Free delivery thresholds: reading rivals' and setting your own

Where rivals show their delivery terms

Delivery terms live in more places than the delivery page. For each rival, check all of these and note any that disagree with each other:

• Header or announcement bar. Often the first place a threshold appears, and sometimes the only place a temporary one is announced.
• Product pages. Look near the price and the add-to-basket button. Is delivery cost or the threshold stated there, or does the shopper have to go looking?
• Basket. Many shops show a progress message once something is in the basket, telling the shopper how far they are from free delivery.
• Delivery and returns page. The fullest version, including exclusions, express options and any postcode areas charged differently.
• Checkout. The final word. Note whether the delivery charge appears for the first time here.

If the header says one thing and the delivery page says another, that inconsistency is itself a finding. It is common, and it costs trust.

What to record for each rival

Keep a small table with one row per rival and these columns:

• Standard delivery charge below the threshold.
• The free delivery threshold, if there is one, and whether it applies to all products.
• Express or nominated-day options and how they are charged.
• Exclusions: oversized items, particular postcode areas, sale items.
• Whether returns are free, and how the returns terms are presented alongside delivery.
• Where on the site each of these first becomes visible to a shopper.

Record what the site says, word for word, with the page address. If you later want to refer to a rival's terms in your own marketing, accurate notes matter: under CAP Code section 3, comparisons with identifiable competitors must objectively compare material, relevant, verifiable and representative features, and must not mislead.

Delivery terms change, especially around the November sales peak and the run-up to Christmas. A note with no date on it is not much use. Our recipe on delivery and returns policy changes describes a simple way to keep this table current.

Setting your own threshold from your own numbers

A threshold works when it nudges a meaningful share of shoppers to add one more item, without giving away delivery on orders that would have happened anyway at a size where you lose money. Three numbers from your own data matter most:

1. Your typical basket value. Where most baskets cluster. The average alone can mislead, because a few large orders drag it upwards.
2. Your actual cost to deliver an order of typical size and weight, including packaging.
3. Your margin on the products a shopper is likely to add to reach the threshold.

A common starting point is a threshold set a little above where most baskets currently land, so that reaching it takes one modest addition. If the products that would close that gap carry a healthy margin, the extra item can pay for the delivery. If they are low-margin, the threshold may just give money away.

Here is a hypothetical example. Suppose a homeware shop finds most of its baskets sit just below a round figure, and it sells a range of small accessories priced to close exactly that gap. A threshold at that round figure gives shoppers an easy, useful addition and protects margin. A rival with a different range might sensibly set a different number. That is why copying is risky.

Our shipping threshold tool takes your own basket and cost figures and shows the trade-off at different threshold levels. Treat its output as a model to test, not a guarantee.

Presenting the threshold well

Once you have a number, how you show it matters as much as the number itself.

• State it consistently everywhere: header, product page, basket and delivery page should agree.
• Show delivery cost before checkout. A charge that appears only at the final step tends to read as a surprise, whatever the amount.
• Use the basket to show progress towards the threshold and suggest relevant low-cost additions.
• Make exclusions clear and close to the claim, not buried in small print.

On how prices and charges are presented more generally, the CMA's price transparency guidance (CMA209) covers what to include in pricing information, including drip pricing, where charges are added as a consumer proceeds, and partitioned pricing. Read it, and take advice on how it applies to your delivery charges.

Next step

Start with the rival table, then model your own threshold in the shipping threshold tool. If you want delivery, returns and the rest of your checkout judged side by side against up to three rivals, an Intel loop scores cart and checkout as one of its eight categories, with quoted evidence. For the wider pricing picture, see our guide on pricing benchmarking.