Customers nowadays prefer to shop on e-commerce websites because of the easy home delivery facilities offered by these sites. The last lap of delivery wherein the items ordered reach the end user is considered to be the most crucial by all e-commerce sites. Moreover, for most online stores, whether big or small, there are a number of additional challenges that must be overcome in order to ensure smooth delivery of commodities. Sometimes online stores offer a free of charge home delivery, wherein the products that you purchase will be delivered to the address that you provide without you incurring any delivery expenses. However, in order to provide you with free of charge delivery, the e-commerce portal must make sufficient profit from a single bill value to offset the delivery cost.
Understanding the Challenges of Ensuring Smooth Home Delivery Service
When it comes to last mile delivery, some of the basic challenges that online stores face are as follows:
Delivery Cost: It is essential for online stores to evaluate the delivery expenses in real time, before offering ‘free of charge’ delivery. In other words, even if free of charge delivery options may be attractive to customers; it might affect the base cost of the products and the retailer’s profit margin as well. Hence, it is essential that you take into account the mode of delivery, predicted expenses involved to ensure that the products are delivered on time and your profit margin remains unaffected. As mentioned earlier, the bill value should also offset the expenses involved in offering free of charge delivery.
Understanding the Challenges of Ensuring Smooth Home Delivery Service
When it comes to last mile delivery, some of the basic challenges that online stores face are as follows:
Delivery Cost: It is essential for online stores to evaluate the delivery expenses in real time, before offering ‘free of charge’ delivery. In other words, even if free of charge delivery options may be attractive to customers; it might affect the base cost of the products and the retailer’s profit margin as well. Hence, it is essential that you take into account the mode of delivery, predicted expenses involved to ensure that the products are delivered on time and your profit margin remains unaffected. As mentioned earlier, the bill value should also offset the expenses involved in offering free of charge delivery.
Being Transparent with the Customer: With the advent of Internet and different types of GPS facilities, customers often want to know the physical location of the products ordered. In other words, instead of just having the tracking ID, customers want to track the exact location of the items ordered. The online store must offer this facility of the last mile tracking to assure the customer of the exact location of the delivery person and the precise time when the items would be delivered.
Efficiency: Customers nowadays want the deliveries to be done in an efficient manner. Hence, it is essential that you do a real-time analysis of the final mile delivery time. E-commerce sites need to make this evaluation even for same day deliveries. The best method to overcome this challenge would be using the latest technology with regard to data analysis, easy navigational systems, and other statistical tools, to give you a better idea of the time it will take to cover the last mile and make the delivery to the end-user.
Thus, it is essential that e-commerce sites evaluate the nature of issues that they are likely to face in the final lap of delivering the items purchased by customers. After careful evaluation of the possible lapse scenarios, you should develop accurate strategies to overcome these challenges. Using a reliable delivery management software is one of the most effective ways to ensure manage last mile delivery process.
