American consumers are amongst the first in the world to be able to order products via safe shopping online and have them delivered to their doorsteps via drone, according to Sky News.

A small-scale trial of drone-based e-commerce deliveries kicked off this week in the Virginian town of Christiansburg, with a Google-owned firm introducing this service ahead of competing companies like Amazon.

Only a handful of products from a small number of organisations are available via the service, but it is noteworthy that pharmaceutical goods are included amongst them, with the intention being to prove that drone deliveries can get vital items to those who are less able to visit bricks and mortar stores in person.

Indeed, the first few orders which were fulfilled in the trial involved medicines being shipped to help combat the symptoms of colds and flu, which are of course common maladies at this time of year.

The speed of the delivery is also very noteworthy, since it is possible for the drone to get products to customers in under five minutes. This means that there is virtually no waiting around for orders to arrive, and it makes online shopping with home delivery even more convenient than same-day click and collect services.

The drones can cover areas of up to four miles in radius, although the experts behind the technology expect that they will be able to increase this as time passes and the hardware is refined.

One of the reasons that drone delivery is being touted as the next big things is that it means that there will be less need for vans to clog up the roads of residential areas, easing traffic congestion as well as providing fewer hazards to pedestrians and other road users at the same time.