text: UK online retail parcel volumes for January and February are 10.5% up on last year, according to IMRG and MetaPack.
  Taking the month of February in isolation and comparing it with the same month last year, online retail delivery volumes were up 11.9%, slightly below the forecast growth of 13% for 2015.
  The IMRG and MetaPack Delivery Index also found the percentage of on-time deliveries / attempted deliveries has continued to increase – reaching 94.5% in February, up from 92.5% in January.
  Andrew Starkey, head of e-logistics at IMRG said: “It’s encouraging to see that against the background of volume growth the level of on-time delivery / attempted delivery continues to improve – this combined with the attempted (carded) delivery rate of only 3% means that in February only 8.5% of orders failed to meet customer expectation.”
  Angela O’Connell, strategy and marketing director at MetaPack, added: “February’s figures confirm a familiar pattern of how consumers are embracing flexible and reliable online delivery services as part of their busy lifestyles. Innovations in the way UK retailers and carriers are offering wider choice and control to consumers are growing in usage, providing a robust platform for the growth in delivery volumes we’re forecasting for 2015.”
  While the low cost delivery services continue to dominate UK-destined orders, at around 60%, and next-day services remaining steady at 33%, the increased use of flexible delivery services and alerts, was cited by Starkey as an explanation for the drop in failed deliveries.
  “The continuous reduction in attempted but failed (carded) delivery must be in large part due to the deployment of pre-delivery alert services which allow consumers to defer, and increasingly divert orders, when the original delivery time or place is not convenient. In addition the increase in use of click & collect, both in-store and through 3rd party networks, is enabling shoppers to better specify when and where they receive their order.”