Australia’s online shopping industry is reportedly now worth more than $47 billion.
According to a recently released study, the market size has grown by 8.9 per cent in 2022, proving that the Australian appetite for online shopping continues to soar.
The November online sales days – Click Frenzy (8-10 November 2022), Black Friday (25 November 2022) and Cyber Monday (28 November 2022) – are now considered a huge retail opportunity for businesses of all sizes – not just major retailers.
Especially following the Covid-19 pandemic – when online shopping skyrocketed to unprecedented levels – Australians today have clearly embraced the convenience of online shopping, with same-day delivery services in large part responsible for what is now considered a permanent change in Australian shopping habits.
Sherpa – an Australian start-up founded in 2014 – is the country’s largest same-day delivery provider by volume of deliveries. Essentially a technology platform that connects independent courier professionals with businesses, Sherpa specialises in same-day delivery.
CEO of Sherpa, Duncan Brett, says the company is gearing-up for another spike in demand this November online sales period.
“Same day delivery is here to stay and businesses that aren’t embracing the benefits of e-commerce and same-day delivery are simply missing out on lucrative opportunities,” says Mr Brett.
According to Statista, 62 per cent of Gen Z consumers intended to shop on the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, while almost half of Gen Y, more than a quarter of Gen Z and nine per cent of Baby Boomers planned to check out online.
“We’re forecasting big demand for the end-of-year online sales period this year in particular, before we again see a boom in same-day delivery demand in the lead-up to Christmas.
“Consumers today generally have a mentality that they “want it now”. Because Sherpa is synonymous with same-day delivery and we have set the timeframe bar so high, we are delivering a lot more during key retail periods, working with a lot more businesses and covering a much wider area of the country than ever before.”
“Sherpa now has more than 70,000 Australian business customers – from big retailers such as Woolworths, Dan Murphy’s and Chemist Warehouse, to SMEs trading across a spectrum of categories.”
“We’ve completed more than seven-million same day deliveries, we have a national fleet of more than 11,000 drivers, and we operate across 21 Australian cities… and that has all happened in less than a decade!” adds Mr Brett.
According to KPMG, 80 per cent of retail CEOs say customer expectations are increasing around delivery; they want more delivery options and online delivery speed.
Additionally, according to Invespcro, 80 per cent of shoppers want same-day shipping, while 61 per cent want their packages even faster — within 1-3 hours of placing an order.
While only a few retailers were able to offer ultra-fast delivery in the past, that has all changed as a result of the gig economy and platform business model adopted by companies such as Sherpa.
Sherpa’s suggested seven starter considerations for businesses that aren’t offering same-day delivery are:
- Make the call sooner rather than later! Your Go/No decision point on whether to enable same day delivery for this year’s November online sales period is on the verge of crunch time. Whether it’s to launch with a bang or just to dip your toe in the water by shoring up carrier redundancy during the peak online sales, you still have options available but don’t leave it too long to make the call.
- Assess whether your order management system supports a same-day delivery service. Click & Collect is the litmus test here – if you already have it in place, you are halfway there in terms of the internal processes required.
- Consider how you can can best fulfil the service. Do you have the space and staff bandwidth to deliver from your store network or perhaps an alternative arrangement such as directly from your distribution centre is more fitting to your business?
- Determine how you will manifest the delivery orders. Your budget for technology will likely steer your decision. It could be by manually uploading onto a web portal, or via a middleware platform or through API (Application Programming Interface).
- Set your service radius – How far from your store or distribution centre will your same day delivery service cover? If you want to on-demand deliver within a couple of hours, this will be a shorter distance by necessity than if you deliver up to 9pm and have most of the day for the delivery driver to travel further afield.
- Determine how much to charge your customers. Same-day delivery is a premium option, above your traditional standard and express services and thus, should be charged as such; potentially up to 25 per cent more than express. Your free delivery shopping basket threshold should be higher too.
- Plan your means of promoting the service. Will it be shouted about on your homepage and across your social media channels or simply kept to the ‘Shipping & Delivery’ section of your website to start? Should you consider advertising or PR activities to promote the service?
