Playbook, fashion retailer
The date in their head belongs to somebody else
Delivery questions on most sites are about patience. On a clothing site they are usually about a fixed date that somebody else set: a wedding, a christening, a flight, a party on the Saturday. A perfectly honest three to five day range reads as a refusal to a person whose event is on the Friday, and the reply has to give them something they can act on rather than a window.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for shipping and delivery holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The question is almost never how long delivery takes, it is whether one specific garment lands before one specific day, and the answer that helps is a cut off time rather than a range.
- One pre-order line holds the whole basket until the drop lands, so the fastest service on the checkout screen quietly buys nothing, and almost no shop says so at the point where the choice is made.
- Collection from a shop is a different promise from delivery to a door, because the parcel waits behind a counter that keeps the shop's hours rather than the warehouse's, and it goes back after a holding period nobody publishes.
- Return postage belongs in the delivery answer here and nowhere else, because a shopper ordering two sizes to try is planning the outward leg and the return leg in the same decision, and the cost of the second leg changes what goes in the basket.
How it arrives
- will this get here before saturday
- i need this for a wedding next week
- what time is the cut off for next day
- when will my preorder be sent out
- how much does it cost to send something back
- how long will you hold a collection order for
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Cut off times, per service and per day of the week | The clock time an order has to be placed by for each service, including what happens on a Friday and over a weekend. This is the number that answers an event question, and a delivery range never is. |
|---|---|
| Pre-order windows, written as ranges with the basket rule attached | The expected shipping window for each pre-order line, and the rule for what happens when one sits in a basket with stocked items. If the whole order waits, say it in the same sentence as the window, because the two facts are useless apart. |
| Collection: which shops, what to bring, and how long it waits | The shops that take collections, the hours of the counter as distinct from the hours of the shop, the identification needed, and the day the parcel goes back. That last one produces the worst version of this conversation and is almost never written down. |
| The return leg, costed | What it costs to send something back on each route, who pays, and whether that changes on a sale line or on a multiple size order. Publish it next to delivery rather than inside the returns policy, because that is where the decision is being made. |
The reply
I cannot see orders or promise a date for one, but I can give you the times the decision turns on. The cut off for the next working day service is the time listed on our delivery page, and orders placed after it on a Friday go out on the Monday [1]. One thing worth checking before you pick a service: if anything in your basket is a pre-order, the whole order waits for that line to land, and the shipping window for it is on the product page rather than at the checkout [2]. If you would rather collect, the counter keeps the shop's hours and not the warehouse's, and parcels are held for the number of days on the collection page before they go back. If the date is tight, say what you need it for and I can pass it to somebody who can look.
It answers with a clock time instead of a range, because a range cannot be acted on by somebody with a Saturday to hit. The pre-order rule is volunteered before the customer chooses a service, since that is the only moment it is worth anything. Collection is described by the counter rather than by the shop, which is the distinction that produces the wasted journey.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor needs a guaranteed arrival for a named date, asks to change an address or a service after ordering, or is asking about a collection parcel that may already have gone back.
I cannot guarantee a date or change a delivery, and I would rather not have you plan around a guess. Leave your name, an email, the piece you are after and the date you need it by, and somebody will tell you whether it can be done.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never promise that an order will arrive by a named date, since the assistant cannot see despatch and the date is attached to an occasion the customer cannot move.
- Never quote a delivery time for a basket that contains a pre-order line without saying that the whole order waits for it.
- Never describe collection using the shop's opening hours, because the counter frequently closes earlier and the difference is a wasted journey.
- Never say return postage is free without naming the route and whether reduced lines are excluded, since that is the sentence people order two sizes on.
Questions
- Why not just publish a delivery range like everybody else?
- Publish both. The range sets the expectation and the cut off time is the only part anybody can use. Somebody buying an outfit for a Saturday is doing arithmetic against a clock, and a shop that only publishes a range has left them to guess at the hour.
- Can it tell somebody whether a parcel is still waiting at a shop?
- No. A collection counter is not a document and there is nothing to read. It can state the holding period and the counter hours, which is what stops the parcel going back unclaimed, and route anything about a specific one.
- Is the return postage really a delivery question?
- In this trade it is the same decision. A shopper ordering two sizes has already accepted they will post one back, and the cost of that leg decides whether they order two or one. Keeping it in the returns policy hides it until after the choice has been made.
Keep reading
- Everything for a fashion retailerFit is both the most asked pre-purchase question and the biggest cause of returns. Here is what a clothing retailer can safely automate.
- Handling shipping and delivery in generalCut-off times, zones, timescales, public holidays and duties on international orders. The material exists on most sites, it is just buried.
- Two histories end with the same mark on a sleeveA security tag left on, a pulled thread, a dropped hem. Transit damage and a garment fault look identical and take different routes.
- Three numbers on one swing ticket and none of them is wrongWas, now and further reduced are three numbers on one ticket. Codes that die on sale lines, and one size cleared while the run stays full price.
- Cancel it and the size goes back on the site within the hourOn a seasonal line, cancelling hands the size to somebody else for good. Pre-orders and stocked pieces cancel on different terms.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.