Step-by-step guide: Maximizing the use of the ‘Estimated Delivery’ module

Since the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, many small and medium enterprises and even big companies have embraced working remotely and many employees now work from home.

What this situation implies is that, more than ever, people will prefer their goods to be delivered at their doorstep. When they order online, people staying at home are even more curious to know the time estimate of delivery. This information can influence their choice on whether to buy or not from an online shop.

This is the main reason why adding a module on the product page, during the order process, or even in the order email to let customers know the estimated date of delivery must be the top priority for every online store. A specific module is therefore needed to improve your conversion rate by displaying easily such an important piece of information to the customer.

Let’s focus on the features of the module Estimated Delivery, and on how you can quickly set it up on your online store.

Setting up

The set-up and configuration of this Estimated Delivery module are very easy and simple, such that you can even configure its own without an expert's supervision. 

The module has several advanced carrier options that offer you the opportunity to control and effectively manage your carriers. Based on your choice, you can either enable or disable them. You can even give them a special name and set the day they will be available for pickup individually. In fact, you can add extra days to deliver products that are out of stock which you still displayed on your webshop for sales. Delivery dates can be set up globally, by category or product itself.

How does it work?

The Estimated Delivery module makes use of geolocation to locate your visitors and also put on display the carriers that are available to them. When a visitor browses through your webshop, the geolocation automatically identifies the location of the user and then displays the estimated delivery time for the carriers that make delivery to the visitor’s country, with a high level of accuracy. 

Once the visitor registers an account with your webshop, the module takes the registered address to display an even more accurate delivery date.

Furthermore, you don’t need to edit any line of code when you want to configure parameters like style, time format, position, and color of the “estimated delivery” box.

How to make the best use of the module’s features?

To make the delivery date more accurate, you can manipulate the module options to edit the final date with the following features:

• Carriers delivery days: The implication of COVID-19, which forced small businesses to close has made online shopping the only available option to purchase products. For this reason, many shipping companies are saturated with delivering products to their customers and this can make them have longer delivery dates during COVID-19.

• Additional picking days (preparation days): Let's say you are overwhelmed with the number of orders you have gotten on your website and it seems impossible for you to prepare them for the same day. You can add some preparation days to any product by category, brand, supplier or to each product or even by combination.

• Out of stock additional days: This is mainly for products that are out of stock. That is, it needs to be resupplied when shops have sold them online without having them in stock. Let's say the provider of the product is delaying the supply of the products and the estimated delivery is long, you can also adapt your shop too based on the new estimated delivery time with the use of additional picking days feature plus a global setting that you can use to add more delivery days to any product that is out of stock and still open for sale.

• Picking days/vacation days: This is useful for some days when you are very occupied and you might have to be unavailable to process delivery of orders. All you will have to do is to configure the day for the picking of the product.

• Vacations: This is relevant when you have to be away for a week or more. What you just do is to consult the configuration and add the period the closure will last, as vacations and the delivery date will be expanded during that period.

• Available date: Let's assume that a product with a regular delivery date is going to be available on a certain date, you can make the configuration and put the new date of delivery as a future date instead of calculating the regular date. This is most useful when there is the certainty of the time you will receive stock from a particular supplier.

A special period in history requires a special approach to doing things. In this period of COVID-19, while taking precautionary measures, you should ensure a service delivery that puts the mind of your customers at rest. With the Estimated Delivery module, your customers will have access to an accurate estimated delivery date to their location, and this transparency and information should boost your conversion rate without extra effort on your end.