Australian online retail is not slowing down. Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025 - a 14% increase year on year, according to the Australia Post eCommerce Industry Report. A record 9.8 million households are now shopping online, with 41% doing so at least fortnightly. Online now accounts for 24 cents of every retail dollar spent.
That growth is the good news. The operational reality behind it is where most retailers run into trouble.
Every order generates a workflow. Every product needs a listing. Every return triggers a process. Every customer enquiry needs an answer. At low volumes, this is manageable. As the business scales, the back office becomes a constraint - and staffing it at Australian wage rates becomes one of the most quietly expensive decisions in the business.
Labour costs account for nearly 40% of total operating costs across Australia's retail sector. For eCommerce businesses, those costs cluster heavily in functions that are process-driven, repetitive, and well-suited to a different model entirely.
What eCommerce outsourcing actually covers
The phrase "outsourcing retail operations" often conjures a narrow picture - a customer service team answering emails offshore. The reality is considerably broader.
A well-structured ecommerce offshore staffing solution covers the full operational back office of an online retail business:
- Customer support - managing enquiries across email, chat and social media relating to orders, shipping, returns, product information and complaints. This is the most commonly outsourced function, and the one with the clearest productivity case: enquiries follow predictable patterns that trained offshore teams handle at scale.
- Product listing and catalog management - writing and uploading product descriptions, optimising titles and tags, processing supplier data sheets, managing image uploads, and ensuring listings are accurate and consistent across platforms and marketplaces.
- Order management - processing orders, coordinating with fulfilment partners, updating customers on shipping status, managing exceptions and escalations.
- Returns and refunds processing - the average eCommerce return rate sits between 20% and 30%. Each return requires customer communication, inspection verification, inventory adjustment and refund processing. It is a high-volume, structured workflow that offshore teams handle end-to-end.
- Data entry and reporting - inventory tracking, sales reporting, marketplace performance data, pricing updates and promotional management.
- Marketplace operations - managing listings across Amazon, eBay, Catch, and other platforms, monitoring performance metrics, responding to seller queries and managing account health.
None of these functions require physical proximity to the customer or the warehouse. All of them consume significant time - time that, in most growing eCommerce businesses, is being spent by people who should be focused elsewhere.
The cost case for retail back office outsourcing
Offshore ecommerce teams cost up to 70% less than domestic equivalents once Australian base salaries, superannuation, payroll tax and leave entitlements are accounted for. For a business running four or five operational support roles, that represents a material improvement to the cost structure -often the difference between a profitable growth phase and one that erodes margin faster than revenue grows.
The flexibility argument is equally compelling. eCommerce is seasonal by nature. Peak periods - Black Friday, Click Frenzy, Christmas - create staffing demands that can be three to four times normal volume. Maintaining the headcount to handle peak in a domestic team means carrying significant idle capacity for the rest of the year. Offshore eCommerce staffing solutions are structured to scale with demand, avoiding the cost of permanent headcount for temporary volume.
Where to start
The most effective eCommerce outsourcing models are built around specific, well-defined functions - not a general brief to "help with operations." Before engaging an offshore partner, it is worth mapping where operational time is actually being spent across the business. The answer is usually concentrated in a handful of repeatable functions that are immediately transferrable.
Customer support is typically the natural starting point - it is the highest-volume function, the most clearly scoped, and the one with the most immediate impact on customer experience. Catalog and listing management is often the second step, particularly for retailers operating across multiple platforms or managing large SKU counts.
The key structural principle applies here as it does across every offshore function: build it as a proper team, not a single hire. Define the outputs, invest in onboarding, and give the function the same standards and accountability you would expect of an internal one.
Getting the partner right
Not all offshore providers are built for the specific demands of eCommerce. The questions worth asking before committing include: do they have experience with the platforms you operate on? Can they demonstrate familiarity with Australian consumer expectations and returns standards? How do they manage quality control at scale? What does their onboarding process look like?
The retailers seeing the best returns from outsourcing retail operations chose partners who understood the operational context - not just the cost equation.
For a deeper look at how seasonal volume and offshore staffing interact, this piece on scaling through peak periods is worth reading alongside this one.
Sources referenced: Australia Post eCommerce Industry Report 2026; KPMG Australian Retail Outlook 2025; BCG Retail in 2025 and Beyond; Sourcefit eCommerce Operations Outsourcing; Inside Retail Australia.
