Have you ordered something online recently and been wowed by how fast it arrived at your doorstep? As consumers, many of us have come to expect exceptionally fast, free deliveries with full visibility into where our packages are at any given moment. We can thank the major eCommerce players like Amazon for setting the bar incredibly high when it comes to fulfillment and delivery.
If you run an eCommerce business yourself, the customer experience you provide through delivery can be a key competitive differentiator - if not a make or break scenario in some cases. With so much choice online, customers will flock to the brands that get their purchases into their hands the fastest.
Not only that, but they expect full transparency into shipment locations, flexible delivery options, and hassle-free returns. Not asking much, right?
To put it lightly, meeting these expectations on a global scale poses some unique challenges, but is essential for any eCommerce merchant to meet them if they want to grow globally. On that note, let's dive deeper into what customers want and how your business can meet their demands.
What Consumers Expect from eCommerce Deliveries
Today's online shoppers have very high standards when it comes to eCommerce deliveries, shaped heavily by the exceptional convenience that industry leaders have conditioned us to expect. Some of the "norms" that customers have come to expect include:
- Lightning-fast shipping, with the option for same-day, next-day or 2-day delivery. The faster you can get purchases delivered to your customer's doorstep, the better.
- Free shipping is now seen as table stakes by most customers, especially for higher ticket items or carts above a reasonable order value. No one wants to pay extra for shipping if they don't have to.
- Up-to-the-minute tracking on their order status via email, text alerts or an online dashboard. Customers expect full transparency into key delivery milestones, such as "order processed", "shipped", "out for delivery", and "delivered".
- Flexible delivery options that allow them to select nominated delivery dates, locations, collection points and more at checkout to prevent missed deliveries. Restrictive shipping creates frustration.
- Premium unboxing experiences with branded, damage-free packaging that matches their high expectations set around leading brands. Presentation matters.
- Effortless returns for any unwanted items, with the retailer paying for return shipping labels. No restocking fees or difficult processes.
As consumer delivery demands continue to escalate, retailers globally face increasing pressure to not only meet these norms, but exceed them to stand out.
How to Elevate Your eCommerce Delivery Experience Globally
Providing world-class delivery that profitably meets today's elevated consumer expectations is tricky on an international scale, especially if you don't have much experience navigating global supply chains. Here are some top recommendations for dramatically enhancing your global ecommerce operations.
Localize Fulfillment & Shipping
To achieve faster shipping times both domestically and internationally, setting up localized operations close to your customers is essential. This requires infrastructure investments in distribution hubs, warehouses, and delivery fleets within key markets worldwide. Think regional, not centralized.
Statistics highlight the impact of these strategies. According to a study by MetaPack, 61% of consumers consider delivery speed a critical factor when choosing retailers.
Moreover, the e-commerce giant Amazon's Prime service, which boasts over 200 million subscribers globally, is a testament to the importance of fast, reliable delivery.
For example, establishing fulfillment centers in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Hong Kong allows you to offer much quicker in-country ground shipping speeds to customers in the USA, UK, and Asia. Additionally, partnering with hyperlocal couriers for final mile residential or commercial deliveries can significantly speed up how fast purchases reach customers across both large cities and smaller towns.
Proximity is crucial. Global shoppers inherently trust local retailers to deliver quickly. Data from Deloitte indicates that 80% of online shoppers want same-day shipping, and 61% of them are willing to pay extra for faster delivery. Therefore, getting parcels from order to doorstep faster earns business.
While setting up multi-country warehousing and courier partnerships requires investment, distributed infrastructure transforms localized delivery into a competitive advantage.
Investing in these localized operations not only meets consumer demands but also enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately driving more sales and growth for your business.
Optimize International Shipping with Freight Forwarders
Shipping products internationally opens up a complex world of customs forms, duties, taxes and regulations that vary drastically between countries.
As an eCommerce business, just figuring out compliance and carrier options across all the different countries you ship to can seem downright daunting, let alone doing it cost effectively at scale.
The good news is that you don't have to do this alone. Digital freight forwarding services are specialized logistics experts that wrangle international shipping on retailers' behalf day in and day out.
They provide shipping solutions that streamline required customs documentation, translate languages, leverage volume discounts across preferred couriers per country, give unified tracking dashboards, and essentially make export/import smooth sailing for businesses of all sizes.
Freight forwarders have existing infrastructure, compliance expertise and carrier relationships across a wide range of countries, allowing your business to tap into optimized global delivery without building it yourself.
Services range from ad hoc parcel shipping to standing contracts transporting full ocean containers internationally.
Expand Delivery Options
You also need to present online customers with more options around delivery control and scheduling. Everyone has unique schedules. So, the more choice you provide to accommodate individuals, the less restrictive your shipping appears, and less packages are missed.
Convenient delivery options to consider include:
- Date-specific delivery so customers can nominate when parcels reach them based on personal availability
- Evening and weekend delivery windows to cover people working weekdays
- Click and collect in-store pickup across locations for easy access
- Capabilities to forward packages to alternate addresses or parcel lockers while traveling
- Temporary vacation holds on deliveries for those away from home for extended trips
Building out these kinds of flexible configurations does require some operational coordination on your end. But customer-centric choice wins every time - earning you new business through positive word of mouth and retention through thoughtful convenience.
Give customers delivery decisions whenever possible. They'll repay you with lifetime value.
Obsess Over the Last Mile
According to Capgemini, 75% of consumers are willing to reward retailers that get last mile delivery right (with increased spend and loyalty). Yet many companies pay little attention to this critical final step after handing off goods to the courier. This last mile customer experience often happens out of sight and out of mind.
That's a huge missed opportunity. You should obsess over perfecting last mile delivery by understanding exactly what customers experience during the final stages of the delivery journey.
Getting these last mile touches consistently right demonstrates customer understanding and care from their perspective right when it counts most. Do it well through empathy, and you transform fleeting delivery moments into emotional brand connections, earning loyalty beyond a single purchase.
Of course, properly addressing the last mile requires closely monitoring customer feedback and holding delivery partners accountable to your brand standards during handoffs.
But it's worth the effort. By obsessing over perfecting the final mile, your brand can stand out while customers reward you with higher lifetime value thanks to repeat business, referrals and increased order sizes over time.
Wrapping up
It's not easy reconfiguring supply chains and last mile partnerships so they run like clockwork cross-border.
But as expectations around speed, visibility, flexibility and convenience continue rising thanks to giants setting new global bars, delivery excellence is quickly becoming a competitive necessity just to stay in the game, not a "nice-to-have".
The brands that step up first to provide unrelentingly exceptional end-to-end experiences from checkout to doorstep will reap major loyalty benefits.
Think long term, localize shipping, provide positive last mile surprises, and exceed expectations. Your customers will thank you for years to come.