How to Improve Delivery Performance: KPIs and Best Practices
Delivery is more than logistics — it’s a competitive differentiator. Customers expect fast, free, and reliable shipping, and retailers who fall short risk abandoned carts, negative reviews, and diminished brand loyalty. Improving delivery performance can set your ecommerce operations apart. In this guide, we show you how.
Key highlights:
- Delivery performance measures how consistently retailers fulfill orders accurately, on time, and at the expected cost.
- Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) for delivery performance — such as on-time delivery (OTD), order accuracy, and cost per shipment — helps identify strengths and gaps in your fulfillment operations.
- Best practices for on-time delivery performance include optimizing carrier selection, improving order fulfillment decisions, and providing clear delivery promises.
- Shipium empowers retailers to reduce costs, expedite shipping, and improve delivery performance.
What is delivery performance?
Delivery performance refers to how consistently a business fulfills orders accurately, on time, and at the expected cost. It’s a holistic measure that includes speed, reliability, and efficiency across the entire fulfillment and shipping process.
Common delivery performance metrics provide a comprehensive look at the operational efficiency and effectiveness of a supply chain. For example, on-time delivery rate indicates how often orders arrive when they are promised, ensuring reliability. Another key metric is order accuracy, which tracks whether the correct products are shipped without errors or damage, reflecting the quality of service.
Companies often monitor the cost per shipment to balance the need for fast delivery with cost savings. And customer satisfaction scores related to delivery are crucial, as they provide direct feedback on the overall delivery experience from the customer's perspective.
Strong delivery performance requires optimizing carrier selection, fulfillment logic, and delivery promises. These are all areas where legacy shipping systems often fall short.
Why retailers should care about delivery KPIs
Retailers live and die by customer experience. And delivery performance is now a core part of that experience:
- Customer expectations are higher than ever: 90% of shoppers expect free two- to three-day shipping. Failure to meet these expectations results in abandoned carts and lost sales.
- On-time delivery metrics reflect on brand loyalty: A single late or inaccurate delivery can cause a customer to switch to a competitor. Consistent delivery performance builds long-term loyalty.
- Cost pressure is relentless: Shipping is one of the largest operational expenses. Retailers who can hit delivery dates while decreasing shipping costs win margin advantages.
Shipium helps retailers balance all three: ensuring the best customer experience with reliable delivery dates, keeping delivery promises, and controlling costs with carrier selection ML modeling.
13 must-track delivery performance KPIs
Tracking the right delivery performance KPIs is the first step toward improving your fulfillment operations.
| Delivery performance KPI | What it is | Why you should track this delivery KPI |
| On-time delivery rate | The percentage of orders delivered by or before the promised date | A high on-time delivery rate reduces cart abandonment and improves overall customer satisfaction |
| Order accuracy | The percentage of orders shipped correctly, with the right items and quantities | Errors lead to costly returns, negative reviews, and poor customer satisfaction, damaging brand reputation and increasing operational costs |
| Delivery speed | The average number of days from when an order is placed until it is delivered | In the age of instant gratification, fast delivery is a major competitive advantage and a key driver of customer loyalty |
| Cost per shipment | The average cost of getting a single order to the customer | This delivery performance KPI is crucial for balancing service quality with profitability, as it helps identify opportunities for route optimization, carrier negotiation, and other cost-saving measures |
| Split shipment rate | The percentage of orders that are sent to the customer in multiple packages | High split shipment rates increase shipping costs, create a negative customer experience, and lead to more customer support inquiries |
| Customer delivery satisfaction | Ratings and feedback from customers specifically related to their delivery experience | This metric helps to understand a customer's perception of your service, which is a leading indicator of repeat purchase behavior and brand loyalty |
| Average transit time | The average time a package spends in transit from the pickup point to the final delivery destination | As a measure of your carrier's efficiency, it helps you evaluate and compare the performance of different shipping partners |
| Order damage rate | The percentage of orders that arrive damaged | A high damage rate signals problems with packaging, handling, or carrier performance, all of which lead to increased costs and customer complaints |
| Return rate due to delivery issues | The percentage of returns that are specifically caused by delivery problems (e.g., damaged items, late arrivals, wrong products) | This metric helps pinpoint how delivery failures contribute to customer dissatisfaction and financial loss, enabling you to address root causes more effectively |
| First-attempt delivery rate | The percentage of packages successfully delivered on the first attempt | A low rate indicates problems with delivery instructions, customer availability, or routing, leading to additional costs for redelivery attempts and delays |
| Order tracking accuracy | How accurately your tracking information reflects the package's real-time location and status | Inaccurate tracking can lead to customer frustration, increased "Where Is My Order?" (WISMO) requests and a loss of confidence in your brand |
| Number of deliveries | The total volume of deliveries completed within a specific time frame | Key metric for understanding the scale of your delivery operations and for resource planning |
| Average time to fulfill an order | The average time from when an order is placed until it is ready for shipment |
A slow fulfillment time means a longer overall delivery time for the customer |
Best practices to improve delivery performance
Improving delivery performance requires data-driven decisions, modern technology, and scalable processes. Follow these five best practices to get started.
1. Optimize carrier selection
Choosing the right carrier for every order is complex—but critical. Shipium’s Carrier Selection uses ML modeling to select the best carrier that meets delivery dates while reducing costs (often by increasing ground usage). This automation ensures consistent on-time delivery performance metrics without manual guesswork.
2. Use smart fulfillment decisions
Where an order ships from is often the biggest cost driver. Our Fulfillment Engine balances speed and cost by making real-time, data-driven decisions, avoiding split shipments and improving delivery accuracy.
3. Deliver clear, accurate delivery promises
Shoppers want to know exactly when their package will arrive. Generic ranges like “3–7 business days” don’t cut it. Shipium’s Delivery Promise provides reliable, precise dates at checkout, improving cart conversion rates and reducing shipping anxiety.
4. Simulate and test your shipping strategy
Before adding new carriers or investing in distribution centers, simulate the impact. With Shipium, retailers can test scenarios in a virtual environment, reducing risk and ensuring better long-term delivery performance.
5. Leverage analytics for continuous delivery performance
Data is only valuable if it drives action. Leverage shipping analytics to get insights into performance, costs, and carrier performance, so you can actually make proactive improvements and unlock new efficiencies.
Improve your on-time delivery performance metrics with Shipium
On-time delivery performance requires modern, data-driven technology that can automate complex logistics decisions, scale with demand, and balance speed with cost. That’s why you need an end-to-end shipping platform like Shipium, which is purpose-built to help retailers turn delivery into a competitive advantage.
With Shipium, retailers see an average 12% reduction in shipping costs, faster deliveries by several days, and measurable improvements in customer satisfaction. Here's how:
- Shipium Carrier Selection ensures you always choose the right carrier to meet promised dates while lowering costs.
- Our Fulfillment engine reduces split shipments and improves speed and accuracy through smarter origin decisions.
- Delivery promise gives shoppers precise and reliable delivery dates, boosting conversion and customer trust.
- Simulation and Analytics provide the insights you need to continuously refine your shipping performance strategy.
Connect with our team today see for yourself how Shipium transforms on-time delivery performance.
Diagonal thinker who enjoys hard problems of any variety. Currently employee #5 and the first business hire at Shipium, a Seattle startup founded by Amazon and Zulily vets to help ecommerce companies modernize their supply chains. Previously was CMO at Datica where I helped healthcare developers use the cloud. Prior to that I came up through product and engineering roles. In total, 18 years of experience leading marketing, product, sales, design, operations, and engineering initiatives within cloud-based technology companies.
