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5 Delivery Trends Every Beauty Brand Should Know About

Delivery is crucial to the success, competitiveness and profitability of beauty brands and particularly those that want to build their own healthy e-commerce business. Consumers are becoming more demanding than ever. A recent Radial survey of online shoppers in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia highlighted that 60% of shoppers expect free shipping and roughly a quarter won’t buy at all if postage costs are over $10. When you combine this with the high expectations Amazon Prime is driving and the fact marketplaces such as EBay and Amazon reflect delivery performance in brand visibility and ratings, it becomes essential to review and innovate delivery solutions on a regular basis to ensure customer satisfaction and growth.

Here is a summary of the top 5 delivery trends you should be offering your customers.

Next Day Delivery – is now the norm and should be a permanent option in your delivery arsenal. Royal Mail and all the parcel carriers offer cost effective next day services.

Same Day Delivery – Amazon Prime has catapulted this solution into the limelight and it is fast becoming an essential offering for brands with a consumer base in high density, metropolitan areas. There are many exciting, innovative and green options available including bicycle deliveries so research your providers well.

Out of Hours Delivery – delivery is now laser focused on customer convenience. Evening and weekend deliveries are increasingly popular and normally attract no additional cost. First attempt delivery is the efficiency goal of any parcel carrier and increasingly flexible workforces mean evening and weekend services suit both the consumer and the courier.

Click and Collect, Drop Shops and Collection Lockers – continuing the convenience theme many consumers prefer delivery to easily accessible locations away from the home and office. Click and Collect services are now available to brands of all sizes through providers such as Collect + and HubBox. Customers choose delivery to one of a nationwide network of high street or independent store collection points at the time of checkout. Drop Shops like those of last mile innovator, Doddle can be found at public transport centres and collection lockers are available at many petrol stations and transport hubs across the country.

Inflight Options – most parcel carriers now offer customers the ability to change delivery details during the delivery journey. Redirecting deliveries to an alternative address, changing the delivery date and time plus advanced tracking and communication is available through carrier specific apps. DPD have notably led this innovation and are quite the consumer favourite.

Solutions to the trends are available to all beauty brands no matter size and the growing awareness of sustainability means all carriers and mail providers are working hard to ‘green up’ their infrastructure.

The delivery of their parcel is the most important and highly anticipated part of your customer’s journey. Like in-store, it is a physical touch point you have with your consumer. Excelling and delighting in this area is therefore essential for customer satisfaction and retention, profitability and competitiveness.

Is it time for you to review your delivery solutions?

Rachel Whittaker is a beauty logistics expert with nearly 20 years experience who is passionate about the success and growth of indie beauty. Her company Indie Beauty Delivers exists to empower beautypreneurs to create disruptive brands by providing them with the resources and inspiration to thrive

The Red Tree is the UK’s leading international beauty brand consultancy and a powerhouse of ideas, insight and inspiration. For an informal discussion on how we might help you, please contact us.

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