A 20% better delivery experience is worth 5-10% more sales

A 20% improvement in delivery experience is modeled to generate 5-10% in additional sales. Applied to current Swedish e-commerce revenue across five retail sectors, that points to 3-6 billion SEK a year. The model is deliberately conservative, excluding the longer-tail value of lower service costs, reduced claims handling and stronger loyalty.

The figure comes from the Delivery Experience Index 2026, a study of 5,000 Swedish online shoppers conducted by Wahsel in partnership with Insitepart and Ingrid. What makes it credible is the attribution underneath it. Delivery drives between 29% and 42% of how satisfied a shopper is with a retailer overall, depending on the sector.

That sits awkwardly next to how delivery is usually measured. Most retailers track on-time rates, lead times and scan compliance, and by those numbers Swedish e-commerce performs well. Operational success and shopper satisfaction have drifted apart, and revenue falls through the gap between them.

Where the 5-10% comes from

The uplift describes retailers moving from sector average toward top-quartile performance on the index. It is a modeled market-level opportunity rather than a guaranteed outcome, applied to current category revenue using data from SCB, Handelsfakta and E-barometern.

Why the upside is usually missed comes down to visibility. Logistics investment is hard to justify when the revenue impact cannot be isolated. Finance sees the cost line, not the cart abandoned because the delivery promise was vague, or the second order that never came because the return was painful. A large share of the commercial potential sits in touchpoints that traditional org charts treat as cost centers: fulfillment, delivery, returns and customer service.

Retailers capturing the upside tend to run delivery as a commercial discipline rather than a pure cost-management exercise. In practice that means treating delivery options the way merchandisers treat assortment, so they are tested, priced, positioned and measured against revenue.

Delivery accounts for 29-42% of satisfaction with the retailer

Across pharmacy, beauty, clothing and footwear, sports and outdoor, and furniture and home, delivery accounted for 29% to 42% of overall satisfaction with the retailer, depending on the category.

Delivery is the only physical moment in an online purchase. It is the brand arriving at the door, the locker or the pick-up point, and it carries more weight than the website, the checkout or the marketing that brought the shopper in. Treated as a back-office function, it leaves the single largest lever on satisfaction untouched.

Average index scores across sectors sit between 83% and 87%. High enough to look healthy on a dashboard, and low enough to leave meaningful commercial opportunity on the table.

The six touchpoints of delivery experience

Delivery experience is not one event. The index evaluates six touchpoints across the journey from purchase to resolution, and shoppers rate retailers on all six whether the retailer is paying attention to them or not.

• Checkout, owned by e-commerce. Judged on clear delivery options, trustworthy payment and transparent shipping prices.
• Communication, owned by e-commerce and CX. Judged on order confirmation, proactive updates and fast alerts when something changes.
• Delivery and collection, owned by logistics. Judged on punctuality and trust, with the package arriving as promised at home, at a locker or at a pick-up point.
• Fulfillment execution, owned by the warehouse. Judged on the right item arriving undamaged and well packaged, within the lead time and without unnecessary waste.
• Returns and claims, owned by operations and CX. Judged on a free, clear and fast refund with easy instructions.
• Customer service, owned by customer service. Judged on whether the problem gets solved by a real person, professionally.

Six touchpoints, six different owners, and none of them sees the whole journey. That fragmentation is one reason the experience falls between the cracks.

Retail sectors weight the touchpoints differently

Each touchpoint is weighted by its relative importance within each sector, so the index does not assume that all categories work the same way.

• Clothing and footwear lives or dies on the returns experience, where over half of shoppers rate a free return as extremely important.
• Furniture and home is decided on customer service.
• Pharmacy is most sensitive to the checkout and to the delivery itself.

Copying the sector leader from another category misses the point, because a strong delivery experience in furniture and home is not built from the same priorities as one in pharmacy. What matters is knowing which touchpoints a given retailer shoppers weight most, and investing there first.

Two in three orders are decided by a default

Alongside the survey, aggregated platform data from Swedish e-commerce checkouts and delivery flows describes observed order behavior rather than stated preference. Three figures recur across categories.

• 68% of orders complete on the retailer pre-selected delivery option.
• 60% of orders complete on the option listed first at checkout.
• 54% of orders ship with free shipping, a norm that is rarely tested against willingness to pay.

That makes the default a merchandising lever rather than a technical setting. Most defaults were set once by whoever built the checkout and have not been priced or tested since.

Willingness to pay is where that matters commercially. 28% of shoppers would pay extra for a slower but more convenient option, 17% would pay extra for the fastest, and 32% pick the cheapest and accept the trade-off. Three groups, three different value calculations, and in most checkouts one shared price list.

Roughly one in six orders is late, and the shopper hears about it last

16% of deliveries arrive after the promise window, while 42% of shoppers rank fast information on delays as critical.

