Our sister publication, InternetRetailing, today reports that next-day delivery remains the favoured option for UK shoppers – but 18% of retailers don’t offer it.
InternetRetailing Editor Chloe Rigby cites research revealing that “Next-day delivery remains the favoured option for more than half (52%) of UK shoppers, but nearly one in five UK multichannel retailers does not offer it”.
What still irks me is that, with everyone knowing that consumers largely want today’s purchases delivered tomorrow and with every growing competition from Amazon, eBay don’t make it easy for buyers to find items offering a speedy delivery.
eBay are still stuck in the 1990’s ‘Fast and Free’ delivery proposition. It may be free but 9 times out of 10 it’s not fast and items can take anything up to three working days after purchase to arrive.
What’s needed on eBay is a simple way to filter search results by shipping method and despatch time. eBay have given sellers the ability to specify a cut off time and thousands of sellers could still at the time of writing this (3pm) still ship products to me today for delivery tomorrow. I just can’t find them.
eBay know which sellers can ship today. eBay know which sellers offer a 24 hour courier service (maybe not as the default delivery option, but as a paid for upgrade). All they need to do is to provide a search filter to enable eBay buyers to find these items.
Next day delivery is not only the favoured option by shoppers, but it’s the default delivery option on Amazon Prime eBay’s biggest competitor. With Prime I can click one button in search and Amazon will exclusively show me products that will arrive tomorrow. They may not be the cheapest, but if I want next day delivery cost isn’t always my priority. Speed of delivery is.
When do you think eBay will catch up with the rest of ecommerce and offer a next day delivery service on behalf of their sellers to buyers? If next day delivery is the most favoured option for UK shoppers then surely the worlds favourite marketplace should be not just offering it, but highlighting it to delight their customers?
14 Responses
eBay used to offer a Next Day / Express tick box on the search & I’ve never understood why it was taken away, especially when its part of the TRS policy to offer Next Day delivery.
eBay don’t offer it / highlight it for the simple reason that it would obviously exclude every non UK and more importantly every Asian Seller.
Cut-off times by shipping service and advertised delivery times under the retailers control. If you upgrade to a faster service you jump the shipping queue, of course, but not with ebay’s one-size-fits-all approach. If you pay us before 2pm on the 24hr courier service, our goal is to deliver tomorrow. We can’t offer than speed on all packages, but neither can we shout about that level of service on ebay.
we dont agree with this emphasis on next day
its only differential and marketing hook for those selling the same item from the same source at the lowest possible price
if next day delivery was crucial
there would be no international trade
Because ebay favour the larger volume merchants and Asian warehouse businesses?!
I’m guessing those that offer the fastest service are smaller uk based sellers
I often buy goods for next day delivery even if I don’t need them in a hurry, simply because there is no other way to guarantee delivery on a specific day, and I don’t want to be stuck in the house for 3+ days just in case I miss it.
Offering buyers a nominated date for delivery would be the best option, but that is not easy or cost effective to offer and implement for most small retailers.
The problem with click and collect, lockers etc is that a lot of stuff exceeds the size limits, although it’s not particularly heavy. Neighbours are good, but they aren’t always guaranteed to be there either.
ebay dont facilitate it because they havent yet found a way to squeeze more money out of us for facilitating it.
mark my words, as soon as they find a way to charge sellers for it, ebay will have a search for faster despatch.
I completed a survey at a university recently and over 80% of attendees confirmed they would expect delivery of goods bought online today within 3 days. This obsession with next day is being driven by Amazon and the following herd of large retailers.
I sell over 3000 sku’s with an average selling price £6; I do offer express delivery at a considerable cost to the customer. Needless to say only 1 in 500 take up this option. Having a facility to only select items with this delivery option would not exclude me nor would it get me further sales.
And customs usually keep items for long periods I posted a item from the UK to Australia it took 8 weeks they kept it and the buyer claimed back money within 7 weeks
Any next day delivery would have additional P&P charges, which ebay would take a slice of, so, ebay would profit by making next day delivery searchable. All those charges, 10% slice (or whatever it is they take) each, yummy!
They have the means to do it and it doesn’t make sense for them not to do it.
They could charge extra to sellers, calling it promotion/extra visibility. Or just be content with the slice of the P&P charges that they aren’t getting right now. Either way, they’d be raking it in, so that’s not the reason.
Nor is not upsetting overseas sellers the reason. Buyers only use overseas sellers for low price items or items that have a lack of availability in the UK (eg country specific rare items) Buyers know it could be 10 or 20 days before items turns up and should filter out to UK Only sellers if searching for next day, or even 2-3 day deliveries. Therefore, overseas sellers won’t lose out to better next day delivery visibility, because they were never in contention in the first place.
I am not sure “Next day” is as important as price
It would help if Ebay did have a delivery time search, I was looking for something this week and kept coming across people that had long delivery dates, I did not need the item next day but nor did I want to wait 2 weeks
We offer an upgrade to 1st class if they are in a hurry and some people do take the option up, but not that many