88% of customers are willing to pay for same-day delivery.
But how will you make same-day delivery possible?
By opting for local delivery!
You might be wondering – What is the difference between shipping and local delivery? The difference is broad enough to solve many of your delivery issues. In this blog, I will provide you with all the information you need about local delivery, its benefits, and how to offer it. So, let’s start with the basics:
What is Local Delivery?
When a company description reads, ‘Delivery at your doorstep,’ it reflects convenience and comfort to the customers, however, as a store owner, you might be aware of how tricky delivery can get. Thus, local delivery is the solution to manage and fulfill on-time deliveries.
It can save you the shipping cost that you spend on transportation of ordered products from the warehouse. You can have a local warehouse where you can keep all the most-selling items as per the region. So, when a customer orders those items from your eStore, you can just pack the product and ship them on the same day or the next day. This will make same-day deliveries possible, decrease the shipment charges, and save your transportation cost all at the same time.
Additionally, you can easily provide a pickup facility to your customers. With AppJetty’s Shopify store pickup app you can enable customers to pick up their order on their desired date and time from the available local store pickup points. You just need to show them the available date, time, and location for pickup to them, from which they can choose their convenience and comfort from Shopify store pickup app.
How Local Delivery Can Benefit Your Shopify Business
And here, local delivery can be your savior. There is not one but multiple benefits of having the Shopify local delivery app option at your store.
Benefits of Local Delivery
1. Deliver Products Faster to Customers
From startups to established ones, every company is working hard to find the quickest and easiest way to deliver its products. Mostly national and international deliveries were affected and are still affected due to the COVID-19 situation. But local deliveries were the only safe way that made delivering essentials to the customers possible in such crises too. It takes a shorter time span to deliver products while delivering them locally.
2. Lower Shipping Cost
Using the services of huge shipping companies can affect shipping times and pricing as per the location. Large-scale carriers are usually expensive if compared to local delivery prices. You can save your and the customer’s delivery charges with local delivery. There are eStores that offer free shipping by including shipping costs in their product cost itself. If you are one of them, then you can provide great deals to your customer in terms of product prices with the ‘free shipping’ tag. This will naturally increase Customer Engagement, trust, and sales. It’s a win-win.
3. Grow a Loyal Community Around Your Business
With local delivery, you can cultivate a local and loyal customer base and dealer’s community. You can use local deliveries as a fantastic opportunity to build relationships with your local customers. How? By creating a personal experience for your local customers. For instance, you can offer exclusive discounts which are only for local customers, add personalized notes, and give offers on local pickup.
And trust me, these days, you only need an online presence to build awareness.
You can even create groups on various social media accounts like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc., to resolve local issues, introduce offers, give constant updates, etc., to the local customers.
4. Save the Waiting Time of Customers
Don’t let your customers wait to receive their parcel, offer them the same day or next day delivery with a local delivery facility. Customer’s excitement often dies when the package takes too much time to be delivered, and you don’t want that to happen, right?
5. Stand Out of the Crowd
In competitive times like this, every company is trying new tricks to increase sales and win customer’s trust. The need here is to update your store so that it can fulfill the new demands of your customers.
If you enable local delivery to your customers, you can provide them with convenience and comfort, which can win their loyalty for you. And adding a pickup facility for local customers will make them feel special and, as said before – offer convenience.
6. Make more sales
With all the above benefits of Shopify delivery app, it is sure that your Shopify store is going to earn more revenue.
You can enable all the benefits through AppJetty’s Order Delivery Date Manager that offers you with local delivery, local pickup, and shipping facilities. You can even let your customers choose the date and time of their choice from the available ones with the Shopify local delivery app.
How to Offer Local Delivery and Pickup Facilities?
Before providing local delivery luxury to your customers, you must be prepared for local deliveries to end up with smoothly delivered products. So, let us see how you can set up your online store for smooth local deliveries:
Decide and Setup Delivery Center
The most basic and important step is to decide the locality you want to provide local delivery in, and the second step is to set up the center with all the necessary goods. Ideally, you should keep the delivery center at a location where people from all streets and lanes of that locality can pick up their order, or it is easier to deliver to them. You can also opt for multiple local warehouses to give incredible convenience to the customers of all areas.
Secondly, when you are setting up your store, you need to keep the local audience and their interests in mind. This will help you to have goods that have the potential to sell quickly.
With Shopify Store locator, you can allow customers to select the nearby delivery center for pick up.
With the Shopify store locator, you can also make local delivery smooth by delivering the products from the nearby store to the delivery address. This will save transportation fare and can help to make same day deliveries possible.
Decide the Method of Delivering Your Products
The way you decide to transport packages will eventually be the base on which you will decide the price, time, and resources you need to spend on the local delivery.
The logistics department varies from business to business and usually depends on the types of products you sell, the area you will be delivering in, and the volume of deliveries you are going to have.
First, you will need resources to package the ready products and then you will need people to deliver them. While delivering them, you need to look if it is the urban area you are delivering in or the rural one because you will need to choose vehicles according to the location.
Determine your delivery times
Transparency is the key to win customer’s trust. Customers need to know when their package will be arriving after placing the order. What if I tell you that you can let them decide the delivery timings and you will be able to cater to their needs? Yes, this article will help you gain all the required information to enable the convenience of selecting their own date and time for customers.
Once the customers select their date and time, you can schedule your deliveries accordingly. You can plan packaging time and delivery time in batches or individually. For instance, you can keep three days available for delivery where you can pack and deliver products in batches, or you can enable delivery every day to pack and deliver as per orders.
Set your delivery rates
We know that when it is about deliveries – the faster, the better, but you don’t want to lose your money from local deliveries, right? To avoid this, you will need to set the rates smartly.
Rates should cover the logistic expenses and have a rough cost of what amount you are spending on each delivery.
You need to take following expenses into the account:
- Delivery center (if you rent out a space for deliveries)
- Car, bike, or truck expenses
- Gas (unless you are using pedal vehicles like cycles)
- Staff wages
Ensure you never go into loss because of deliveries. Keep the delivery rates or free deliveries as per your profit base.
Trust me, if anything customers actually rely on, then it’s local stores that offer local deliveries. So, offering local delivery and pick-up facilities will attract more customers to your store, and it can win their trust for you.
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