Standard order confirmations and tracking links are fine as far as they go. The gap is proactivity, because only the leading retailers tell the shopper before the shopper notices. Updates that reach shoppers ahead of the question turn a broken promise into a manageable situation rather than a lost customer.

Four weak spots that show up in every sector

The recurring weak spots are the gaps between what shoppers value and what they currently experience.

Vague delivery times

A range of two to five working days is a buffer, not an answer. Shoppers consistently rank a clear, visible delivery time among the top three checkout factors, while many retailers still display the carrier range. Owners: e-commerce and logistics.

Silence on exceptions

42% of shoppers say fast information on delays is critical, and many retailers still default to reactive customer service once something has gone wrong. Owners: CX and customer service.

Friction in returns

Free returns and easy instructions are now non-negotiables in clothing and footwear. Added steps, charges for the label or a hidden policy get paid for in repeat purchase. Owners: operations and customer service.

The unboxing

77% of shoppers rank receiving the right item as extremely important, 58% rank the product arriving clean and fresh, and 38% want it well packaged. This is a fulfillment responsibility, although the cost of getting it wrong lands in net promoter score (NPS) and customer experience metrics rather than in the warehouse management system (WMS). Owner: warehouse and fulfillment.

A sequenced way in

For retailers looking to act on the findings, a sequence makes more sense than a simultaneous program across all six touchpoints.

1. Start where the promise is made. Clarify delivery options, timing and pricing at checkout, before the order is placed.
2. Fix the moments where the promise breaks: proactive communication on delays, clear ownership of exceptions, faster customer service response.
3. Treat returns as a retention loop rather than a cost event.
4. Audit fulfillment and packaging against what shoppers actually value: correct item, clean and fresh condition, packaging that protects the order without creating waste.

Increased automation in pick-and-pack has created better conditions for delivering consistently on what shoppers value, and for tightening the delivery promise without raising operating cost.

Who owns delivery experience inside a retail org

For most of the past decade delivery has been treated as a downstream consequence of e-commerce strategy. When 29-42% of satisfaction sits in touchpoints that org charts treat as cost centers, that position becomes harder to hold.

What the data points toward is a shared operating model across three perspectives.

• Customer insight defines what matters, read sector by sector and retailer by retailer.
• Operational design makes the promise deliverable, redesigning touchpoints so operational performance becomes visible as customer value.
• Commercial orchestration makes the promise visible, selectable and measurable in the buying journey, with delivery options, pricing, defaults and communication tested and measured with the same rigor as assortment or checkout conversion.

Separated, these three turn delivery into a cost discussion. Working together, they turn it into a commercial discipline.

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Frequently asked questions

How much revenue is a better delivery experience worth?

A 20% improvement in delivery experience is modeled to generate 5-10% in additional sales, which points to 3-6 billion SEK annually across the five Swedish sectors studied.

How much of customer satisfaction is driven by delivery?

Delivery drives 29% to 42% of overall satisfaction with a retailer, depending on the sector, according to the Delivery Experience Index 2026, based on a survey of 5,000 Swedish online shoppers.

What is the Delivery Experience Index?

The Delivery Experience Index 2026 combines a nationally representative survey of 5,000 Swedish online shoppers with anonymized, aggregated platform data from across the Swedish retail landscape. It evaluates six delivery touchpoints and weights each one by its importance within a given sector.

What are the six delivery touchpoints?

Checkout, communication, delivery and collection, fulfillment execution, returns and claims, and customer service.

What share of orders use the default delivery option?

68% of orders complete on the retailer pre-selected delivery option, and 60% complete on whichever option is listed first at checkout.

Do shoppers pay extra for faster delivery?

17% of shoppers will pay extra for the fastest option, while 28% will pay extra for a slower but more convenient one and 32% pick the cheapest and accept the trade-off.

How often do deliveries arrive late?

16% of deliveries arrive after the promise window, and 42% of shoppers rank fast information on delays as critical.

About the Delivery Experience Index 2026

The study was conducted by Wahsel in partnership with Insitepart and Ingrid, and analyzed by Wahsel. It covers five sectors with 1,000 respondents each: pharmacy, beauty, clothing and footwear, sports and outdoor, and furniture and home. The beauty sample includes female shoppers only.

Respondents were recruited via online panels and quota-sampled to reflect the Swedish population, with no weighting applied. Qualifying respondents had purchased in the relevant sector within the past 12 months, and retailer-level evaluations were included only where they had bought from that retailer within the past three months.

The full paper includes the sector-by-sector weightings, the four recurring weak spots with their internal owners, and the sequenced approach in detail.

About Ingrid

Ingrid is the delivery intelligence platform that helps retailers design, A/B test and execute delivery strategy across the entire customer journey, from checkout to tracking to returns and exchanges. With 350+ carrier integrations and 250+ leading retailers on board including Paul Smith, Mint Velvet, Nordic Nest, Patta, Apoteket and NA-KD, Ingrid powers delivery across 170+ markets.