Pick a Day - Iconography

Improving customer experience

Make it easy for the customer to buy your products; that’s the goal of Conversion Rate Optimisation. You want to remove obstacles and steer them around the stumbling blocks. If you know where there's a pain point, you address it quickly, so that your customers can get back to spending their money.

Customer choice is paramount. Thanks to eCommerce shopping experiences they’ve enjoyed on marketplaces like Amazon or eBay, or on industry leaders like Asos, John Lewis or Loaf.com, customers come to your site with certain expectations.

They want to be able to buy what they want, when they want, and pay for it how they like. Customers also want to be able to choose when they get it; ‘as soon as possible’ may not be as good as you think.

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At Iconography, we are constantly updating and improving our platform, IXO Commerce, and all of our features are built for both new and existing clients.

Pick a Day is just one of the features we offer our clients - if you think it would benefit you, just let us know.

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Your customers can get what they want, but can they get it when they want it?

As soon as possible?

This is the standard model for any eCommerce or mail order purchase. The customer has ordered their products, and expects delivery; companies look to ship them as fast as possible.

For the majority of products, and the majority of customers, that’s perfect. But what if you fall into the cracks?

Some items just don’t lend themselves to ASAP delivery. You can’t simply show up on someone’s doorstep with larger items like sofas and mattresses; you need someone there to receive the goods, especially if you’re delivering to a room of the customer’s choice. Likewise, high value items will have to be signed for; even in a post COVID-19 world, proof of delivery is a requirement.

Just take a look at Amazon: for high value electronics like iPads, they’re now sending out ‘delivery passwords’ via text message that have to be quoted to the courier before the delivery person can hand over the products.

At the same time, some customers want to make sure they’re at home to receive their purchase. Maybe they don’t have a ‘safe place’ where parcels can be left, or maybe they know it’ll get eaten by the dog; they might be wanted a birthday present to arrive on a particular date. Regardless, these customers want an alternative solution.

Not everything fits in a letterbox

Having difficulty implementing Pick a Day?

The answer is to let your customers pick a delivery date at point of purchase,* then, rather than delivering as soon as possible, you deliver when the customer actually wants the goods to arrive. As far as the customer is concerned, that’s all there is to it.

The question for you, as a retailer, is whether your systems are set up to scratch. If a customer were to specify a delivery date, how would your warehousing system manage your workflows? In an ideal world, you’d expect the stock to be immediately reserved, but for the order not to hit the packing list until the day of despatch, right?

If your warehousing system simply records the delivery date as an order note, there is a very real chance that it would be missed by your warehouse staff, and the product would be going out early; if they’re used to ‘as soon as possible’, that could be your team’s default setting.

That is the worst possible scenario; first raise the customer’s expectations by offering them the chance to pick a day, and then ignore the date that they select by despatching as soon as possible.

*In the case of back ordered items like made to order furniture, they should pick a day once the product has been received into your warehouse, and the order is fully paid.

If you want to get something right, speak to someone you trust

Pick a Day with IXO Commerce

All of this functionality is handled in IXO Commerce by our Pick a Day module. This covers the two essential elements; an intuitive customer interface, coupled with steps and measures to automate and safeguard your workflows.

First, choose the delivery options where you want to enable Pick a Day, and then, during checkout, you customers simply choose their preferred delivery date. Once they’ve paid, IXO Commerce reserves their stock, and the order is held until the requested delivery date. Then, it automatically enters your warehouse workflows for fulfilment. It couldn’t be simpler!

Do you want this feature for your eCommerce website?

We can build Pick a Day for existing customers, or build it in from the outset for new clients . As the interface is inserted right into the checkout, the customer can enjoy an intuitive user interface, which is allows for the quick and simple selection of options.

In the CMS, clear workflows allow for easy order managemnet, so nothing gets delivered before your customer is ready. This slots in really well with our Picking and Packing Module, where stock is reserved, but the order is only flagged for despatch when it needs to be; not before.

It's also easily adapted for booking the delivery dates of back ordered items, like furniture. Create one smooth journey by taking the balance of your customers order online, and allowing them to choose a delivery date, all in one process.

6th July 2021