growth in customer numbers was “very pleasing”, but added that the ongoing growth in repeat purchases via the service was equally pleasing.
“There has been continued growth in customer numbers month on month. And significantly, more customers are coming back to use YouShop repeatedly to ship their online purchases home, so that means sustainable growth,” he said.
‘June and July 2014 were the fastest growing months on record, with the number of parcels coming though YouShop up by a record 8%. Since March, volumes are up 45% from the UK and up 18% from the USA.”
Choice
The YouShop service has had a US delivery address since September 2012, and a UK delivery address since August 2013.
The new Chinese delivery address should be launched in October, allowing New Zealanders the chance to shop on Chinese websites. It will even allow consumers to shop on different websites and have all items consolidated within a single package for forwarding back to New Zealand.
“More customers are connecting with New Zealand Post digitally and the two things driving growth, after price, are choice and convenience,” Choudhry said.
“We are committed to providing customers with excellent service though continuous innovation. Recent YouShop feature enhancements, including parcel search, push notifications for mobile users and flexible pickup and delivery choices to Postshop or ParcelPods, are a response to what our customers want.”
