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Forum - How important is Next day delivery from a website shop? Is 3-5 days acceptable?
How important is Next day delivery from a website shop? Is 3-5 days acceptable?
Tue, 19/01/2010 - 18:30 — kellieakeith
HI,
I'm in the process of writing up my T&C, and delivery & returns policy for my website business / shop. It's dropship, but i want the products to come to me first after the customer orders. I will then pack them in my own packaging and send to the customer. But this process could take up to five days to get the order out to the customer. Will it put customers off if i state a general 3-5 days delivery and not have a 'next day delivery' option?
Thanks
K
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3 - 5 days is completely acceptable, customers will usually prefer next day and expect an additional cost. However it really does vary on what you are selling and more importantly can you actually perform these deliveries.
It depends on the type of product you are selling. If the product being shipped is an accompaniment to something else that was delivered online, then it is important to offer a next day delivery. For exmaple, a Gradwell VoIP account is setup in around 15 minutes, but if there is a VoIP phone to come along with that then the customer will not want to wait 3-5 working days for it to arrive. Thats why we provide next day delivery on all hardware orders.
If the product being shipped is the whole purchase, and its not an important business solution, then people are prepared to wait for it to arrive. When I buy things from Amazon, I'll happily take cost-saving over delivery speed by choosing the free delivery, which can sometimes take over a week, instead of paying a few pounds for a Royal Mail delivery in a few days.
I think it is important to have this option but at an extra charge it may also be a god idea to offer this as a courier service. As since the strike action taken by Royal Mail more customers are choosing this option.
I don't think 3-5 days is a bad delivery time as long as it's stated up front. Even huge online stores such as Amazon don't always manage next day delivery!
Personally I would consider 3-5 working days to be the standard. If I need something to be delivered "next day" I expect to pay an additional shipping charge for a courier service. If a "next day" service isn't available I might, if I really needed the product, shop around, but, if I knew the company, the quality of the products and had a good relationship with them as a customer I would be more likely to simply accept the 3-5 standard delivery.
Hi K,
Depends what type of products you're selling. Personally i've bought from shops that say delivery is 3-5 days, so i wouldn't particularly panic.
Look at eBay for example. Most of the products listed on eBay take a good 4 - 5 days before they turn up at the front-door of the buyer, but that doesn't seem to stop the millions of people that use eBay. The same could be true of Apple, Amazon or Play.com. 3 - 5 days is about normal.
If you're really concerned about this, why not try and pick out the good bits about the process, such as advertising free delivery. People are usually happy to compensate if they know they are getting a good deal.
Which leads to the final question : are you billing for the delivery, or rolling it into the product prices?
3-5 days is absolutely fine for me.
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