The key to win customers’ hearts is to provide them with quality as promised and quick delivery. Let’s discuss the latter in this blog!
Online shopping and eCommerce retails have grown exponentially in recent years, and this growth was not hindered by the global pandemic in 2020. If anything, the pandemic has accelerated the growth by manifolds due to convenience and safety measures. Naturally, with this incredible growth comes the change in consumer behavior and expectations. Online shoppers now have certain expectations, which, if not fulfilled, they are likely to switch brands.
Faster delivery or fast shipping is one such expectation. It is crucial for you to meet this expectation to retain your existing customers. In fact, faster delivery has become so crucial for customer retention that 27% of shoppers are likely to choose one brand over another due to their delivery options. This is a big change in shipping time expectations initiated by the eCommerce giant Amazon. Amazon Prime’s 2-day deliveries have now become an eCommerce standard.
Why 2-Day Delivery?
What exactly is meant by 2-day delivery? As the term suggests, the shoppers receive their products within 2 days of their purchase if they meet the cut-off order time. So, it is a 2-day time between the order placement and delivery date. Depending on the retailer’s internal process, it can be two full days or two business days.
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Even back in 2017, 26% of online shoppers mentioned slow shopping as one of the reasons for cart abandonment. Also, as per 53% of online shoppers, delivery time is an important factor impacting their purchase decision. Fast delivery options meet and exceed customer expectations by providing them with higher value. Apart from this, let’s see why you need to offer 2-day delivery options to the shoppers:
- Less Cart Abandonment. Shipping time is crucial for some shoppers who abandon their purchases even after adding them to the cart because of shipping options. 19% of cart abandonment is due to slow delivery. Implementing 2-day delivery increases conversion for the eCommerce retailers.
- Customer Delight & Loyalty. A good delivery experience, especially faster delivery, boosts customer happiness. It has been seen that more than a third of online shoppers switch brands following a bad delivery experience. A good online shopping experience includes everything from placing the order to delivering the product.
- Influences Marketing Strategy. Faster shipping and happy customers provide exciting and attention-grabbing materials for your marketing strategy. You can promote fast shipping by adding them in banners on your website, posting them on social media channels, and adding it to your email signature.
Now, though we have seen that faster delivery significantly impacts the eCommerce business, managing that on your own is quite a daunting task. The best and most efficient option is hiring a third-party logistics provider to help faster delivery.
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Why Partner With a 3PL Provider?
Third-party logistics [3PL] providers are logistics and supply chain experts who come with relevant industry experience and infrastructural setup for successful order fulfillment. As they say, “it is their job to ensure the product delivered is accurate and on time.” Hence, the best option is to partner with a 3PL provider if you want to grow your eCommerce business and make your customers happy with 2-day delivery.
There are three major ways how a 3PL can help and here they are:
- Wide Fulfillment Network. 3PLs have a huge network of fulfilment centers in diverse locations. They can cater to your customers in different locations much faster. So, the less distance between the fulfilment center and the customer location, your fulfillment becomes faster and more cost-effective.
- Air Shipping vs. Ground Shipping. Air shipping, we all know, is a much costlier option than ground shipping. Air shipping is typically used to deliver products stored overseas or to customers living too far away. On the other hand, ground shipping is done by road using trucks or vans to deliver from the warehouse to the customer. 3PLs, with their wide network of fulfilment centers, ensure that almost all your orders get delivered using ground shipping so you can reduce the cost of carriers.
- Advanced Technology. 3PL providers have the infrastructural support of advanced technology, including sophisticated analytics to track shipping and logistics. The advanced software they use can integrate seamlessly with your system to track logistics and fulfillment through a dashboard. Technology is at the center of any 3PL operations.
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Conclusion:
To conclude, because of the Amazon Prime 2-day shipping effect, it has become imperative for eCommerce retailers to offer 2-day shipping to keep their customers happy. Thus, the best option is to get a 3PL strategic partner to help you expand your business and keep your customers happy to cope with this challenging task.
About XPDEL:
XPDEL is a leading hi-tech provider of fulfillment and logistics services, on a mission to enable growth for eCommerce companies. We are futuristics in our vision and constantly work on creating technology that helps us meet customer expectations for today and tomorrow. We have a widespread network of fulfilment centers that enables us to efficiently handle nationwide delivery in the US – same day, next day, 2-day delivery. Being closer to the end consumer, we deliver much faster than others.
