Ship-to-Delivery Time: How to Avoid Shipping Delays and Keep Delivering On Time

Today’s consumers are always looking for retailers that offer the fastest shipping options when shopping online. Due to their newfound desire for instant gratification (a consequence of the global pandemic), fast shipping is now a highly influential factor in their decision-making.

To meet this demand for speedy shipping and delivery, eCommerce heavyweights like Amazon constantly deploy logistical resources to improve their ship-to-delivery time. For instance, Amazon offers guaranteed one-day shipping to Prime members. We’ve also seen Walmart try to match this move by providing NextDay delivery with zero membership charges.

Based on the data collected, consider some raw ship-to-delivery stats and insights:

• Across all industries, on average it takes 3 days for a product to get to a customer once it’s out the door.
• The most significant impact to on-time delivery was carrier selection
• Historically, on-time rates for carriers hovered between 60-85%

Forward-thinking businesses are always optimizing their fulfillment strategy so they can improve their ship-to-delivery time and get more customers to checkout. This blog will help you to understand ship-to-delivery time better and how to improve this important metric so you can start shipping faster and exciting your customers with a superior delivery experience.

What is the ship-to-delivery time?

Ship-to-delivery in eCommerce has to do with two concepts: "Ship" and "Delivery."

"Ship refers to when the order begins moving toward the customer, and "Delivery" is when the package has finally arrived at the customer’s location.

So ship-to-delivery time entails the time between when an order is sent out to the customer and when it finally arrives at their location.

Some factors can influence the time it takes to get packages shipped from the warehouse to the final customer. Consider some of them:

• Order processing

The more time spent processing an order at the fulfillment center and getting it out the door, the more likely the package will get shipped and delivered outside the customer’s delivery date expectation.

• Shipment management time

If your shipping carrier spends a lot of time managing and overseeing cargo movement, then expect to have a high ship-to-delivery time.

• Shipping Strategy

Depending on a single-source shipping carrier strategy can have bad consequences if your contracted carrier constantly experiences downtime or bottlenecks, eventually leading to delayed shipping.

• In-transit problems

Despite getting everything right, incidents like bad weather conditions, roadblocks, or accidents disrupt all forms of domestic and international shipping. Of all truck delays in the US, for example, nearly 12% are caused by bad weather conditions.

• Incorrect shipping information

Shipments could take longer to deliver after they are sent out if you don’t have a system that detects inaccurate addresses or shipping information supplied by the customer. At that point, the carrier may not be able to deliver the package correctly, thereby leading to delays.

Understanding and measuring your ship-to-delivery time, helps you better understand the performance of your carriers. There will always be situations beyond your control, once a product goes out the door. However, understanding performance and implementing tools that account for this data helps you more accurately predict how a carrier will perform, as well as set clear expectations with your customer. Couple that with a superior post-purchase program, and you will have your customers singing your praises and coming back to buy again and again.

If you want to learn more about how ship-to-delivery impacts customer satisfaction and how you can address these issues, check out our latest guide on the metrics you should be tracking and how to address them.

(Link to Guide)

We’ve also prepared more guides on other crucial metrics you should be leveraging in order to deliver a flawless customer experience and increase conversions. Check them out below:

• Click to ship time
• eCommerce Shipping Upgrades
• Available shipping methods by category

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