Last Updated on October 25, 2022 by Umer Malik
Home delivery is a booming sector, bringing with it many great things and some not so great. It has greatly changed our lives, mostly in a good way. So we are here to tell you more about this new way of consuming products delivered to your home, much appreciated by individuals and professionals alike. Like ordering meals at home, home delivery has become a permanent fixture in our lives.
Definition of home delivery
What is home delivery? Formerly an optional service, or a bonus offered by certain businesses, home delivery is now essential for any e-merchant or merchant (e-commerce, marketplace) who must offer this service to its customers.
Home delivery can take several forms depending on the choices made by the professional setting it up, but also on the choices of the consumer.
Home delivery can be made from an e-commerce site, for which the consumer does not have the opportunity to discover the products physically and directly in the store, but is also developing with physical shops, when a customer wishes to place an order for a product not available at a time T in the store or to have a voluminous or cumbersome product delivered directly to his home.
Whatever the starting point for home delivery, the model is as follows: a product is ordered, the customer enters the place of delivery, and his product is delivered directly to his door.
A simple system… Seemingly!
Home delivery can be defined as the establishment of an ecosystem organized around a product purchased online. Shops offering home delivery must therefore ensure that the boxed packaged goods ordered by the customer are transported from the place where they are stored to the address provided by the customer. Beyond the simple delivery, it is the responsibility of the professional to deliver the product in perfect condition to the customer, but also respecting the delivery times announced at the time of purchase, and as far as possible, the recommendations of the customers on possible delivery times.
Upstream, to set up the delivery system, the professional thinks about the different levers that he can put in place, in order to respect his budget, with respectable margins. Depending on the delivery method chosen, the buyer can receive it:
- In person with a commissioned carrier
- From a delivery person supervised by the site,
- Receive it directly in your mailbox.
No more need to make an appointment to get your package, no more delivery notices, it is now the package that organizes itself to come to the consumer!
A system served by service providers
Once this delivery ecosystem is thought out and set up, as soon as the item is ordered online, the professional is responsible for:
- Take it out of stock (or order it in the case of a dropshipping site),
- wrap it up,
- Label it
- Ship it to the address given by the buyer.
In the case of platforms with a very strong community or clientele, the professional goes through an inventory and order fulfillment manager. He subscribes to the services of a carrier, which takes care of all these tedious steps in his place.
Home delivery takes different forms from one site to another, directly impacted by the different delivery methods, as well as the delivery options for the buyer.
What are its advantages?
Home delivery is one of the new challenges for any e-commerce site. Indeed, a successful marketer is not only the one who will make the most clicks on social networks, but the one who will be able to send a product quickly to the customer. Indeed, in the era of instantaneousness, consumers see waiting times shortening regardless of the product concerned, and a trade with an excessively long delivery time, or promises of delivery not kept will be penalized by its customers.
Conversely, an efficient trade on delivery time, ensuring delivery in good condition and on time will improve its image with its customers, for example hard to deliver products like bottled and jarred packaged goods. However once the system is perfected there is no limit to what can be bought online by the customer or shipped by the seller. Thus, he can derive many advantages from it.
