Holiday Shipping Cutoff Dates Make Good Ecommerce Usability
The holiday shopping season is now in full swing, and while there’s still plenty of time for online shoppers to receive their orders by Christmas (or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa), not receiving an order on time is a concern for consumers. Great online stores ease the fears by providing holiday shipping cutoff dates and making this information easy to find on home pages and product pages. Let’s take a look at some examples:
Bed Bath and Beyond
Tagline: “Holiday Shipping Cutoff Dates”
Bed Bath and Beyond dedicates some central home page real estate to its holiday shipping information:
And it’s not limited to just Christmas, either:
Art.com
Tagline: “Holiday Info”
The tagline is not as clear as it could be - what exactly does holiday info mean? Behind the link lies the shipping cut off dates:
Art.com’s FAQ-style page has information for US and European customers, but looks like Canadians are out of luck.
American Eagle Outfitters
Tagline: “Gifts on Time / It’s Not Too Late For 12.24 Delivery”
Great placement in top right of the home page where it will be noticed first:
And in case you missed it up top, it’s showcased on the left side of the homepage:
Pop-up window:
Amazon
Tagline: “It’s Never Too Early To Shop And Get Free Super Saver Shipping”
This choice of words may have been optimal before Black Friday but with less than 30 days before Christmas, it needs an update:
Here’s what you find behind the link:
Amazon clarifies that the deadlines only apply to items bought from Amazon.com, not from the seller marketplace:
These deadlines apply only to items shipped from and sold by Amazon.com and refer to delivery on or before December 24, 2007. For products fulfilled by other sellers, that seller’s shipping deadlines apply. Check under “Availability” on individual products’ pages to determine the seller. For complete holiday shipping information and information on restrictions, click here.
My hunch is most people will read the pretty table and ignore the text below. Just a hunch.
Best Buy
Tagline: “New! Guaranteed Christmas Delivery”
I like Best Buy’s “Guarantee” approach. It communicates additional value:
Guarantee means that they will credit your shipping charges and offer you a $10 or $20 digital coupon for your trouble if your order arrives late:
It’s nice that Best Buy will refund shipping on late orders, but it’s also competing with retailers that offer free holiday shipping. But, Best Buy adds to the bottom of its home page a box showing its extended returns policy, complete with a little calendar icon showing January 31 (so you don’t even need to click through to get the gist). Reducing consumer risk and easing online shopping anxieties may influence shoppers to stay on the site for all their shopping rather than checking out competitors’ offerings.
Domestications
Tagline: “Holiday Delivery - Order by December 15 for Standard Shipping”
I like how Domestications shows the date right up front, so you don’t even need to click through for details:
What’s novel is that Domestications has an interactive map (I’m dubbing this “Domestications Destinations”) where you can click on any state and see specific cutoff dates:
Hickory Farms
Tagline: “Holiday Delivery and Shipping Options”
Hickory Farms uses a text link:
The chart shows cut off dates for the different holidays and shipping methods, and includes a reminder that frozen foods may need a few days extra to thaw:
Hickory Farms also takes the opportunity to remind customers that electronic gift cards always make it on time (good idea):
Nordstrom
Tagline: “Shipping Details and Deadlines”
Nordstrom’s shipping details page lists various product categories’ shipping deadlines.
Shipping deadlines are also listed on product pages:
Saks Fifth Avenue
Tagline: “Free Rush Shipping on Every Order”
Saks one-ups your run-of-the-mill Free Shipping offer by adding “Rush.” Great value messaging.
Sharper Image
Tagline: “Holiday Shipping”
The Sharper Image includes a link on the home page, further down in the footer but makes it stand out in red text. The footer is a common place for shipping information anyway, so it’s likely customers will be able to find it easily from any page:
Zappos
Headline: “Order By 1 PM PST December 22, 2007 For Guaranteed Delivery Before Christmas”
The most detailed of the bunch, this deadline-headline eliminates any need to click through to a detail page, stating not once, but twice, the cutoff date:
But did they really have to put 2007 in there?
Shipping Cutoff Tips:
1. Use clear wording like “Shipping Deadlines,” “Shipping Cutoff” or “Order By December ___” rather than just “Shipping Details” or “Shipping Info.”
2. Make sure the information is easy to find on the home page and product pages.
3. Include where you ship on your detail page. If different states or countries have different cutoff dates, make this clear.
4. Clearly state any restrictions.
5. If different products have different shipping times, make sure to make that clear.
6. Include all shipping options: standard, expedited and express.
7. Remember that Christmas is not the only holiday of the season.
Bonus:
1. Offer a guarantee on your schedule. If the order arrives late, issue an e-coupon and pay for shipping.
2. Show holiday return policies on home page.
3. Remind last-minute shoppers about electronic gift card options.
Linda,
Absolutely awesome!! These are some of the best examples of holiday usability I have seen this year. Very helpful to shoppers, makes customer service a breeze, good all around business practice.
My only thought is that perhaps a system like this may be difficult for just anybody to implement, unless it came “out of the box” on the merchants platform or was offered as a module of some sort.
It’s great for the big guys, and certainly is useful for any eCommerce site, but may require technical “savvy-ness” or programming abilities.
Do you know of any standalone systems that do this?
@ eCopt,
Love your enthusiasm ;)
I think this should be fairly easy for anyone to implement as it can be added to the shipping info page and highlighted on the home page - it would take some communication with the shipping company to establish deadlines, then some organization of the information into a table which can be added to your shipping page or created as a new page.
Then the graphic designer makes a tweak to the home page design to showcase the link.
I guess it helps in a time crunch to be on a content-management system for non-techie ecommerce managers unless you have your own in-house webbies.
I imagine Domestications’ map was a bit of work but I don’t think the ecommerce platform is a barrier to doing this as long as it’s its own content page.
Fabulous article! A good review of what I call ’seasonal usability’. Still surprises me that there are big branded sites out there (generating quite a bit of business) with shipping rates and policies hidden in Help content pages, or homepage banners are hidden below the fold! So annoying! The more obvious the message to the customer, earlier in the journey, the more likely they will convert. I really liked BestBuy’s ‘Easy Gift Return’ - they are really making it easy for the customer to purchase fearlessly! Thanks for the piece!
@KCorreia,
Thanks for your comment. I wonder if as we get closer to Christmas, more sites make this information prominent.
Another surprise - Amazon’s US site now shows “8 days left to order to get FREE super saver shipping” (as opposed to what it says in the screenshot above)
But the Canadian site doesn’t show this at all.
Another head-scratcher.