Adding a Delivery Promise: A Playbook | Shipium

Updated September 10, 2026

Key highlights:

Providing a promised delivery date can drive purchase decisions

Consumers expect to be told when they will receive the things they buy online. Traditionally, that is managed after an order is processed, with notifications being sent via email during the post-order flow. But increasingly, buyers are making purchase decisions based on knowing an estimated delivery date before they actually buy something.

A study of VML showed that 63% of shoppers agreed with the statement, with a clear and seamless delivery experience being a crucial aspect of their decision to click the buy now button.

Not many stores adhere to this preference. Visit most ecommerce sites and go to the product detail page, and you will see something like “Usually ships within 2 days,” which doesn’t help. All the consumers care about is when they will get the product, but instead, sites give a service level agreement (SLA) for the fulfillment center.

Examples of delivery promises from large ecommerce brands

Large ecommerce businesses — like Walmart, Target, Amazon, Home Depot, and others — have invested in delivery promises, however, and pushed this expectation over the years because they know it matters to customers. Let’s take a look.

Once Amazon expanded to a marketplace model, they extended estimated delivery dates to sellers who use Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA). Here is an example of a seller who uses FBA which affords them the same customer experience benefit of showing accurate EDDs on the product detail page.

Now if we look at Loog—who makes awesome music instruments for kids, by the way—we find the absence of that delivery promise. Instead, we see “SHIPS IN 1-2 WEEKS”. For customers who want it faster, they will pick Amazon, which means Loog gives up 15% margin.

However, if we look at HH’s site, there are no estimates at all.

Interestingly, Backcountry is itself a very large ecommerce retailer, with estimated annual online revenues over $500 million making them one of the largest 200 ecommerce sites. If we look at the same product on backcountry.com, we don’t see any estimated shipping dates.

Here is how Walmart handles it: Simple, effective, and to the point.

Target is even more aggressive with delivery promises for fast shipping, in addition to providing basic free shipping.

And perhaps the company with the most rapid innovations lately is Home Depot, who not only display estimated delivery dates, but has done an excellent job of bringing in ship-from-store and curbside pickup.

Implementing estimated delivery dates is a challenge

Any company that presents an estimated delivery time will experience better conversion and loyalty. So why doesn’t every store do it?

The screen real estate for displaying a simple date is small, yet the technical requirements behind the scenes are huge. A real-time, SKU-specific estimation displayed on a screen requires integration with the following systems:

Shifting a company’s internal processes towards customer experience will require changes to supply chain metrics, data, and culture. Practically, it expands the operations team’s area of responsibility to measure and monitor all stages of the shipping process.

How to implement reliable delivery dates

When implementing reliable delivery dates, the first thing to know is the destination ZIP. If you have a user account system set up, you can pull the ZIP from the customer profile. If the user isn’t logged in, you could check if a previous order had been made and saved to a cookie, which can pull the ZIP from that previous order.

Lastly, you can assume the ZIP based on checking the user’s IP address, but to ensure accuracy, you may need to request the user enter the destination ZIP on product pages before showing a projected date.

From there, the front end makes a call and sends those two data points to the inventory management system to know how many items of that SKU are left across which FCs.

Given all these inputs, the system then runs an algorithm to determine the most precise delivery date available. The result is returned back to the frontend store, which then displays the information back to the consumer.

Delivery date promise: Key plays

When it comes to providing an upfront shipping date to customers, the challenges are multidimensional and get increasingly complex, with more FCs, SKUs, carriers/methods, packaging options, and shipping policies in your system.

Managing trade-offs

Prioritizing real-time results

Factoring cut-off times

Fulfillment metrics you need to track

The key to optimizing your promise is managing and consistently reviewing and drawing insights from detailed shipping analytics. These include:

Make delivery promises more intuitive with Shipium

Adding a delivery promise is a play that Shipium was built to support. We provide an API that customers call, sending us their product and customer information for a given SKU. We then return an estimated delivery promise with precision.

Frequently asked questions

What is a delivery promise?

A delivery promise is a commitment a retailer or ecommerce business makes to deliver an order within a specific timeframe. These estimates, usually provided before a purchase decision, set expectations and affect the overall customer experience.

What is the importance of keeping your delivery promises?

Keeping the delivery promises you make at the time of purchase is crucial because it helps: