How long does delivery take?
What online stores need to publish
They are deciding whether the item arrives before the date they need it. This is a buying question, not a support question — an unanswered version of it is an abandoned basket.
How customers actually ask it
The same intent arrives in wording your page probably does not use. All of these mean the same thing:
- “How long does delivery take?”
- “when will my order arrive”
- “shipping times”
- “how fast is postage”
- “do you do next day delivery”
What a complete answer contains
For online stores specifically, an answer is only complete when it covers all 5:
- 1
The cut-off time for same-day dispatch, stated in a named timezone
- 2
Transit time separately from dispatch time, because customers conflate them and then complain
- 3
Different figures for domestic and international, if you ship both
- 4
What happens on weekends and public holidays
- 5
Whether the estimate is working days or calendar days — this single ambiguity generates more contacts than any other
A worked example
Illustrative — not a real business
Orders placed before 2pm UK time on a working day are dispatched the same day. UK delivery is 2-3 working days from dispatch; EU is 5-7. Orders placed after 2pm, at weekends or on a bank holiday are dispatched the next working day.
Which page should own it
Shipping & delivery policy
What silence costs
This is the single most-asked pre-purchase question in retail. Leaving it vague moves the sale to whoever states it plainly.
More questions online stores get
Related
industry
AI customer support for ecommerce stores
Most ecommerce support is four questions wearing different hats: where is it, when will it arrive, can I return it, and will it fit. RubyRep reads your product pages and policies and answers them at the moment of hesitation, which is the moment the sale is won or lost.
term
What is AI customer service?
AI customer service means answering customer questions with a language model rather than a person. The useful implementations are grounded in a specific business's own content; the poor ones let a general model improvise, which produces confident answers that are wrong.
term
What is a knowledge base?
Traditionally a knowledge base is a help centre humans read. For AI support it is the source material a representative answers from — which means an ordinary website, well written, can serve as one without a separate help centre.
Does your site answer this already?
Point RubyRep at your website and ask it this exact question. If it cannot answer, neither can your customers.