The magic of free delivery: why and how

Victoria Kadevska
White box on a table with a white background

In this article we decided to figure out why free delivery is so attractive for users and present you with 3 kinds of free delivery features that we recommend to use in your eCommerce.

‘The future is fast, free shipping. Whether through special seasonal offers or reaching threshold spend levels or annual membership, shoppers are being trained that items purchased online should magically arrive at their door at the same price they would have paid in-store.’
Kathleen Kusek
Forbes

Let’s look at it from a customer's perspective first. Paradoxically people are willing to spend more to get free delivery, even though their initial intention is to save up when making a purchase; also, if an item costs a bit more but has free delivery people are most likely to buy it.

The most common cause of cart abandonment is extra charges at checkout, i.e shipping costs.

On the contrary, the free shipping feature increases basket size. UPS found 58% of customers added more items to their basket in order to get a free delivery.

93% of customers prefer free shipping to any other type of discount. 

Shippo made a research showing that customer’s love towards free shipping increased at 8% from 2020 to 2021.

So why do we like Free delivery so much?

Delivery costs increase friction, and eCommerce that don't charge for delivery shows an understanding of their customers' pain points. The average customer checks three sites before making a purchase, and they most likely go with the site that offers both good price and free delivery.

Our love towards free stuff has been studied as a zero price effect.

Graph comparing impact of free delivery between 2020 and 2021
‘In 2013, in celebration of Dubai being announced as the site for the World Expo 2020, Baskin Robbins declared that everyone in the United Arab Emirates could get a free scoop of ice cream. The crowds, as you may expect, were huge. The queues spanned for blocks, with lines for indoor mall outlets spilling outdoors. In all the madness, one might begin to wonder why people were willing to withstand these mobs for hours just for a $3 scoop of ice cream.’
The Decision Lab

Here are a few Free delivery models that we would recommend to look at:

  1. Order threshold: ‘Free delivery if you spend £50’ + follow up in the cart area ‘£10 more to spend and you will get Free delivery’;
  2. Subscription model - like the Amazon Prime;
  3. Free delivery for first-time customers.

Let us know if you have any questions or would like to explore this further.

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Monsoon Consulting are Ireland's only Adobe Gold Solution Partner, focusing on delivering best in class B2B and B2C eCommerce solutions to large companies such as Uniphar PLC, Sysco (Pallas Foods), Topline, Heat Merchants Group, One4All and Central Bank of Ireland.

The team at Monsoon provide a full-service offering from business consultancy & strategic planning, UX & UI creative design, development & engineering, Infra & Dev ops to a dedicated Support team, offering 24x7 critical application support.

For more information on how Monsoon Consulting can help your business online, please get in touch with alastair.brodie@monsoonconsulting.com or call +353 (0)1 4750066

Victoria Kadevska - UX/UI Designer

Victoria Kadevska,

UX/UI Designer