How fast are your eCommerce orders delivered? How many choices do you give for delivery? What are you going to charge for shipping? Is shipping secure for you? These are some pressing questions related to eCommerce delivery.
You have to have a plan for delivery services that satisfies your customers and improves their customer experience. In eCommerce, businesses are competing over the customer experience and prompt, well-planned delivery can surely improve it.
In this article, I will be giving reasons that explain the importance of delivery strategy and show you some best delivery management plugins that will help you achieve your business goals.
Why do you need a delivery management strategy?
A bad experience with shipping has a major impact on your business. It affects the reputation of your company, consumer satisfaction, and can raise costs. If there is one business area to concentrate on next, consider making it your shipping strategy for eCommerce. A good shipping experience is more critical than ever, new statistics show.
- Merchants are now primarily struggling for customer experience.
- Merchants don’t meet eCommerce delivery customer expectations.
- Customers are more interested in home delivery than shopping from a brick-and-mortar store.
- After the COVID-19 outbreak, hygiene and touch-free delivery is expected and merchants are struggling
What do eCommerce customers expect from delivery service providers?
Customers want competitive rates, versatile shipping choices, and quick delivery when it comes to logistics.
Take a further look at these figures to clarify what customers want.
- 2 out of 3 individuals plan to be able to place an order for next-day delivery up to 5 p.m the night before.
- Preference for two-days shipping is up significantly
- For time-sensitive personnel, half of the consumers are prepared to pay extra for faster delivery.
But, you need to find an inexpensive way to enhance your fulfillment operations to reach these standards. This takes time and investment and you probably have a lot of areas that need to be changed.
How to improve the delivery strategy of eCommerce: consider using these modules
You probably don’t specialize in supply chain management or logistics, unless you’re Amazon. And, most probably, you don’t have the money to do this either.
Instead, for making your delivery process quick and smooth, you should consider adding some delivery services dedicated modules to your eCommerce store. As a result, these modules will help you improve the customer experience related to shipping.
The best four extensions developed by KnowBand to enhance customer experience on your eCommerce store are:
- Delivery Boy Mobile App
- Preferred Delivery Time Extension
- Cash On Delivery Extension
- Store Locator and Pickup extension
Use Delivery Boy App to assign, manage and deliver the orders
Customers drive away from your store if delivery management is poor. You try your best to bring the customer to your store but during the last step of your business, poor delivery management can cost you a potential customer.
To manage the deliveries you need robust software that can handle all your deliveries, addresses, date and time of delivery, delivery assigning and delivery boy registration, etc.
The Delivery Boy App can help you do that with ease. I will be coming to this later. Before that, you need to understand the need of offering home delivery and how it can boost sales.
The module allows the administrator and the customer to interact easily, which will help to improve customer loyalty as they remain aware of the delivery.
- The Admin and the delivery boy will also receive updates about the order.
- Admin can register delivery boy to the application.
- No Admin will monitor the status of the delivery boy and allocate an order to them.
- Admin will talk with customers to answer their questions and collect feedback.
- Admin can also speak with the delivery boy to ask them questions and answer their queries.
- Delivery Boy will make their status as Online/Offline via the application. This will make their presence or absence.
- The delivery boy will either confirm or reject the new order assigned to him.
- OTP must be entered by the delivery boy to check that the delivery is carried out by him to the correct customer.
- The customer can also monitor the activities of the delivery boy.
The delivery boy app is available for two open-source eCommerce platforms.
PrestaShop Delivery Boy Mobile App
OpenCart Delivery Boy Mobile App
Live Examples of Delivery Boy App
PrestaShop Delivery Boy App
The Mayida is a PrestaShop store delivering farm-fresh fruits, vegetables, and green leaves in Saudi Arabia. To make the delivery on time and to avoid the delivery management challenges, they have been using KnowaBand’s PrestaShop Delivery Boy App. This app is a one-stop solution to take care of the delivery process from order pick-up to delivery.
The registered delivery boys will receive the notification when the admin assigns any order to them. Once they accept the order, the order status will be changed.
