How Shippers Can Relieve Consumers’ Delivery Anxiety
Delivery anxiety is the anxiety consumers feel when they don’t know when they are going to receive their order or when shipping costs push the total order cost too high. It ultimately causes the consumer to abandon the shopping cart, and possibly order the product they so desperately desire elsewhere.
Removing delivery anxiety, your single largest obstacle to converting orders, can result in an up to 20% increase in sales, happier customers, fewer calls to customer support, and an optimized delivery network.
There are 3 key ways to eliminate delivery anxiety and thus convert more online sales:
- Providing date-certain delivery dates
- Reducing delivery times
- Reducing the price of delivery
Providing Date-Certain Delivery Dates
Many e-commerce companies report that consumers will call customer service while they are shopping to ask when they might receive an order if they were to place it. So, not providing date-certain delivery information is not only hurting sales, but it also costs you an average of $5 every time your customer service agent needs to get involved.
Providing date-certain delivery has been difficult to do until now. Deterministic approaches can take 9 months or more to implement, require dozens of engineers, and additional consultants at a high cost. These approaches attempt to understand exactly where items are in stock, where they would be shipping from as well as warehouse picking and packing times, and carrier cutoffs.
Stop being vague with delivery dates and commit to your customers. They will then, in turn, commit to you.
Reducing Delivery Times
If you are like most companies, the majority of your customers are willing to pay a premium for faster delivery. To emulate Amazon and be responsive to the needs of today’s consumers, many companies strive to provide a two-day shipping option on their e-commerce website. This could be accomplished by fulfilling orders from retail stores or optimizing your own shipping process from your distribution centers that enable you to provide two-day shipping to your customers.
The expectations consumers have on delivery times are quickening by the minute so it is critical to explore the shipping options available to you and see what you can do to keep up with what consumers expect from their shopping and delivery experiences.
Reducing the Price of Delivery
The price of delivery is a critical factor in converting online sales. But don’t be fooled by the need to only provide free shipping. It’s important, of course, but not the only option that matters. According to Fulfillment Service, free shipping is important, but not as important as low prices. 58% of those surveyed want free and discounted shipping, while 28% want a choice of lower-cost shipping options. Therefore, a good portion of your shoppers are willing to accept longer delivery windows as less expensive shipping options. Note that it’s still important to provide expedited shipping as an option. More competitive shipping costs lead to more competitive pricing for shipping in the shopping cart. That equals more orders.
Conclusion
If you are an e-commerce company, or a retail company with a portion of online business, you spend around 10% of revenues on acquiring new customers through SEO, advertising, social media, and more. However, 20% of your visitors that leave product in the shopping cart and checkout pages do so because of delivery anxiety, i.e., they don’t know when they are going to receive their order or shipping costs are too high.
Removing delivery anxiety, your single largest remaining obstacle to converting orders, results in an increase in sales, happier customers, and fewer calls to customer support.