How we grew revenues by 18% per week for 52 weeks.
When we launched Dispatch a little over a year ago, we set out to give people the absolute easiest way to shop, letting them order and get anything delivered simply by instant message. We very quickly found out that we’d created something that people loved and were willing to pay a premium for, something that most products are never able to achieve.
People often ask us what’s been the secret to growing Dispatch so rapidly. Here’s the secret:
Just build a great product that people want and love to use and you’re on to a winner. That’s it. There’s no secret, no crazy growth hack.
The app has been growing phenomenally well over the past year since launch, and we’ve already handled hundreds of thousands of requests worth millions, with revenues growing at 18% avg. per week (78% per month) and buyers growing at 10% avg. per week (43% per month). Our average order value is around £140 per order and has been consistently above £100 for a year. Our active weekly buyers buy on average 1.4 times per week and spend over £200 per week.
This growth trend shows that revenues are growing faster than orders which are growing faster than buyers. This means that customers are not only buying more often but also spending more every week.
Close to 40% of our customers are repeat buyers, and on average 15% of our buyers come back and buy every week. Our customers pay on average up to £15 extra for delivery and service on every order, on top of the cost of the items, which further reinforces the strong value that Dispatch provides them. Our biggest category in terms of orders and buyers has been Food & Groceries, but in terms of value has been Electronics.
Also compared to other on-demand apps, we tend to cover a much wider area of London, normally anywhere in zones 1 and 2 but on occasion as far out as zone 3.
We’ve done very little marketing, most of our growth has come organically from word of mouth. I believe that too many startups want to craft the perfect app, the perfect strategy, the perfect launch. My advice to them is to just launch and find out if people actually want what you’ve built. If so then make it better, which is the philosophy we’ve followed for Dispatch.
What’s next for Dispatch
Now that we’re a year in and have proven that people want what we’ve built, we are in the process of launching a newer, better version of the app, which will make the entire ordering process even faster and easier. We’re also really excited to introduce a new logo and merge some of the video chat technology we’ve developed at Lutebox into the app and although I can’t share too much just now, we will be rolling out these exciting new changes over the coming months. Finally we’re in negotiations to close a major investment round which will let us scale up in London by hiring more dispatchers, and look to expand to new cities.
