5 Ways You Can Offer a Custom Order-Tracking Experience

Many retail businesses often overlook their order-tracking experience simply because they believe it's under the control of third-party delivery services.  

But what they don’t realize is that real-time visibility for in-transit packages plays a crucial role in providing a great shopping experience to their customers. It can also be used as a marketing channel to drive customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention.

Yep, you read that right. Customer retention in eCommerce or retail is no longer about being the cheapest or having the biggest product selection. It’s whether or not your customers receive a satisfying last-mile delivery experience.  

97% of online shoppers expect to be able to track their orders throughout every step of the shipping process. On average, consumers also check their parcels 6-8 times before delivery.  

Do you have a fully customized web design in West Palm Beach for order tracking that provides a memorable post-purchase experience?

What is Order Tracking?

Your customers anticipate when their package will arrive. Order tracking provides your customers access to the real-time order status of their packages. It tells them where their package is, when they can expect to receive it, and whether or not there are delays in shipment.

Transparency in shipment plays a crucial role in providing a great post-purchase experience to your customers. It alleviates concerns and keeps them calm and confident in your business during the most anxious stage in the customer journey.  

By providing your customers' shipment tracking, estimated delivery dates, regular order status updates, and notifying them if there are any delays, you can give your customers assurance that their orders will arrive.  

You can keep your customers in the loop about their packages through the West Palm Beach web design on-site order tracking page, email notifications, or SMS messages. If you tap into third-party delivery services, you can give your customers a shipment tracking number that they can enter on the courier’s website.  

The question is, should your order-tracking experience rely on third-party delivery service? The answer is no. Although you're only tapping into a third-party shipping service to get your orders delivered, your customers still associate their delivery experience with your brand.

Post-Purchase Customer Experience Gap

Once you’ve handed over the parcels to your delivery guy, you lose control over the kind of post-purchase experience you want to provide your customers. You simply just don’t know what goes on beyond that point. This is why providing a frictionless delivery experience almost seems impossible.  

The lack of transparency from your third-party delivery guy creates a gap that leaves your customers:

• Frustrated and dissatisfied with your service, which can hurt customer loyalty.
• Anxious about the status of their orders, which can lead to more complaints and concerns.
• Feeling angry, which can lead to bad word-of-mouth and negative reviews on social media.

Offering a tailored order-tracking experience helps put you in control during your customers’ most apprehensive moments. It also lets you continue to engage them post-purchase.  

Benefits of Providing Real-Time Visibility for In-transit Packages

Here are the five reasons why you need to start taking control of your customers’ order-tracking experience with your business:

• Lessen your customers’ anxiety by keeping them in the loop about the whereabouts of their packages. Provide timely delivery-status updates regularly.  
• Build trust and motivate your customers to remain loyal by being honest about delivery delays they're likely to face and resolving them proactively.  
• Exceed your customers’ expectations and drive customer satisfaction by providing a smooth, brand-consistent order-tracking and delivery experience.  

• Monetize post-purchase moments by using your order-tracking page with an on-brand West Palm Beach web design as a means to run relevant promotions and campaigns to drive sales.  
• Cut down customer service inquiries by resolving delivery issues proactively. This lessens the number of angry customers calling your support team, which allows them to focus more on upselling or cross-selling to customers.  

Disadvantages of Relying on a Courier’s Tracking Page for Order-Tracking

It’s not ideal to rely on a delivery company’s West Palm Beach web design tracking page to meet your customers’ delivery expectations. First of all, your customers aren't their customers.  

And secondly, they know that customers will associate whatever delivery experience they provide with your business, not theirs. If you’re not careful, this could impact how people remember your business and their likelihood of purchasing from you again.  

