Local online and multi-channel stores are using speedy delivery to fight back against competition from international retailers.
Three-hour and same-day delivery as well as evening drop-offs are among the options retailers are offering consumers to improve the convenience of online shopping and gain an advantage over overseas competitors.
"While price is still often the determining factor, the carrot for a lot of consumers is quick and convenient delivery," says Carl Hartmann, the managing director of Temando — a company that links more than 20,000 retailers with over 200 courier and freight companies.
"It's all about instant consumption. An example might be a consumer that realises it's Friday and they have nothing to wear that night. So, increasingly we're finding that retailers are shipping direct from store, rather than from the warehouse, and often they can deliver in the same time it might take the customer to drive across town and pick it up themselves."
Earlier this month, sisters Emma Cronin and Fiona Pearse launched a new website — Wantitnow.com.au — to help meet the increased demand for the express delivery of online goods.
The website brings together more than 70 Australian retailers, including popular e-tailers The Iconic and Styletread, who can courier goods within hours.
The idea is that consumers who can't get to the shops but urgently need a particular item — be it a pair of shoes for an event that night or a textbook to cram for an exam the following day — can search the website by category, such as clothing, footwear, books and cosmetics, and have those goods delivered just hours later.
The service — which costs between $9.95 and $20 — depending on the retailer, is currently available in Melbourne and Sydney and will be rolled out in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra next year.
The sisters say the business model — which also has an app with a countdown clock to your exact delivery time — was born out of a desire for greater convenience and expediency when it came to shopping online.
"It really came from a personal frustration we had ... We were shopping online because we were time poor and needed stuff urgently but there was no convenient delivery option for us," says Ms Cronin.
She says not only does the service provide greater convenience for shoppers it is allowing local retailers to "compete against the offshore giants" who might offer cheaper prices, but have longer delivery times.
Mr Hartmann says more retailers are also offering delivery of goods before 9am the next day and evening deliveries between 5pm and 9pm to better suit people's lifestyles.
He says the average delivery time for online shopping in Australia has halved in the past two years, from an average of 5.6 days in 2010 to a current average of 2.8 days.
Grant Arnott, from online retail resource, Power Retail, expects services like WantItNow to be particularly popular in the lead up to Christmas.
"These types of services are going to enable online shopping to encroach closer to the traditional retail Christmas shopping period," he said.
