Last Mile Delivery & Its Importance For eCommerce Business!
In this fast-paced digital world, everyone wants to get their work done in a speedy manner. The emergence of the eCommerce industry has increased the expectation of fast order delivery to customers. Today they can think about same-day delivery if they want to get any product on an urgent basis or want to gift any specific item to their loved ones. Some prominent eCommerce channels, such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc., offer their customers same-day delivery services.
A decade ago, consumers didn’t have this liberty, but today due to the paradigm shift in the eCommerce industry, customers can expect their order at their doorstep right after a few hours of order placement. Because of the speedy shipping and last-mile delivery feature, the customer experience has become far better than ever before. It would be best if you also took advantage of this quintessential feature as an eCommerce seller.
Last mile delivery is specifically designed to deal with the hurdles of the last delivery phase when a product reaches the customers’ doorstep from the warehouses. This approach has pushed eCommerce sellers to cope with changing customer demand for speedy delivery. This blog will teach you about the aspects of last-mile delivery and why you need to implement it in your business.
What is Last Mile Delivery?
Whenever a customer places an order via any eCommerce marketplace, the product reaches their doorstep from the manufacturers in three different phases of delivery.
- First Mile Delivery: First-mile delivery is about receiving a product from a manufacturer through a courier partner and storing it in a warehouse or at any distribution center.
- Second Mile Delivery: Second-mile delivery is also known as the middle mile delivery of products from a distribution center or a warehouse to the fulfillment center where customers can get their products delivered.
- Last Mile Delivery: The last mile delivery refers to getting the products from the final destination from a courier partner, which can be the sellers’ home, fulfillment center, or any nearest center, and then delivering them to the customers’ doorstep. The last mile delivery system assures the product reaches the customers’ place within the promised time.
Now, if you are still wondering why last mile delivery is so essential for your eCommerce business, here we mention numerous points that can help you understand it better.
Requirement for Last-Mile Delivery For eCommerce Business
Fulfilling the Urgent Requirement of Customers
In the fiercely competitive world of eCommerce, speed is a significant concern today. Customers want their products delivered within a few hours of order placement. To fulfill the customers’ urgent requirements, as an online seller, you need to speed up the delivery part. We can say that delivery speed is a huge concern for online sellers. According to a survey, more than 42% of consumers are willing to pay extra money for same-day delivery. Last-mile delivery can help you attain an intensified delivery speed.
However, getting along with a reliable logistic service provider will be best to implement a last-mile delivery factor. Before that, you may require an online order management software that can automate the backend operations and thus enforce speedy delivery. In this regard, you can get along with eVanik OWS; it can handle all your backend operations such as payment, inventory, shipping, and returns.
Building a Loyal Customer Base
The enormous success of your online business depends on how many loyal customers you have and whether you can fulfill their demands on time or not. However, building a robust and loyal customer base in the eCommerce industry is complex. For this, you need to understand the requirement and shopping behavior of your customers. The requirements and demands may vary from customer to customer, but one thing can be constant: on-time delivery.
If you cannot deliver their order on promised time, you may quickly lose them. If you want to win the hearts of your customers, you may have to implement last mile delivery solution for your online business. If you can fulfill their demands on time, they may also repurchase a product from you in the future and can become your loyal customer too.
Customers Prefer to Track Orders
Unlike a physical store, customers can not simply visit your store and buy products; they need to place orders and make payments without analyzing them. So what they expect is at least having a track of their orders. Order tracking relaxes them and assures them that their order is on the way and will be delivered to them promptly.
Providing tracking features to your customers can also help increase your revenue because they get back to you repeatedly. Based on research, more than 80% of customers prefer to shop from those who provide them with a last-mile delivery tracking feature. So you need to indulge with a courier or logistic partner that can provide your customers with a last-mile delivery tracking solution.
Challenges of Last-Mile Delivery
Provide Faster Delivery
For faster and more efficient delivery, the last-mile delivery solution requires an intelligent strategy to follow. As a seller, you must have wondered if the order may get delayed for any specific reason. Well, your question is correct, it can happen, but the best you can do is to attain a fulfillment center near your targeted customer locations.
For instance, if your targeted customers reside in Delhi, you should store your products in any fulfillment center in the city. It can help you with the fastest last-mile delivery option. Apart from that, you can even distribute the orders into small individual deliveries.
Visibility can Become an Issue
As an eCommerce seller, you might feel that providing complete visibility throughout the delivery process can become problematic. However, some prominent eCommerce platforms can help you with this as they provide last-mile delivery tracking features to their customers. But the problem is customers want to track the entire delivery process, and it can not be done without the help of enormous tracking software.
Several software solutions available in the market provide comprehensive tracking solutions to your customers. It can provide them with the estimated time and location of their order. Several food apps such as Zomato and Swiggy are using this tracking solution.
Cost Management can Become a Major Concern
If you plan to divide the orders into small and individual parts, it can become quite costly for you as you will require delivery partners for each order. On the other hand, same-day delivery or order delivery within one or two hours of order placement can also put you in a stressful situation and may affect your budget also.
However, suppose you are an Amazon seller. In that case, you should take advantage of Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) service. They can handle the entire shipment and delivery for you and provide speedy last-mile delivery to your customers. However, you need to pay a small FBA charge to them, but it can be cost-effective for you.
So this is all about the last-mile delivery; it is not rocket science; it is simply a delivery process that can effectively help you deliver the orders quickly to your customers. Various other aspects, such as robust inventory management software, can help speed up this process. Such software can clarify every available or unavailable product in your stock and save you from overstocking products. Hence if you have clarity over inventories, you can effectively speed up the order fulfillment process and implement a last-mile delivery service.
Conclusion
You must understand that a last-mile delivery service requires advanced and automated software to execute the process accurately and efficiently. However, this innovation comes with the cost of integration. Various software, whether an order management system, inventory management software or even a las-mile delivery software, can speed up the last-mile delivery process and deliver the product to the customers on a promised delivery date or time. For backend operations automation, you can subscribe to the eVanik OWS. Automating the various eCommerce aspects can eventually intensify the order fulfillment process.
