Sustaining a business during the times of COVID-19 is quite difficult. The Coronavirus pandemic and the country-wide lockdown measures have largely affected the economic activities all around the world.
Amidst strict quarantine measures and restrictions, businesses are struggling a lot for survival.
There are, however, certain industries like eCommerce that have a tremendous amount of opportunities to not only survive but thrive in these difficult times.
By simply facilitating contactless delivery, eCommerce businesses can effectively deal with the serious hit of COVID-19 and come out even stronger.
What is Contactless Delivery?
In simplest terms, contactless delivery is basically a type of delivery in which a customer selects his or her desired products on your online store, place their order with the contactless delivery option, and get their order delivered without any risk.
Now, the exact form of contactless delivery may vary from business to business.
For instance, some eCommerce businesses drop the order in the customer’s postbox, while others prefer placing it at the customer’s doorstep, step away to a safe distance, and wait for the customer to pick it up.
Importance of Contactless Delivery for eCommerce Businesses
The need for contactless delivery is to basically ensure end-to-end hygiene. In simple words, contactless delivery can help to ensure 100% safety for both customers as well as delivery agents.
Plus, offering contactless delivery can help a lot in winning customers’ trust to make a purchase, which can ultimately boost the number of sales.
Moreover, the governments of most countries have already expressed their strong concerns about the community spread of the novel coronavirus.
But, eCommerce businesses can take certain precautions as mentioned below to achieve complete end-to-end hygiene.
Here are a couple of recommended precautions that every eCommerce business should take to ensure the safety of both parties:
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- Regular screening of all delivery agents and warehouse personnel.
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits for all warehouse personnel.
- Maintaining appropriate social distancing and limit the number of staff in the warehouse.
- Frequent sanitization of the warehouse as well as product packaging.
- Screening of all warehouse visitors and maintaining their records.
- An emergency phone line to the nearest hospital.
All the above-mentioned precautions can be really helpful in containing the spread of coronavirus.
How to Add Contactless Delivery Option in Your Magento 2 Store?
Now that you know exactly what contactless delivery means and why it needs to be implemented, let’s look at the ways you can implement it in your own Magento 2 store.
Adding the no-contact delivery feature isn’t complex.
Many eCommerce businesses have repurposed Magento’s offline shipping method like Table Rate or Flat Rate into contactless delivery shipping option.
Though it’s certainly possible, we don’t recommend doing it because it’s not enough.
In order to offer a truly seamless contactless delivery option, you need to add an entirely new shipping method or impose certain limitations to your existing shipping method to avoid accepting orders where the orders can’t be delivered.
For adding a new shipping method, you’ll obviously need technical help. For this, you can either ask your in-house Magento 2 developers or seek an outside agency’s help.
However, adding a new shipping method could be time-consuming and a little bit expensive.
This is why we always recommend going with option number #2. – Impose limitations to an existing shipping method.
Not only this approach is quick, but it is also cost-effective.
All you need to do is basically integrate the delivery availability checker functionality so that your customers can check whether you make deliveries in their area or not.
After that, you can simply integrate the shipping restrictions Magento 2 extension to easily restrict shipping to certain areas by postal code.
And once the Pandemic gets over, this extension won’t become useless. Its other functionalities tailor your shipping restrictions by city or even by customer group, which can help avoid loss.
How to Market Your No-Contact Delivery Service to Attract More Customers
So, now that you know what is contactless delivery, its importance, and how to add the contactless delivery option in your Magento 2 store, it’s time you also learn the best ways to market your contactless delivery service to attract more customers.
The best way to attract customers with your newly launched no-contact delivery service is by creating a loop of trust between your employees and customers.
This can be enforced by employing strict hygiene measures that we discussed earlier.
Once that’s done, here are the actions you can take to win the trust of your customers.
1 – Let Customers Know About Your Safety Measures
Regaining customers’ trust can be very difficult and tricky. But, transparency can help you go a long way when it comes to winning your customers’ trust.
So, first of all, you should showcase all the safety measures you’re taking as a business. This includes all the precautions we discussed earlier and let your customers know about them.
Being transparent about the safety measures that you’re taking as a business can help to ensure your customers that they can expect the highest possible safety for every order they place.
2 – Introduce Contactless Payments
The key enabler and the backbone of the entire contactless delivery system is the existence of an online payment option.
This can help to eliminate any contact between the customer and the delivery agent and reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread among your customers and employees.
You can provide different online payment options by integrating popular payment gateways such as Stripe or something alike in your Magento 2 store.
Whatever payment gateway you choose, just make sure that it supports all kinds of payments such as debit cards, credit cards, UPI, net banking, and so on.
3 – Offer Instant Refunds
Instant refunds are like the secret ingredient for guaranteed eCommerce success in these difficult times.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused so much panic and confusion among consumers due to the nationwide lockdown. Although, most eCommerce businesses are doing everything in their power to deliver every last order to their customers.
But unfortunately, eCommerce orders are still facing a lot of refund requests due to a variety of unforeseen reasons.
Now, most eCommerce businesses generally take 3 to 7 working days for completing the refund process.
But, at times like this, offering instant refunds can help you to attract new customers as wells keep the loyal customers happy and keep them returning to your online store instead of switching to your competitor.
Concluding Thoughts…
The COVID-19 Pandemic is certainly not permanent and it will soon be over.
Now, it may take longer than expected, which is why we, as a leading Magento 2 Extensions vendor, want to help you make the most out of this situation.
So, if you have a Magento 2 based online store, we highly recommend considering to add the contactless delivery option to ensure business continuity.
Recommended: COVID-19 Effects on eCommerce Industry: 5 Strategies to Boost Online Sales
