A Map of Delivery Areas on the Website

Do you deliver to me?

It is the first question anyone asks a business that delivers, and many websites answer it badly: we deliver locally, we serve the whole region, free delivery within ten kilometres.

None of those lets a customer standing in their kitchen know whether their street is in.

Some phone to ask. Others assume they are outside and order elsewhere. A few order anyway and find out after paying.

In December, with gifts, parties and holiday meals on the way, each of those costs more than usual.

Why vague areas lose orders

• A radius nobody can measure from home.
• Region names that mean different things to different people.
• A map image with no street names on it.
• An area revealed only at checkout.
• Charges that appear after the cart is full.
• A listing that disagrees with the website.

The second causes more trouble than it looks. A place name can mean the city itself to one customer and everything around it to another, and the people on the edges are exactly the ones who cannot tell.

Three ways to show one area

A map shows the shape at a glance, for people who think in streets and landmarks.

A list of neighbourhoods and towns serves people who think in names, and search engines and screen readers can read it, which they cannot do with a map.

A list of postal code prefixes, the first three characters, settles the edge cases exactly. Most people know their own.

Each covers what the others miss, so the delivery page should have all three.

Drawing the map

Draw the boundary along things people recognise: a river, a highway, a main road, a shoreline. A line through the middle of blocks helps nobody.

Shade the area, mark where you are, and show enough street names that someone can find their own corner.

An embedded interactive map lets people zoom; a plain image loads faster and prints. Either works if it can be read on a phone without effort.

Where the boundary runs along a street, say which side is in. Then test the map on someone who lives near the edge, and watch whether they can find their own street.

The edges of the area

Most questions come from just outside the line. Say what happens there: a higher charge, a minimum order, a pickup point, or an invitation to ask.

A plain line saying ask us about addresses near the edge keeps those customers talking to you rather than to the next business.

And when the area changes, change the map, the lists and your listings on the same day.

A worked example

A meal prep company cooks in a rented commercial kitchen and delivers a week of meals to homes on Sunday afternoons. Orders close on Thursday night.

Its website said it delivered across the region. Every week a few orders arrived from towns it did not reach, and the owner refunded each one by email on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, people in one suburb it did serve kept asking whether it delivered there, because the site never named it.

The order form checked addresses only after payment, so nobody found out until money had changed hands.

The company drew its boundary along a river and two highways, listed the neighbourhoods and postal code prefixes inside it, and set a charge for an outer zone.

The order form now asks for a postal code first. Customers outside the area are offered pickup at the kitchen on Sunday mornings instead of a refund.

Check the postal code first

Online ordering should confirm the address before anything else, not after the cart is full and the card is entered.

A single box asking for the postal code, answered at once with yes, yes with a charge, or no with an alternative, spares everyone the disappointment.

Many ordering systems can do this from a list of accepted prefixes. Where yours cannot, put the list beside the order button.

Charges and days by zone

A delivery area often has rings: free nearby, a charge further out, a minimum order at the edge. Show each ring on the map and in the lists, with a small table beside the map, one row for each zone.

Give the delivery days and time windows for each zone, and the order cutoff that goes with them.

If the charge depends on the order value, say so beside the prices, not on a policy page nobody opens.

Holiday weeks change the schedule

Christmas Day falls on a Sunday this year, and so does New Year's Day a week later. Any business that delivers on Sundays has two weeks to rearrange and to explain.

Post the changed delivery days and cutoffs on the delivery page and the home page, and repeat them in order confirmations for those weeks.

Extra demand in December may also shrink the area or widen the delivery windows. If it does, show that on the map rather than in a footnote.

Keep the listing in step

Google My Business lets a business that delivers describe the area it serves. That area should match the website's boundary, not an old radius chosen when the listing was created.

The same goes for the Facebook page and any ordering service you appear on. Customers compare them, and a mismatch makes all of them look doubtful.

The counter-case

Businesses that quote every job, such as movers, may work in an area too irregular to draw. A list of the towns they cover and an invitation to ask may be enough.

A business that delivers to one small neighbourhood can describe it in a sentence, and one that ships nationwide needs shipping rates rather than a map.

For everyone in between: draw the boundary, list the places and postal codes, show the charges, and check the address before taking payment.

Before the holiday orders

1. Draw the boundary along roads people know.
2. List every neighbourhood and town inside it.
3. Add the postal code prefixes you serve.
4. State charges and days for each zone.
5. Check the postal code before taking payment.
6. Post holiday delivery changes on every page.
7. Match your listing's area to the website.

Step five is the one that ends the refunds. A customer told no at the first box can be offered pickup; one told no after paying is mostly annoyed.

Where pickup customers already come from, a good guide when the area grows, is covered in where directions requests come from.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.