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Picture the scene. A shopper spends twenty minutes comparing products, reads the reviews, picks a size, adds two items to the cart — and then, at the last screen, closes the tab and buys nothing. No error message. No complaint. Just a sale that never happened.
It happens far more often than most sellers realise. DHL's 2026 E-Commerce Trends Report, built on answers from 29,000 online shoppers and 5,800 e-commerce businesses across 29 countries, puts a number on it: only about a quarter of shoppers say they never abandon a cart. Everyone else has walked away at checkout at least once — and the reasons they give are remarkably consistent. Delivery comes first. Then a surprise bill. Then a payment method that isn't there.
This is not a story about shoppers being fickle. It is a story about the last ten minutes of a sale doing more damage than the first ten days of marketing. And with Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, the timing of the findings could hardly matter more.
The numbers behind the headline
The survey ran between December 15, 2025 and February 11, 2026, covering shoppers and businesses in Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. It was published by DHL in June 2026, and a fresh write-up of its findings appeared on November 8. The report's central theme is a gap: what shoppers expect and what businesses actually deliver are drifting apart, and the gap shows up most sharply at checkout.
Four figures carry the story. Two in three shoppers — 67% — say they have abandoned a purchase because the delivery offering did not meet their expectations. Almost as many, 63%, have walked away over unexpected customs or tax charges. Nearly as many again, 62%, left because their preferred payment method was not available. And 65% have abandoned a purchase because the product was out of stock or unavailable. Shoppers could pick more than one reason, so the numbers overlap — but the pattern is clear. The sale is usually lost on logistics, cost surprises, or a missing payment button, not on the product itself.
For scale, the Baymard Institute's long-running research puts the average documented online cart abandonment rate at 70.22%. In other words, roughly seven out of ten carts never become orders. DHL's figures explain why.
Delivery is the deal-breaker
Delivery is the single biggest reason carts are abandoned, and the report shows it is not really about speed alone. Shoppers abandon purchases when delivery is too expensive, too slow, or simply unclear. A delivery date that says "3–7 working days" tells a buyer almost nothing. A shipping fee that appears only at the final step feels like a trick, even when it isn't one.
Free shipping is the strongest single encouragement to complete a purchase, according to the shoppers surveyed. That puts sellers in a genuine bind: someone has to pay for the van, the fuel and the courier, and free shipping is never actually free. The report's point is subtler than "make it free." It is that delivery terms should be visible early, honest, and offered as a choice — standard, express, and pickup — rather than revealed as a surprise at the end.
Trust in the delivery itself matters as much as the price. Seven in ten shoppers say they will not shop with a brand if they do not trust its delivery and returns provider. The same share say they will abandon their cart if they are not offered the delivery and returns options they want at checkout. One in five shoppers say faster delivery would encourage them to complete a purchase, and three in ten now look to out-of-home delivery — lockers and pickup points — to fit around their day.
The American slice of the survey sharpens the picture. Among 1,000 US shoppers, 93% describe themselves as convenience shoppers who want fast, free delivery and easy returns above everything else. More than half — 57% — say what they most want to see in the next five years is same-day or even faster delivery and returns. Pablo Ciano, global chief executive of DHL eCommerce, summed it up plainly: "American shoppers are clear about what they want: speed, transparency, and trust."
The surprise bill at the border
The second-biggest abandonment trigger is the one sellers control least and explain worst: unexpected customs or tax charges. Almost two in three shoppers — 63% — say such a charge has made them abandon a purchase. Only 45% of businesses recognise it as a reason customers leave, which means most sellers are losing cross-border sales without knowing why.
This is not an abstract problem any more. The United States ended its de minimis exemption for low-value parcels in August 2025, so shipments that used to enter duty-free now attract charges. The European Union has been moving in the same direction with a new per-parcel handling fee. For a buyer, the result is the same: a price agreed on the product page turns out not to be the price at all, and the extra charge arrives as a demand from the courier or the customs office, sometimes after the parcel is already in transit.
