Trends for Online Retail Delivery Revealed in 2010 Report
UK online retailers are continuing to improve their delivery services, according to the fifth annual Snow Valley Online Retail Delivery Report, this year sponsored by delivery specialists, MetaPack.
Snow Valley evaluated 166 UK retailers for this year’s report, placing orders on 137 sites and monitoring 27 aspects of the delivery process, from charges to speed of delivery.
The research discovered that 64% of the retailers provided a choice of delivery times and charges in 2009, up from just 54% in 2005.
The most pronounced improvement from the past five years, however, was in communication and customer service - 84% of the retailers can now provide online order tracking, allowing the customer to check the status of their delivery, compared to just 59% in 2005.
But the report also found that there is room for improvement. Many premium services have remained proportionally static over the past five years – Saturday delivery was available on 26% of sites compared with 23% in 2005. Nominated day and time of day delivery had increased from 14% in 2005 to 15% in 2009. Interestingly, larger retailers were much more likely to support these services – 53% of those on the Hitwise Top 50 Shops List had a Saturday service – which suggests that the demand for such services is there.
And although 94% of retailers sent an e-mail to confirm the order had arrived, only 5 retailers used any text messaging during the delivery process.
Other trends include:
- 15% of the retailers offered some sort of collect from store option, up from 12% in 2007
- 39% of retailers now offer free delivery over a certain order value threshold, compared to just 24% in 2005
- Standard delivery charges have crept up very slightly over the past 5 years but charges for premium services, such as nominated day delivery, appear to be decreasing
- Despite the weakness of sterling, only 43% of retailers could deliver to the US
- Cut-off times are getting later – one retailer could accept orders until 11pm for next-day delivery
The report also summarises ten key trends that Snow Valley expects to develop over the next five years.
"The overall service proposition is critical to the success of online retailers,” said Carlo Rimini, CEO of Snow Valley. “Delivery is a key part of that and service offerings that seemed acceptable 5 years ago are now poorly received - 'standard delivery means your order should arrive in the next 7 days subject to stock' cannot compete with 'free next day delivery for all orders placed before 6pm'. We expect to see big efforts at improvement from many retailers.
“There are many trends that we’re going to be watching closely in future such as the rise of delivery loyalty schemes like Amazon Prime and ASOS Premier, where you pay an annual fee and then every order is delivered for free, is very interesting for example.
"Many of our other top ten trends are continuations of what we’ve seen over the past five years. We expect to see more growth of nominated day and time of day options, as they’re still relatively uncommon and there’s a lot of room for improvement. Text messaging is still in its infancy and we expect international delivery to increase."
The report is sponsored by delivery specialists, MetaPack, whose CEO, Patrick Wall, has written the foreword. “We are really pleased to be sponsoring the Online Retail Delivery in the UK Report. MetaPack works hard to play a positive role in the home delivery industry; working alongside retailers of all sizes, eCommerce companies and the carrier industry, bringing them together in a seamless solution that benefits them all. But most importantly; also raising the standards of home delivery so that it no longer becomes a deterrent for those looking to shop online. The Snow Valley report is particularly valuable for retailer benchmarking, not only to compare the customer proposition at the website, but additionally, to find out what is actually going on through the end-to-end process. We have used these findings to support the push to best practise in delivery as set out in standards such as the IDIS Gold, and have explained how to achieve these in our supporting white paper.”
The report is available from www.snowvalley.com/reports