Customers Demand Home Deliveries During Covid-19

There are plenty of trends and outside influences that affect the retail industry, but it’s the Covid-19 pandemic that has forced retailers – both large and small – to completely shift focus and offer what customers have been demanding. That demand has been loud and clear and that is the need for home deliveries.

Whether lockdown measures made it difficult to get out of the house and to the store, or people are just choosing to stay out of the stores as much as possible and avoid any potential crowds, home deliveries have skyrocketed during the pandemic. And even with the pandemic becoming more controlled in recent weeks, these home deliveries have continued.

Let’s look at some interesting facts and figures surrounding the current trend.

Retailers Have Learned a Full-Day Delivery Window Simply Isn’t Good Enough

Another trend has been the shift away from a day-long delivery window to a specified time. Where it would be the norm to place an order and then have it arrive sometime between 8am-5pm in the next couple of days, customers have demanded a much more precise and frankly flexible system. They are looking for something that better meets their needs and doesn’t cause as much uncertainty.

This is even more important when you’re talking about fresh food delivery that can’t sit outside your door all day waiting for you to get home. A missed delivery drop off just isn’t going to work. Retailers have now had to set up systems that allow customers to pick a specific window of time, even down to the hour, in which their delivery arrives. This has caused retailers to re-think their entire delivery model.

One company that has taken a novel and innovative approach to this very issue is Shift.Online. It uses a match system where it finds the driver that is located nearest to the customer job. It gives the customer total control over what time their delivery arrives, catering to the customer rather than the customer being at the mercy of the driver.

One of the Biggest Winners During the Pandemic

As you look through the statistics, it appears as though one of the only winners during this pandemic has in fact been a delivery product, in particular online food delivery. Back in March, during the early days of the pandemic, it was the online food delivery industry that was reporting increases over the year while much of every other industry was either shuttered completely or reporting record losses and downturns.

Contactless delivery was then introduced, in order to make things as safe as possible, and the market blew up even more.

Besides takeaway food, there were other areas that saw an increase in online shopping with groceries seeing a rise of 32.8%, clothing saw an increase of 20.97%, and electronics increased by 13.65%.

What Does the Future Hold?

So what does the future hold for home deliveries? Considering the world is still working to find a safe and effective vaccine, the very same risks still exist out there today. This means people are continuing to shop online and look for ways to stay home whenever possible.