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Website with fast shipping: how much it affects the purchase decision
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Anyone wondering whether a website needs fast shipping usually starts from a reasonable idea: deliver before the competition, sell more. The available data tells a more precise, and partly different, story: what more often kills an order isn't how long the package takes to arrive, but how much it costs to find that out at the last step of payment.
Cost weighs more than speed
An e-commerce cart is abandoned in 70.22% of cases on average: that's the figure Baymard Institute calculates from 50 studies collected between 2006 and 2025, updated in September 2025. That number doesn't say why it happens, but the same Baymard page explains it with a separate survey of US shoppers, one that excludes anyone saying they're "just browsing" and allows more than one answer per person: the most cited reason for abandoning a cart or checkout is that extra costs, meaning shipping, tax and fees, were too high, picked by 40% of respondents. "Delivery was too slow" follows at 20%, half as much. The final bill, in other words, kills twice as many orders as the wait does.
What the European data says, Italy included
A similar picture comes from Europe, from a source worth naming for what it is: Sendcloud's Delivery Compass 2026 report, published September 21, 2026, comes from a company that sells shipping services to businesses, so it has a direct interest in showing how much delivery weighs on sales. That said, the methodology is disclosed: a survey run in March 2026 across 8,000 consumers in eight European markets, Italy included with a sample of roughly 1,000 people. 76% would rather wait longer than pay shipping costs, and 48% say they abandoned an online purchase in the last three months over a delivery-related problem, where cost, timing and the lack of a preferred option all fall under the same bucket.
The Italian answer: more options, not just more speed
In Italy, businesses seem to have responded by leaning on the variety of delivery options rather than on raw speed. According to the Netcomm eCommerce B2c Observatory, School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, in a press release from May 6, 2026 presented at Netcomm Forum, "out-of-home" deliveries, meaning in-store pickup, third-party points, depots and lockers, reached 21.9% of total Italian online purchases: more than triple the 7.3% the same Observatory reports for 2014. That's not a speed metric, it's about the freedom to choose how and when to receive a package, and for a growing share of online buyers that matters more than how fast the courier rings the doorbell.
What this means for anyone selling online
Put together, these numbers tell the same story from three different angles: what kills the most orders at the moment of paying is the final shipping bill, not the delivery date. Before investing in a faster courier, or promising 24-hour delivery you might not be able to keep up every day, it's worth checking something simpler and cheaper first: does the shipping cost show up early in the buying journey, or only at the last step of checkout? That's where, according to the data above, the largest share of carts gets lost.
The same question applies to anyone deciding whether to turn on cash on delivery: both are decisions that cost money before they pay off, and both should be made by looking at how many real customers would actually ask for them, not at how good they look on paper. Adding pickup at a partner point or a locker, where local logistics allow it, often solves more dissatisfaction than speed alone does: that's what the Italian data above is describing.
For the full picture of what weighs on an e-commerce's margin, from payments to fees, there's how much does an e-commerce cost: shipping is one line item among several, not the only lever to pull.
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In more than ten years I have never had a client unhappy with the work delivered. That is why I can afford to say this: you have 30 days from accepting the quote to stop, or until the shop goes live if that comes first. Within that window I refund everything you have paid and we part ways, with no further claim and no argument. There are no conditions to meet and nothing to prove: you decide.
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I take the risk at the start. It is the only way I have to say “trust me” and have it mean something.
Where to start
Before switching couriers or promising faster delivery, check where in your checkout a customer first sees the shipping cost: if it only shows up at the last step, that, not speed, is probably the problem worth fixing first. If you've already fixed it and the problem remains, get in touch and let's work out together what to change.