The next step in the process will be transportation and finding the location. For that, it provides the Google Map location of the customer. With the help of Maps, the delivery boy will be able to find the correct location.
For customer verification, an OTP code will be required. The delivery process will be completed and the order status will be ‘Shipped’.
Explore more- PrestaShop Delivery Boy Mobile App making Delivery Management easy for Mayida!
Live Demo of Myida PrestaShop Delivery Boy App
OpenCart Delivery Boy App
In India, many eCommerce companies are using the OpenCart platform. A Pune-based grocery marketplace startup is using KnowBand’s Delivery Boy App to deliver its products locally. BuyKeyStuff is the website for local stores and they do on-time deliveries.
It isn’t easy to manage the shipping for a marketplace as there are various merchants with a larger customer base. However, to provide efficient delivery, they have a team to deliver products. The delivery boy app helps the merchant to assign the orders to delivery boys.
They pick up the order from the merchant and deliver it to the rightful owner. The complete shipping process can be tracked by the app administrator. In case a delivery boy refuses to pick up the order, then he will have to provide the reason for his denial.
This OpenCart Delivery Boy App helps the owner to track the entire process. This way the BuyKeyStuff marketplace manages the delivery with ease.
Live Demo of BuyKeyStuff OpenCart Delivery Boy App
Preferred Delivery Time for better customer experience
Most of the time the delivery process gets hampered because of the unavailability of the customer at the delivery location.
By offering customized service, the store admin can provide a better store experience. To select the preferred delivery date and time, the store admin can implement the functionality on the OpenCart store.
- It enables consumers to pick the preferred date and time of delivery at their convenience.
- Store owners can set a minimum shipping gap between the date of order placement and the preferred date of delivery
- Defines the interval for delivery time [Start time and End time]
- Allows to set up different slots for distribution
- The store manager can specify days of non-delivery
- Also after placing the order, clients will be able to change the delivery date and time.
These features of preferred delivery time extension give a personalized user experience and merchants can ship and deliver the order according to the customer’s choice.
Cash on Delivery improves trust and builds loyalty
Gain customer loyalty by providing the item with a COD facility. This is simply to allow consumers at the checkout page to make the online payment instead of opting to pay later at the time of delivery. But since many customers are reluctant to share their card details online, you can provide them with the option of Cash on Delivery (COD) along with some extra cost.
- The customer does not have to share debit card or credit card details
- Shoppers can shop for goods on the web without fear of hidden costs, breach of security, or risk of money loss.
- It also allows showing the COD option on the checkout page
- You can set different charges for different amounts of the order.
- Add your own payment gateway with the OpenCart Cash on Delivery plugin on your web
- Set up various COD profiles for different delivery methods and order quantities.
- OpenCart Cash on Delivery with Fee Extension enables retailers to charge an extra fee for the option of cash on delivery.
In addition, there are several other features that you can configure from the backend of the OpenCart Cash On Delivery Extension.
Buy online and Pickup in-store promotes up-selling
Retail firms have also moved their company on the online platform to ensure social distancing. It also assures that the customers do not feel troubled to get essentials buying online by allowing in-store pick up.
The Shop Locator and In-store Pickup extension encourage self-pickup facility. It allows you to add store location on your websites and lets customers pick up their products by choosing their nearby shop. You can also add multiple stores.
- It allows the store manager to add multiple stores to make sure that the customer can pick up the order from the closest store using a distance filter
- Moreover, the store owner can specify timings for the shop opening and closing so no customer sees a lock on the door
- It also has Google Maps for quick navigation
- You can specify a pick up time slot. Also, customers can pick the date and time slot as they want
- In addition, you can notify the customer via email about pickup orders.
Final Thoughts: There is no denying that shipping services play a significant role in deciding whether a customer chooses to buy. If you know your previous delivery strategy isn’t satisfying them well, there’s a fair chance you’ve got to improve it at some places! The OpenCart extensions for delivery will improve user experience and make your business stand out from the crowd.
Recommended Reads to streamline your eCommerce Delivery Management: