Shoppers today have an array of ecommerce channels available to choose from. Everything from brand websites to ecommerce marketplaces to social media stores now offers fast, convenient online shopping experiences. Ecommerce business that sell through these channels must strive to consistently provide customers with a first-class shopping experience, or risk getting left behind.
One of the most fundamental aspects of the online shopping experience is the delivery promise—the estimated delivery date that is displayed to customers at checkout before they purchase a product. Typically, customers are offered a few different delivery date options at checkout, which vary based on the shipping method, speed, and cost.
To attract, convert, and retain customers, ecommerce companies must be able to:
- Offer fast, accurate delivery options
- Keep delivery promises by unfailingly fulfilling orders on time
Recent research underscores the importance of making good on delivery promises: In a 2024 survey, consumers ranked transparency in shipping times as their second-highest priority in online orders—above speed, and behind only shipping cost. To help deliver on promises to customers, many ecommerce merchants outsource their order fulfillment operations to third-party logistics (3PL) providers.
In this blog, we will explain how a 3PL can help you drive business growth by making accurate delivery promises to customers and by keeping those promises with deliveries that are on time, every time.
How a 3PL can help you make accurate delivery promises
For ecommerce companies, being able to automatically display an accurate delivery date at checkout can lead to an increase in shopper conversions. How can you generate fast and accurate delivery estimates for customer orders at checkout? A 3PL can help with this.
Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS) is one 3PL that excels in this area. ASCS is an end-to-end supply chain offering backed by Amazon’s global network and cutting-edge technology. It includes services like Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF), which leverages ASCS’ fulfillment resources and expertise to enable ecommerce businesses to automatically surface accurate delivery dates for customers at online checkout, no matter which channel they’re selling on.
Here’s how MCF works:
- The merchant connects their online stores to MCF’s back-end order fulfillment system using one of the many integrations and apps available, or a custom API.
- When customers add items to their carts, the merchant’s online store calls the MCF system in real time.
- The MCF system instantly generates shipping options and delivery dates, taking into account a number of factors, including:
- Product availability: MCF has a complete, up-to-date view of the merchant’s inventory levels across the Amazon fulfillment network. When making order promises to customers, it’s critical for merchants to ensure that they have the product the customer wants in stock.
- Product distribution: When generating delivery dates, the MCF system considers the location of products, which have been strategically distributed across ASCS’ network of over 200 fulfillment centers.
- Customer location: The MCF system considers the location of customers and determines which stock is closest to them and should be used for the order. When stock is stored close to your customers, it’s more likely to arrive quickly and seamlessly.
- The MCF system transmits the various shipping options and delivery dates in real-time to the merchant’s ecommerce store, and these are visible to customers at checkout.
- Customers choose the shipping option that they want, and—once they complete checkout—the order fulfillment process commences.
It’s important to note that not all 3PLs have the capabilities described above, and some 3PLs may have a different way of calculating order delivery dates and sharing them with customers.
The bottom line: to increase customer conversion your ecommerce company must have the ability to provide customers with attractive shipping options and accurate delivery dates at checkout across all the channels you sell on.
How a 3PL can help you keep your delivery promises
Of course, it’s not enough for ecommerce companies to just make order delivery promises—they have to be able to keep those promises by fulfilling the order on time.
This is no easy task, as merchants today face a number of challenges when it comes to order fulfillment and inventory management, and many opt to engage 3PL providers to help them streamline their logistics operations.
A 3PL can help your ecommerce business at every stage of the ecommerce fulfillment process by:
- Receiving your inventory in the 3PL’s network of storage facilities, including warehouses, distribution centers, or fulfillment centers.
- Storing your inventory in your 3PL’s facilities until it’s ready to be sold to customers. As mentioned above, your products should be strategically distributed across your 3PL’s network to minimize shipping times and costs, and a 3PL with a global network, like ASCS, is more likely to have locations positioned close to your customers—and in markets where you hope to expand.
- Handling your order processing after an order has been placed by a customer on any of your online sales channels. A 3PL will pick, pack, and ship your products in the most efficient and effective manner possible. With ASCS’s advanced systems and technology—which includes more than 1 million robots in global fulfillment centers working with staff to optimize the picking, packing, and shipping process—ecommerce businesses that utilize ASCS as their 3PL have access to one of the most efficient processes possible.
In addition, some 3PLs, like ASCS, will provide real-time order tracking through services like MCF, enabling both merchants and customers to gain visibility over the progress of their order and gain confidence that the order delivery promise will be kept.
- Delivering your orders to your customers’ doorsteps on or before the promised delivery date. Working with 3PL services can really help you improve your on-time delivery performance. MCF, for example, has a 96.4% on-time delivery rate for all MCF orders worldwide.1
A 3PL can help you ensure that your end-to-end order fulfillment process runs smoothly and successfully across your sales channels and that orders are delivered on time—this is a pivotal part of maintaining customer satisfaction, trust, and retention. Around 74% of consumers stated that they would increase spending with an online retailer if they are happy with that merchant’s delivery services, according to a recent study.
1Based on all orders placed and delivered between October 2024 and September 2025 in the US, and measuring the percentage of orders that were delivered on or before the estimated delivery date generated upon order confirmation.
Choosing the right 3PL for your business
Consumers today have sky-high expectations when it comes to ecommerce order fulfillment—they want their products delivered as quickly and reliably as possible.
To satisfy customers, ecommerce businesses today must have the capability to:
- Make fast and accurate delivery promises to customers at online checkout, and
- Keep those promises with optimized order fulfillment operations.
As we’ve discussed in this blog, a 3PL can help your ecommerce company improve your order promising capabilities—if you choose the right 3PL.
It’s important that when you are evaluating prospective 3PLs you ask them about their on-time delivery rate, service-level agreements for order fulfillment, click-to-delivery speeds, and other important metrics. Assessing their performance in these areas will help you determine if they are a 3PL that you can truly trust to help you keep your order delivery promises to customers.
