The retail industry at large has benefited in many ways through the evolutions of online shopping. Not only has shopping online given customers a unique opportunity to receive fully detailed breakdowns of a retailer’s product, but they’re able to do so safely from their homes. The possibilities of what you can find shopping online are seemingly endless, and you may even stumble upon a few deals you would’ve otherwise not found in store. For a better understanding of the e-tail impact, consider the industry’s earnings throughout these past years. Throughout 2019, online shopping for products and services totaled above $3.5 trillion dollars spent with close to 2 billion people shopping online.
A lot of the progress this industry has made over the past few years can be attributed to Amazon. They’ve consistently evolved the e-commerce space through different product offerings and unique benefits. Amazon offers more than 12 million products on their platform. A majority of which are offered up by the numerous third-party sellers that make up the platform. Close to 200 million people visit Amazon’s website every month searching for products. These sorts of numbers have a negative impact on other online retailers in the space. Online shoppers now have a wide set of expectations from the online retailers they shop with, largely in part to the benefits of shopping online with Amazon. For example, Amazon’s Prime shipping options have spoiled online shoppers. So much so, that recent research indicates that 88% of shoppers say that the shipping from Amazon has made them expect faster shipping from other online retailers they shop with.
For online retailers that lack the shipping capabilities that Amazon has, this can be bad news. Organizations looking to increase their online retail sales should keep this expectation in mind. If your prospective customers are those that expect a quick turnaround, make your main priority finding methods to increase shipping speeds rather than diversifying your product offering for example. In the meantime, there are smaller concessions you can make in order to keep your customers happy. One example would be creating a branded tracking page on your website. Rather than redirecting your customers to the shipment handler’s tracking page, allow them to track their package via your website in an attempt to increase brand recognition and simplifying the customer’s experience.
Despite how important expedited shipping is to many online shoppers, what’s even more important is the cost associated with shipping and handling for each online order. In most cases, even though customers would prefer their shipments to arrive as promptly as possible, if there’s a cost associated with accelerated shipping, most customers tend to avoid it. In fact, nearly 70% of online shoppers would rather wait an extended period of time for their delivery if it meant not having to pay for shipping at all. This is the one advantage for online retailers lacking the resources that Amazon has. Even if you’re unable to provide your customers with their orders in the timely manner they expect, if you’re able to provide them with free shipping all is forgiven. One way in which this can be accomplished is through an automated storage and retrieval system for business to help better coordinate warehousing and transportation efforts for their deliveries.
If your organization is searching for additional information regarding how to improve shipping times, be sure to review the infographic featured alongside this post.
Author bio: John Hinchey is VP of Sales for Westfalia Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of logistics solutions for plants, warehouses and distribution centers. He has more than 20 years of experience in manufacturing and warehouse automation.