Creating local delivery for your Lightspeed eCom

As a Lightspeed Retail POS merchant with physical brick-and-mortar stores, you can offer local delivery to your local community or across the city. When you add a local delivery option to your store, it is displayed at checkout along with other shipping options you’ve created.

Delivery is flexible to customize: you can draw the delivery areas right on the map, offer delivery over a certain order total, limit it to dates, create different fees based on customers’ addresses proximity, and even specify how shoppers can pay for the delivery.

Lightspeed eCom does not provide delivery service. Instead, you have to assign delivery to your employees or hire a third-party service.

Creating local delivery for your Lightspeed eCom (E-Series)

You can create one or many local delivery options so that customers who live nearby can choose this method at checkout. For each area, you can charge different fees based on how far away it is from your outlet. For example, you can create three zones with different fees: offer free delivery to the nearest customers (Zone 1), charge $5 for the delivery to the neighboring areas (Zone 2) and $10 for more distant locations (Zone 3).

To create a local delivery for your Lightspeed eCom store:

1. From your Retail POS, navigate to Online → Settings → Shipping & Pickup.
2. Scroll to Local Delivery and click + Add Delivery.
3. Choose the rates for this method:
   • Free delivery — customers won’t be charged for delivery. Best to use for the nearest areas to your outlet.
   • Conditional free delivery — encourage customers to spend more by offering free delivery over a certain amount. For example, for orders over $100.
   • Flat rate — you will charge a fixed amount disregarding the order total or the delivery address proximity. 
   • Custom rates — choose this to charge different fees based on a certain weight or order subtotal. For example, $15 delivery on orders over 3 kg and a lower delivery fee for light-weighting orders.
4. Specify the name to make it clear where you deliver and what the delivery conditions are. For example, Free delivery in Old Town, Portland. 
5. In the Outlet associated with this local delivery method dropdown, select an outlet for this method. The outlet stock will be associated with this method.
6. Specify delivery rates or conditions if you have any.
7. Click Set delivery zone to limit the area where you deliver to. 
8. (optional) To offer this delivery option only for orders over a certain sum, click Limit availability by order subtotal and specify the minimum order subtotal.
9. (optional) Click Set operating hours to prevent customers from placing orders at certain times. For example, at nights or during weekends.
10. (optional) Turn on the Ask for delivery date and time at checkout toggle to allow customers choose delivery time at checkout. Specify the order fulfillment time and if you want to allow the same-day delivery. That information will be taken into account to calculate the nearest delivery day at checkout. 
11. (optional) Click Add description for customers to enter any detailed instructions for customers.
12. (optional) Turn on the Ask for pickup date and time at checkout toggle to allow shoppers to specify a time for the pickup. You can set available times for pickup, customize your order fulfillment time, choose a pickup range, and add blackout periods for pickup:
13. Click Save & Finish.
14. (If you connected several outlets to your eCom) Click Back to return on the Shipping & pickup page. Scroll down and click Outlets’ availability for pickup and local delivery. Specify if you want to limit the choice of local delivery locations at checkout based on inventory availability. When you restrict delivery options, customers will be prompted to remove out-of-stock items from their cart or select a delivery method connected to outlets with available stock. Otherwise, people will be able to order even out of stock items and you will have to transfer items between outlets. Learn more about delivery rules for multi-outlet stores →

That’s it. Now your shoppers can choose local delivery to get their orders. Repeat the steps above to create more delivery options with different rules: other locations, higher or lower fees, etc. 

Setting up date picker for local delivery in Lightspeed eCom

You can enable the date and time picker for your local delivery. That way, your customers will have to choose a convenient date and time for the delivery to complete their purchase.

Having the date picker in your store comes in handy when you make all items available for delivery disregarding the actual stock in the nearest outlets. To keep up with this rule, you may need time to get out-of-stock items and deliver them across the city. For this, you specify the fulfillment time so it’s taken into account when calculating the nearest delivery date at checkout. 

For example, you run a bike store and receive a delivery order for a helmet model that is available only in the store in the center of Montreal. However, the customer lives on the edge of the city that is several hours away from the store. Taking into account that you need to pack the item, and deliver it with other orders, it will take you at least one day to fulfill the order.  So you specify your order fulfillment time to 1 day. After that, the earliest delivery time your customers can select at checkout is the next day.

To ask customers about date and time for local delivery in Lightspeed eCom:

1. Navigate to Online → Settings → Shipping & Pickup.
2. Choose a pickup option you want to edit or create a new one.
3. At the local delivery settings page, make sure you have the Limit delivery operating hours toggle turned on and set up the Delivery operating hours. That time will be taken into account when calculating the nearest delivery date and time at checkout:
   

   

   If you don’t specify the delivery hours, your customers will be able to pick any days of the week and hours in the delivery time picker at checkout.
4. (optional) In the Blackout dates section, click + Add Blackout Date or Date Range to set up specific dates when your store doesn’t work, so customers won’t be able to choose these dates for pickup. To repeat blackout dates every year, tick the Repeat every year checkbox.
5. Scroll to Ask for delivery date and time at checkout and turn it on.
6. Choose between Ask for date only and Ask for date and time slot.
7. If you picked Ask for date and time slot, you need to specify delivery time slot lengths. (If you picked Ask for date only, proceed to step 8). In the Delivery time slot length, specify the delivery time frame that customers will be able to choose from at checkout.
8. Turn on the Same-day delivery toggle to let your clients choose delivery on the same day they place the order. In the Cutoff for same-day delivery field, specify what is the latest time to place the order for the same-day delivery. 
9. Select the convenient Order Fulfillment Time — an average time it takes for you to prepare an order for delivery plus your average delivery time within the area. Let’s say you choose 1 hour. If a customer places an order at 12:15, the nearest delivery slot will be 14:00 — 15:00, not 13:00 — 14:00.
10. In the Allow choosing delivery date within, specify the longest possible delivery date that your customers can choose in the date picker. If you are not sure an item will be in stock in a month, you can set a restriction so that customers can make an order no later than a date you pick.
11. Click Save.

Now, when your customers choose to pick up their order at the checkout, they can select the preferable day and time according to your business hours and order fulfillment time.

You will know what day and time the customer has selected for pickup from the email notification you receive for each order.

The pickup time also appears in your Lightspeed eCom mobile app in the Orders tab. To download the app, open your eCom admin (go to Online tab in your Retail POS → Overview → Go to eCom). In the left-hand side menu, choose Mobile and click Get the app to download the app.

Specifying payment methods for local delivery

You can enable certain payment methods for local delivery only. For example, you can add the Cash-on-Delivery payment method and set it up so that it will only be available for customers who chose local delivery during checkout. In that scenario, customers from other cities or countries won’t see the Cash-on-Delivery payment option.

To limit payment methods for local delivery:

1. Navigate to Online → Settings → Payment.
2. Choose a payment you want to enable for the local delivery and click Edit. For example, it’s Cash-on-Delivery.
3. Scroll down to Payment method availability based on shipping choice and click Limit availability by shipping method‍.
4. Click Select Methods and tick boxes for all delivery methods you want this payment to be available to. For example, Local delivery. Then click Select.
5. Click Save.

Now your customers will be able to pay in cash only if they choose Local delivery as their delivery method at checkout.

Related articles

Adding and managing destination zones for local delivery
Managing local orders and pickup