Below are the disadvantages of entrusting your tracking-order experience to a third-party shipping company:

• Delivery companies have no interest in providing service-level accountability or informing you about delivery issues before it affects your customers. Their main concern is to get your parcels delivered, not deliver a great post-purchase experience to your customers. The bad thing about this is that 94% of online shoppers will end up blaming you for a bad delivery experience. What’s worse is that 47% of customers will stop buying from you after a single bad delivery experience.  
• They only provide limited tracking information, which is usually not in real-time. Many third-party delivery services conceal information about delays while in transit to protect their company’s image. However, it’s your retail business’s reputation that gets affected because of this. Angry customers will call you for the status of their orders, asking why it hasn’t arrived on the expected date.  
• You lose the opportunity to continue delighting your customers post-purchase and to monetize this stage. There's just no way you can engage or interact with your customers whenever they check the status of their orders or run campaigns and promotions.  
• You expose your customers to off-brand experiences. When you leave your customers to check order updates on a shipper’s tracking page, you’re exposing them to an off-brand experience. This leads to an unsatisfactory shopping experience and you lose the opportunity to strengthen your brand.  

5 Ways to Provide a Memorable Order-Tracking Experience

1. Build a Customized Order-Tracking Page

Having an on-site order-tracking page that has a fully customized West Palm Beach web design, enables you to improve your brand’s recall and sales.  

Your tracking page should contain all the necessary information about your customers’ parcels. These include the courier name and service information, the date it was shipped and the expected arrival of their package, the current status of their orders, the current location of their parcels, and latest updates about it.  

Make sure to give your customer order tracking updates when the following events take place:

• When their order has been received
• When their order is currently being fulfilled
• When their order has been shipped
• When it’s out for delivery
• When their package has been successfully delivered and received  

You can even include other details such as what items are inside the parcel, total weight, order number, and more.  

The more detail you provide your customers, the happier they will be.  

2. Align Your Order-Tracking Page with Your Brand

Did you know that online shoppers check the order status of their parcels at least 6-8 times before it finally arrives?

You can use this opportunity to cross-sell, upsell, and drive repeat purchases with your customers by adding a product recommendation banner on your web design in West Palm Beach.  

This also provides an opportunity to reinforce your brand identity in your customers’ minds by providing a consistent, on-brand experience on your order tracking page. To do this, you need to ensure that you use the same tone, voice, messaging, color, and logo in your West Palm Beach web design.  

3. Collect Customer Feedback

Allow your customers to rate your delivery performance so you can compare it to service-specific delivery standards. With this information, you can assess how customers perceive your brand and whether they’re happy or not with your current courier’s delivery performance.  

This enables you to make better shipping choices next time, identify specific problem areas in your shipping process, and determine how to improve things for a better post-purchase delivery experience.  

4. Add Smart Order-Tracking CTAs in Your Order Confirmation Emails

Send your customers an order confirmation email to let them know that you did receive their orders and that they’re currently being fulfilled.  

To take things to the next level, add a clickable smart-order tracking CTA that redirects them to an on-site order tracking page. This makes it easier for online shoppers to check their parcel’s whereabouts and boost your business’ post-purchase experience.  

5. Allow Self-Serve Order Tracking

Baymard’s quantitative study shows that the most critical self-service feature for users is tracking of open orders, specifically order status and arrival date. However, relying on third-party sites can lead to difficulties and a subpar user experience.  

Allow your customers to track their parcels anytime anywhere with a single click! A tracking widget gives your customers quick access to the status of their parcels.  

Take Your Customer Experience to Next Level by Integrating Tracking Information into Your West Palm Beach Web Design!

56% of eCommerce sites fail to create an on-site order-tracking page with an on-brand West Palm Beach web design. As a result, they fail to delight customers during the most anxious and critical time in the eCommerce shopping experience.  

Giving up control to a third-party tracking site could jeopardize your business’ reputation, customer retention, and profits.  

Don’t make this mistake. Make sure you offer a customized order-tracking experience to your customers!

At Digital Resource, our digital marketing specialists and web designers will work with you to create an on-brand order-tracking web design in West Palm Beach. It will reinforce your brand in your customers’ minds, strengthen loyalty, and encourage repeat purchases.  

Contact us today to boost your customer experience and boost your sales online!

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