The fix is not complicated, but it is work. Sellers who show the full landed cost — product, shipping, duties and taxes — before the buyer reaches the payment screen convert better than sellers who let the courier deliver the bad news. Where the exact duty cannot be calculated, saying so clearly, with a realistic range, beats silence. A shopper who knows the total cost in advance can decide. A shopper who discovers it afterwards feels misled, and misled shoppers rarely come back.
"We don't take your card"
The third trigger is the most avoidable of all. Almost two in three shoppers — 62% — have abandoned a purchase because their preferred payment method was unavailable. Only 45% of businesses recognise this as a driver of abandonment. The gap is 17 points wide, and it is pure lost revenue: the buyer wanted to pay, had the money, and left because the store did not accept the way they pay.
Payment habits are deeply local. A buyer in Germany may expect to pay by invoice or bank transfer. A buyer in the Netherlands reaches for iDEAL. A buyer in Pakistan or India may want cash on delivery or a local wallet. A buyer in Brazil expects instalments. Every market has a default, and every missing default is a closed door. Adding a payment method has real costs — transaction fees, fraud exposure, reconciliation work — so the sensible approach is to measure first: look at which payment options customers actually ask for, test one addition at a time, and compare completed orders against the cost of offering it.
The same logic applies to discount codes, which create their own special frustration. More than half of shoppers — 57% — have abandoned a purchase because a code did not work or was invalid, while only 39% of businesses see this as a reason. A code promoted on social media that fails at checkout does double damage: it loses the sale and it teaches the customer that the brand's promises do not hold. Testing eligibility rules on both phone and desktop, making exclusions visible, and taking expired codes down promptly costs nothing and saves sales.
The other four leaks
Delivery, customs and payments are the headline three, but the report names four more reasons carts are abandoned, and together they describe a checkout that fails in quiet, ordinary ways.
Stock comes first. Almost two in three shoppers — 65% — have abandoned a purchase because the product was out of stock or unavailable, making it the top reason among American shoppers specifically, at 68%. Nothing frustrates a buyer more than choosing a product, entering an address, and only then learning it cannot be had. Live stock levels on the product page, honest "back in stock" dates, and a working notify-me option turn a lost sale into a later one.
Returns come second. Well over half of shoppers — 58% — have abandoned a purchase because of the returns offering. A returns policy buried in fine print, a short window, or a return that costs the buyer money all read as risk. Free and simple returns are expensive for the seller, but the report suggests they function as a conversion tool, not just a cost centre: shoppers buy more readily when they know they can send something back without a fight.
Discount codes, covered above, come third at 57%. And fourth is the one that will surprise older sellers most: 35% of shoppers have abandoned a purchase over a lack of sustainability credentials, and 32% of businesses say their customers have done the same. A third of buyers now check, at least sometimes, whether the packaging is recyclable, whether the delivery is offset, or whether the product is built to last. It is not the top reason, but it is no longer a niche one either.
The perception gap
Read the two columns of the report side by side and one pattern repeats on every single reason: businesses underestimate it. Delivery: 67% of shoppers, 52% of businesses. Customs charges: 63% against 45%. Payment methods: 62% against 45%. Discount codes: 57% against 39%. Sustainability: 35% against 32%.
That gap is the real finding. A store can see that a visitor left during checkout, but it cannot see why. Was the shipping price too high? Was the buyer interrupted? Did they intend to buy later? The two survey groups were not matched to the same transactions, so the report is comparing what shoppers say with what sellers observe — and sellers consistently observe less of the problem than shoppers report. A business that trusts only its own analytics will conclude its checkout is fine, because its analytics cannot show the reasons people leave. The survey is the corrective lens.
The gap extends to channels as well. Nearly three in four shoppers — 72% — are app-first, browsing and buying mainly through apps, yet only 38% of businesses offer browsing and buying through their own app. Businesses sell across an average of three platforms, and 63% sell on social media, but only 45% of shoppers buy through social channels. Sellers are chasing reach where shoppers are choosing trust: reviews, customer content and honest product information influence purchases more than paid promotion, according to the report.
