Retail Week report finds delivery experience crucial to ecom success

by Mattias Gredenhag, CTO

The right delivery options and order tracking matter more to the ecommerce customer experience than loyalty schemes, perks and payment options.

This is the conclusion of a new Retail Week and nShift report, which found the delivery experience has the power to increase conversions and help retailers out-perform competitors.

Shopper Unlocked - key findings

The nShift / Retail Week report, “Shopper Unlocked: inside the mind of 1,000 consumers” found that:

• Over 70% of shoppers consider a choice of delivery options important
• Almost 85% of customers would prioritize the ability to track where their order is at all times
• 85% of people expect to find a clear returns policy
• By contrast, loyalty schemes are important to 60% of shoppers, and flexible payment options like buy now, pay later (BNPL) matter to barely 50%
• 62% of shoppers will abandon their basket if the delivery is too expensive
• 63% want to specify the time and date of a delivery

Stand out from the crowd, build loyalty and grow revenue

Our findings prove that delivery management holds the keys to helping retailers stand out from the crowd, build loyalty with customers and grow revenues. Treating shipping as a purely logistical feat means they miss opportunities to turn deliveries into a competitive advantage.

Effective delivery management ensures retailers have connections to all the carriers they need to offer customers personalized delivery options. This includes next-day, zero-emissions, lockers, and more. It also enables warehouse teams to handle greater volumes of orders. An outstanding customer experience joins the dots from the checkout to the customer’s doorstep and on to buying again. It should be easy and intuitive for customers, while yielding insights and intelligence to help retailers run a tighter business.

A customer experience to surprises and delights shoppers

It’s why we recently launched Delivery & Experience Management (DMXM), a new category of software which combines the core aspects of delivery management, such as label printing and multi-carrier shipping software with customer-facing applications. It turns shipping and deliveries into a customer experience which surprises and delights shoppers, while reducing costs and unlocking efficiencies across warehouses and delivery teams.

DMXM with nShift enables retailers to:

• Grow beyond limits – with a library of 1000+ carriers, nShift enables retailers to expand internationally and offer more delivery choices at the checkout. This increases conversion rates
• Connect every stage of the post-purchase customer journey, by offering the right delivery options at checkout (including popular zero-emissions and pick-up, drop-off deliveries), a superior tracking experience, and simple returns which maximize revenue retention
• Enable data-tight ecommerce, by combining data from carriers, logistics, and other business systems. DMXM brings this information together, helping retailers sharpen customer insights, break down internal silos, and drive operational efficiency
• Out-perform competitors – whether by engaging with customers in new ways or increasing the throughput of deliveries and fulfillment teams. nShift helps retailers stay one step ahead of the rest by investing more in R&D than its closest competitors

 To find out more, download your copy of the new nShift / Retail Week report, sponsored by nShift - Shopper Unlocked: inside the mind of 1,000 consumers.