Delivery choice is the last product decision in the checkout, and most retailers present it as an afterthought
A shopper who reaches the delivery step has chosen the product, but not yet how and when it will arrive. Research by GFS and Retail Economics, reported by Just Style in May 2023, puts a number on how often that second decision goes wrong. In a survey of 2,000 consumers and more than 100 UK retailers, 24.8% of attempted online purchases were abandoned because the shopper’s preferred delivery option was missing at checkout. Retail Economics modelled the cost to UK retailers at £31.5 billion in sales a year, around £605 million a week. The study dates from 2023 and was repeated in 2024 and 2025, so read these figures as a UK snapshot of that year rather than a current European benchmark. The pattern behind them is what deserves attention.
Retailers and shoppers look at a different delivery step
The most useful figure in the study is not the cost but the perception gap. 83% of retailers thought their delivery choice was wide enough. Only 48% of consumers agreed. The same retailers did not underrate delivery: more than 95% saw it as decisive for shoppers, and 61% put delivery and returns on a par with the product in what customers value. They knew it mattered and still overestimated what they offered.
The gap has a plain cause. A retailer judges the delivery step by what is available behind it: carriers contracted, services switched on. A shopper judges it by what fits this order: whether the parcel arrives before the weekend, whether someone has to be home, whether it can wait at a pick-up point. UK retailers offered around three options at checkout, against the five the researchers set as the benchmark. Three in five offered express or next-day delivery, 39% nominated-day delivery and 25% parcel pick-up points. A shopper who works office hours and finds only home delivery on an unspecified day has no option that fits, however many carriers sit behind the screen.
Free delivery is not the only answer shoppers accept
Delivery is often treated as a cost to minimise, with free delivery as the conversion tool. The study points elsewhere. Retail Economics concludes that consumers do not see free delivery as a must-have. 78% of consumers would pay extra for same-day, next-day or nominated delivery, rising to 94% of Millennials, and 74% would shop with a retailer that offers a wide range of options, including some that are not free. One in two would pay a small fee for a quick, hassle-free return.
Age sharpens the point. Shoppers under 45 abandoned about a third of their intended online purchases because of delivery issues, more than twice the share of those over 45. Within that group, 94% of Millennials would pay extra for faster or nominated delivery, against 78% of all consumers. A paid express option is therefore less a threat to margin than a way to turn a lost basket into an order with a delivery fee attached.
Build the delivery step as a choice, not a confirmation
Shoppers start weighing delivery early. One in three consumers in the study wanted to know the delivery and return options before adding anything to the basket. Show the options and their prices on the product page and in the basket, so the delivery step confirms an expectation instead of introducing one.
Inside the checkout, give every option the three facts a shopper uses to choose: the expected delivery date or window, the price, and where the parcel goes. A label such as Standard or Express without a date leaves the shopper to work it out. Preselect the option most of your shoppers actually pick, and keep the cut-off time for next-day delivery visible near the order button, because the promise changes once the clock passes it.
The delivery choice then has to carry through to payment. When a shopper selects a paid option, the total on the payment step must reflect it at once, with the delivery fee on its own line. A total that changes between steps without explanation reads as a hidden cost at the exact moment the shopper is asked to pay. Put a short line on returns, the period and whether a return is free, next to that total as well, since that is where the shopper weighs the commitment.
Start with your own analytics. Measure how many sessions that reach the delivery step continue to the payment step, split by device and by the option that was preselected. Then list your options as a shopper sees them, with date, price and location for each, and hold them against the gaps the study found: a fast paid option, a nominated day and a pick-up point. Add the one that is missing first, and measure the delivery step again a month later.
Sources: just-style.com, retaileconomics.co.uk, fashionnetwork.com, gfsdeliver.com