What this actually means
Three conclusions follow from the data, and they matter more than any single percentage.
First, the checkout is now the product. For most of e-commerce history, the work of selling ended when the buyer clicked "add to cart." The report says the opposite: the final screen is where the sale is won or lost, and the deciding factors are operational — delivery options, landed cost, payment choice, stock accuracy — rather than marketing. A store can spend heavily on ads and still leak most of its traffic at the last step, because the ad did its job and the checkout did not. The businesses that win the next few years will be the ones that treat checkout as a product in its own right, measured, tested and improved like any other.
Second, trust has become a logistics question. Seven in ten shoppers will not buy from a brand whose delivery and returns provider they do not trust — a figure that puts the courier's reputation on the same level as the brand's own. That is a strange new world for sellers who think of delivery as a back-office cost. It also explains why scams thrive in the same space: when delivery is the moment of truth, a fake tracking page or a bogus courier message is the easiest way to exploit a buyer. Shoppers who know how online shopping scams work are harder to fool, and sellers who use recognisable, trackable delivery partners borrow trust they could not build alone.
Third, the festive season just proved the economics. India's Diwali shopping window, which ran from early October to November 4, produced a useful natural experiment. Unicommerce, which processes orders for Indian retailers, reported more than 138 million order items across the full festive window, with 85% of orders valued below ₹1,000 — roughly $11. Quick commerce order volumes grew 85% in the first week alone, far ahead of marketplaces at 26% and brand websites at 27%. Flipkart said orders on its Big Billion Days grew 20 to 22%, and Amazon said its Great Indian Festival volumes rose by more than half. The pattern is the same everywhere: order values are shrinking while delivery expectations are rising. When the average order is worth $11, a $3 delivery fee is not a minor add-on — it is nearly a third of the basket. Cheap goods and expensive delivery do not mix, and the sellers who solve that arithmetic first will take the volume. The same split is likely to show up in the Singles' Day 2026 numbers on November 11, and again on Black Friday.
Seven fixes before Black Friday
Adobe forecasts US online holiday spending of $275.1 billion between November 1 and December 31, up 6.7% on last year, with $12.9 billion expected on Black Friday alone and $15.1 billion on Cyber Monday. The traffic is coming. The question is how much of it survives checkout. Seven changes, drawn directly from the report's findings, cover most of the leaks.
1. Show the full price early. Put delivery costs, duties and taxes on the product page or in the cart, not at the final step. A buyer who sees the true total early can still decide to buy. A buyer who discovers it late feels tricked.
2. Offer three delivery choices, not one. Standard, express and a pickup or locker option. One in five shoppers say faster delivery would make them complete a purchase, and three in ten want out-of-home delivery. Choice converts; a single take-it-or-leave-it option does not.
3. Add the payment method your customers actually ask for. Check support messages and failed-checkout notes, then add the single most-requested option first. Test it for a month and compare completed orders against the cost. Our Black Friday 2026 shopping guide covers the season's dates, deal patterns and the traps to avoid alongside these checkout fixes.
4. Fix stock honesty. Show real stock on the product page, flag low stock accurately, and offer a working back-in-stock notification instead of letting buyers discover an empty shelf at checkout. In the US data, stock was the number-one abandonment reason of all.
5. Make returns boring. A short, plain-language returns promise — free, 30 days, no questions — removes a reason to hesitate. Put it next to the buy button, not in a footer link.
6. Test every discount code before promoting it. Run each code on a phone and a desktop, check its exclusions, and pull expired codes from every channel the same day they expire. A dead code at checkout is a broken promise in front of a customer who was ready to pay.
7. Walk your own checkout. Place a real test order from a phone, on mobile data, exactly as a customer would — product page to confirmation, including fees, delivery estimates and payment errors. DHL's report recommends exactly this, and it is the fastest way to find the friction your analytics cannot see. Fix what you find before the Black Friday traffic arrives, not after it has already left.
