If you order something from one of the big blue webshops, you can choose from a laundry list of delivery options. Nothing is too crazy: the delivery person can deliver your package in the evening and on weekends, at home or at a pick-up point nearby. Very handy, I think. Send my parcel to the local shop and I will pick it up when it suits me. For smaller webshops, it is more difficult to offer so much ease of delivery. Right? Well, nope.
Check your check-out
First, some figures: research by MetaPack shows that more than 60% of online shoppers prefer a store over another when better delivery options are offered. 87% of shoppers indicate that they will return to an online store if the delivery has gone well. And at DHL, we see that webshops grow 60% faster when they offer fast delivery. In short: a smooth check-out process with extensive delivery options provides webshops with enormous advantages. Actually, as a webshop owner, you can't do without it.
Great opportunities for smaller players
The large webshops of course have their parcel shops in order. They have the budgets and economies of scale to offer an extensive selection menu for each delivery service. But even as a smaller webshop owner, you have options – perhaps more than you think. Most parcel companies have a proposition for 'small business', with which they make extensive delivery options accessible to webshops without a budget of millions. At DHL, we opted for a technical solution: we developed a tool for WooCommerce, the e-commerce plugin for WordPress that runs behind many small to medium-sized webshops.
Woohoo, parcels via WooCommerce
The most important function of the tool: you can easily add and remove delivery options from your check-out process. You just have to tick what you want to offer, such as home delivery with time slots, 'delivery to a ServicePoint' or 'no delivery to the neighbours' – useful for anyone with neighbours who only seem to be at home during office hours (more common than you think).
You can also print labels from the tool, and you have the option to adjust orders manually. Useful if, for example, a customer orders a bag of pegs and tent poles from your camping shop. The pegs can be included in the private network, the tent poles are better sent for business. In the tool you can easily make that split. With all these features, you don't have to be inferior to the big boys in terms of service level.
Short lines of communication keep it simple
Because the tool is intended for small to medium-sized webshops, we think it is important that the implementation remains simple and the lines of communication are short. That is why we visit you personally – myself or a colleague. Together we merge the tool into your WordPress site and walk through the settings, so that you can get started immediately afterwards. You don't have to pay for that: implementation and use are free. And because we do the management of the tool in-house, we can implement improvements within a few weeks. For example, we recently made 'bulk selection' possible at the request of a number of webshop owners. Where you first had to click on each order to print a label, you can now select all your orders at once and print all labels at once.
I would love to hear from you
Are you curious about the WooCommerce plugin, or are you looking for other ways to improve your checkout process? I love to get in touch to discuss the possibilities. Send me a message for an appointment at your business.
