Better Conversion When Timeliness Matters

I am probably the only woman around who is buying her husband Henckel knives for Valentine’s Day. But, having to wait until February 8 to do this, I had better purchase them from a website that is close enough to get them here in under a week.

So I started my search for Henckel knife websites and found that most are in California. Or, if they aren’t in California, they don’t do same day shipping because they are drop-shipping from cooking.com, a California company. (Gosh, I’d love those little colored paring knives, but no one has them unless they come from cooking.com.)

All of which takes me to my question — why are our websites only specific about when the product will arrive in December? Maybe we’re out there shopping for Valentine’s Day, a holiday on everyone’s calendar. Or maybe we’re out there shopping for a birthday. An anniversary. A congratulations gift. No matter what — timeliness is not just a Christmas phenomenon.

After I ditched the web-and-Henckel-knife problem and decided to drive to Williams-Sonoma, I realized that if only sites would tell you where they ship from and what their policy is (same day usually, the same day always, etc.), they would have a chance to turn more browsers into buyers. At least, they would if they had great shipping policies and weren’t always located too far away.

Bye for now — I gotta go to Williams-Sonoma. At the mall.