Implementing estimated delivery date
By showing an estimated time of delivery, you are answering one of the most common questions customers shopping online are asking: when will my order arrive?
There are a few things you need to bear in mind when setting this up:
Guide
To use the lead times you receive from our APIs, you need to account for
your own lead times as well and add them to the query as the shipping
date and time.
If you do not provide the date and time for shipment handover to Bring
when querying the Shipping Guide API, the response will assume the query
time stamp is the shipment handover. E.g.: date = current
date and time = current time stamp - the result will be an
overly optimistic ETA in checkout.
Calculate your your shipping date and time before querying Shipping Guide.
1 Order placed before cut-off time
In the first case, the query to shipping guide will use today as
shipping date, and 21:00 or blank as shipping
time. A typical Bring lead time for packages to larger
cities is one day, and the end user will be shown "tomorrow" as
their delivery estimate.
Cut-off time can also be shown to the end user, both for providing transparency into what they can expect, and how they can benefit from ordering now, instead of later.
2 Order placed after cut-off time
In the second example, the same webshop gets an order at 19:17. Orders placed after 17:00 will not be packed in time for the pickup the same day. They do not need to be prioritised in the warehouse, and will be picked the next day. An additional day is added to the webshop lead time.
In this case, the query will set date = tomorrow’s
date. With the same Bring distribution lead time, the end user will
be shown "2 days" as their delivery estimate.
Internal lead time as min-max values
While we recommend having as precise estimated delivery time as possible, we understand that sometimes, a range is needed to account for uncertainties or large volumes. By configuring internal lead time from minimum to maximum, you get this flexibility.
- If the value for both minimum and maximum lead time is equal, (e.g.: 0–0 days) you are able to present an exact estimated delivery date in checkout.
- If the value for minimum and maximum lead time differ (e.g.: 1–2 days), you should provide the user with a range instead of exact date.
For exact date, use the expectedDeliveryDate response from
shipping guide, for a range, use workingDays.