A short note for shoppers
The report is written for businesses, but shoppers can use it too. If a store hides its delivery fee until the last screen, treats returns as a favour, or cannot tell you the total cost including duties before you pay, that is information about the store. Compare the landed cost, not the headline price. Check the returns window before you buy, not after. And if a discount code fails, assume the store's systems are sloppy in other places too — because usually, they are.
Frequently asked questions
What is cart abandonment?
Cart abandonment is when a shopper adds products to an online shopping cart but leaves the website without completing the purchase. Research by the Baymard Institute puts the average documented abandonment rate at 70.22%, meaning roughly seven in ten carts never become orders. It is one of the most closely watched numbers in e-commerce because it measures sales lost after the buyer has already chosen to buy.
Why do most shoppers abandon their carts?
According to DHL's 2026 E-Commerce Trends Report, the leading reason is delivery: 67% of shoppers have abandoned a purchase because the delivery offering did not meet their expectations. Close behind are products being out of stock (65%), unexpected customs or tax charges (63%), and a preferred payment method being unavailable (62%). More than half also cite the returns offering (58%) and discount codes that do not work (57%).
Does free shipping really increase sales?
Free shipping is the single most frequently cited encouragement to complete a purchase in DHL's survey, which covered 29,000 shoppers in 29 countries. That does not mean every store should offer it on every order — someone always pays for delivery. The practical versions are a free-shipping threshold, free delivery on orders above a set value, or free pickup. The key finding is that delivery cost shown late, or not at all until checkout, is what kills sales.
Why are customs charges causing more abandoned carts in 2026?
Cross-border rules changed. The United States ended its de minimis exemption for low-value parcels in August 2025, and the European Union has been introducing per-parcel handling fees. Charges that used to be waived now land on the buyer, often as a surprise demand from the courier after the order is placed. DHL found 63% of shoppers have abandoned a purchase over such charges, while only 45% of businesses recognise the problem — so many sellers are losing international sales without knowing the cause.
How can small sellers reduce cart abandonment?
Start with the cheapest fixes: show the full landed cost before checkout, offer at least two or three delivery options, add the payment method customers ask for most, and display honest stock levels. Then test every discount code before promoting it and place a real test order on a phone to find hidden friction. None of these require new technology — they require treating the checkout as carefully as the product page.
Is cart abandonment getting worse?
The headline rate has stayed roughly steady — Baymard's average is around 70% — but the reasons are shifting. Delivery expectations keep rising, cross-border charges are new for many buyers, and shoppers are increasingly buying on phones and through apps, where a clumsy checkout loses them faster. The sellers losing ground are not the ones with the worst products; they are the ones whose checkout has not kept up with what buyers now expect.
Sources
- DHL — 2026 E-Commerce Trends Report (29,000 shoppers and 5,800 businesses across 29 countries; surveyed December 15, 2025 – February 11, 2026)
- DHL Group — DHL E-Commerce Trends Report 2026: Old rules don't apply in the age of AI (press release, June 2, 2026)
- Market Business News — Delivery and payment choices can stop online sales at checkout, DHL survey finds (November 8, 2026)
- Chain Store Age — DHL: Here's why online shoppers abandon carts (July 1, 2026; US findings)
- Post & Parcel — DHL: American shoppers are clear about what they want: speed, transparency, and trust (June 26, 2026)
- Saras Analytics — 25 Ecommerce Conversion Rate Statistics for 2026 (Baymard Institute 70.22% average cart abandonment rate; DHL figures)
- Unicommerce festive-season data via Medium — The ₹1,000 ceiling (November 8, 2026; 138 million order items, 85% below ₹1,000, quick commerce +85%)
For sellers building an online store, Digital Selling Point covers the tools and services that turn browsers into buyers — starting with a checkout that does not lose them.