More than two-thirds of customers have experienced at least one delayed delivery in their past six months of online shopping, according to a report by Körber. While shipment delays are a common experience, they do not go unnoticed by buyers and can harm your brand’s reputation and overall revenue.
Let’s uncover the biggest reasons for ecommerce shipping delays, how they negatively impact customers and retailers, and how to manage them in an efficient manner.
Shipping delays affect both buyers and vendors on a significant scale. According to an S&P Global study, issues like low water levels in the Panama Canal and rebel attacks in the Red Sea forced ships to reroute in 2024, adding up to two weeks to shipping operations times.
As of July 2024, shipment delays have surged to nearly four times the usual average, still below COVID peaks but significantly impacting delivery times — levels not seen in 15 years before the pandemic.
Beyond these global factors, operational inefficiencies play a large role in extending delivery times. Understanding these four shipping delay reasons helps businesses to prevent them:
Problems with transport are among the most common reasons for delays on delivery. Inaccessible routes, natural disasters, bad weather, or other macro-environmental changes cause disruptions that lead to missed deadlines.
But the main causes of supply chain issues related to freight carriage normally are:
Explore how Shipium’s Injection Shipping can help boost your peak season operations.
When customers misspell their addresses, or retailers don’t document orders properly, packages may be late or, worse, not delivered at all. Validating addresses before the order reaches fulfillment centers helps you fix any inaccuracy beforehand.
Platforms like Shipium cross-check entered addresses at checkout and compare them to official databases, like USPS. This process ensures every detail — street name, city, ZIP code — is up to date before you can route orders.
See how Shipium’s Address Validation API can help ensure the deliverability of your packages before picking and packing.
Many ecommerce businesses rely on legacy systems that don’t provide real-time tracking or automation, making it difficult to prevent or react to issues causing delayed shipments.
For instance, overestimating demand without the infrastructure to support it leads to bottlenecks. Meanwhile, underestimating demand can leave your business scrambling to restock.
Shipping issues such as damage, loss, or theft can happen at any point in the supply chain. For instance, packages that are not adequately protected may suffer harm during extreme weather conditions like rain or snow. Multi-stop shipping processes, where freight is loaded and unloaded multiple times, can also increase the risk of boxes and items breakage.
Another growing issue is the phenomenon of “porch piracy” — the stealing of deliveries left unattended on customers’ doorsteps. Research shows that one-quarter of American adults have had a package stolen in their lives. Homes without surveillance or secure delivery options are especially vulnerable, particularly in urban and suburban neighborhoods.
Ecommerce businesses can mitigate this issue by offering alternative delivery options such as parcel lockers, in-store pickups, or requiring signatures upon delivery to ensure packages are not left unattended.
The cost of late delivery extends far beyond unhappy customers. The impact on your bottom line includes:
Delays may seem inevitable with all types of possible supply chain disruptions, but there are ways to manage and prevent them — both upstream and downstream. Follow these five best practices to minimize ecommerce shipping delays before they occur:
Where your inventory is located plays a critical role in delivery speed. By strategically placing items closer to customers, you reduce transit times, decrease shipping costs, and prevent delays caused by last mile delivery challenges.
Advanced tech solutions leverage data-driven insights to help businesses determine optimal locations, ensuring that stock is always where it is needed most. Shipium’s platform, for instance, improves your inventory management process by informing the best allocation decision for products at the SKU level.
When items are out of stock or misplaced within the warehouse, delays in fulfilling orders happen more often. For effective stock practices, implement a warehouse management system (WMS) to get real-time visibility into inventory levels, ensuring accurate stock counts and location tracking.
Manual picking processes cause errors and inefficiencies, slowing down your order fulfillment process. Implementing automated picking systems like robotics or pick-to-light technology accelerates this process and reduces the risk of shipping delays.
Automation also enables warehouses to scale operations during peak periods, keeping up with increased demand without compromising efficiency.
Use historical data and real-time insights to forecast demand and identify potential bottlenecks before they occur. By planning inventory replenishment, staffing, and carrier capacity ahead of time, you can navigate high-pressure periods such as holidays with more confidence.
Discover how predictive analytics drives better supply chain decisions.
Relying on just a few carriers increases vulnerability to delays caused by capacity issues, strikes, or overall disruptions. Diversifying your network helps your shipments continue to move even during unforeseen challenges.
With Shipium’s pre-integrated carrier network, you easily switch between carriers to maintain on-time delivery performance while optimizing for cost and efficiency.
If you’ve done the work to prevent delayed shipments, but unexpected errors still happen in your supply chain, here’s how you can address late deliveries:
Shipium is the right technology partner if you are looking for ways to minimize late deliveries. Our API-first platform connects with your existing systems to optimize the supply chain and help you keep delivery date promises to customers. With Shipium, you get:
Minimizing delivery issues is not just about addressing delays — it’s about setting the right expectations from the start. Request a demo today and see how Shipium’s carrier management solutions help avoid costly ecommerce shipping delays.