delivery - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

Internet business has changed to meet the demands and expectations of the growing numbers of online shoppers, shifting their pounds from the high street to the internet.

Initially loved for its price driven advantages, the internet was where you turned to for the £8 CD album and cheaper electronics. But with many high street stores now offering the same prices as their online counterparts, the internet is no longer always cheaper.

Online retailers still tick the convenience box in the minds of shoppers, but how can this be pushed further?

If you send a reasonable volume of email, you've probably experienced the frustration of being told by some of the intended recipients that they never got your messages.

Delivery charges and options are important factors in many customers' decisions to buy online. If delivery costs are too high, or flexible options are unavailable, then people may look elsewhere.

Here are a few tips for retailers to make their delivery charges and options more attractive to customers...

Call me old fashioned if you will, but I still believe in the premise that when a customer places an order online, they should receive their goods within the timeframe highlighted by the retailer. Or better still, they should actually receive their order at all!

How about really stretching it and offering the customer the opportunity to choose a convenient delivery method and time?

Free delivery offers are the main driver behind online shoppers' purchase decisions - more so than even their site experience, a new study by ForeSee Results has indicated.

The company surveyed more than 10,500 visitors to 30 top retail websites in the UK to find out what drives site traffic, sales and satisfaction.

Over a third (34%) cited free delivery as the most important factor in their last purchase decision. A positive site experience was the only other thing mentioned by a significant amount of respondents (15%).

The Direct Market Association (DMA) has urged email marketers to focus more closely on deliverability after its figures showed another drop in delivery rates in the second quarter of the year.

The group’s latest stats suggest that delivery rates fell to 68% for acquisition emails and 80% for retention emails in the period, continuing the drops seen in Q1.

Many offline brands have woken up to the importance of marketing activity that appeals to all five senses, rather than just the traditional senses of sight and sound, writes Simon Harrop.

eCourier, the start-up best known for its hi-tech assault on London’s delivery companies, is now targeting the online retail sector with an API it plans to launch later this year.

The firm, which cuts costs by managing its couriers through software rather than human controllers, hopes the API will encourage etailers to use its system for short notice deliveries to shoppers.

One of the biggest factors holding back consumers from doing their Christmas shopping online is concern about delivery times, according to a survey by shopping site GreasyPalm.co.uk.

The survey finds that concerns about delivery are likely to be hurting online sales this Christmas, with 55% of those surveyed citing delivery times as the major obstacle to doing their Christmas shopping online.