Next-day delivery: how do you compare?

We picked six sectors to investigate: women’s clothing, men’s clothing, toys, homeware, charity stores, and health and beauty.

Then we took the top 5 online stores in Google’s results when using the search terms: women’s clothing, men’s clothing, toys, homeware, online charity store, and online health and beauty store. And took the cut-off time for each store, along with the next-day delivery price as the start point for our investigation.

Which sector provides the best service?

Out of the 30 stores we investigated the men’s clothing sector provided the best service for next-day delivery. For our purpose, best service was defined as those stores that offered next-day delivery seven days a week and are still competitive on price, and order cut-off time.

Astonishingly, three of the men’s clothing stores are the only stores out of the 30 we investigated that provide next-day delivery seven days a week.

Which sector had the latest cut-off time?

The graph below indicates the average order cut-off time for each sector. It shows that the women’s clothing sector has the latest cut-off time compared to the other sectors. The earliest order cut-off times come from the charity and health and beauty sectors.

Average order-cut off times across sectors

The blue and green lines in the graph below show that the women’s and men’s clothing sector offer order cut-off times consistently above average.

However the coloured lines in the graph below show that no such trend emerges between the toy, homeware, charity, and health and beauty sectors, as their order-cut off times fall above and below the order cut-off average across sectors.

Overview

Our research shows that the men's and women's clothing sectors provide the best next-day delivery service to their customers. The order cut-off times in both sectors are above the average of all order cut-off times in our investigation. And they also provide the highest ratio of stores that offer next-day delivery six and seven days a week. Of 10 stores 6 clothing sector stores offer next-day delivery 6 or 7 days a week.

The other sectors we investigated do not show a similar consistent pattern, as their results vary from sector to sector and store to store.

The only order cut-off times that display a consistent trend are from the charity sector. The order cut-off times available are consistently low and may reflect that charities are unlikely to gain a competitive advantage over other charities by providing improved delivery options.

With our industry knowledge, we can help you develop delivery options that are competitive and suit your commercial goals. If you are interested please visir our website to find out more www.orbital-response.co.uk.