Top sellers in Germany could improve shipping transparency

Many major online retailers in Germany leave customers in the dark about how long they will have to wait for their products to be delivered. Personalized delivery time windows are especially scarce, even though consumers would appreciate them. “The desire for specific delivery times remains largely unmet.”

This is the conclusion of Lars Hofacker, ecommerce expert at the EHI Retail Institute and author of an online retail report on Germany. He examined the logistics information provided by 500 major online stores.

Shipping information

Almost all of them offer an information page about shipping, but only 60 percent mention an average delivery time. Shoppers who want to quickly check how long delivery typically takes will not find that information in the place where it logically belongs. On the product level, the information is better: nearly 80 percent of the surveyed online stores provide an estimated delivery time on product pages.

40% do not provide a clear average delivery time

Personalized delivery time windows

Personal delivery windows are far from common in Germany: only 6 percent of the 500 largest online retailers offer this service. This leaves an important consumer wish unfulfilled, according to researcher Hofacker. Other studies – including one from the Netherlands earlier this year – already showed that shoppers value punctuality over speed. However, most German online stores seem to lack the scale or resources to invest in such services. That could change now that ecommerce in Germany is picking up again after years of decline.

Click & collect

More than half of the 500 online stores in EHI’s study (56 percent) have at least one physical store. Yet only around a third (34 percent) offer a click & collect service. Even fewer online sellers (22 percent) inform shoppers about the possibility of buying a product in a physical store if it is sold out online.

Free shipping and returns

The study also reveals that 9 percent of the top online stores in Germany require a minimum order value just to place an order. The same percentage always offer free shipping – a phenomenon that has been declining, according to earlier EHI research. More than half of the 500 online stores (52 percent) in the latest study offer free shipping from a certain order amount.

Most online stores offer conditional free shipping

Returns are always free at two-thirds of the online retailers, while the remaining third requires customers to cover return shipping themselves. Remarkably, only 23 percent of those online stores clearly state in advance how much return shipping will cost the customer.