BONUS: What form of shipping is used?

While free shipping is the most desirable for shoppers, it can be an expensive proposition for retailers. 31% of Top 100 retailers have opted to leverage the perk of free shipping with a tactic used to increase average order values – threshold based free shipping: i.e. buy over $75 and get free shipping. Anecdotally, the most common threshold level for free shipping we saw was set at $50.

Sample sizes were too low to evaluate this tactic on a group-by-group basis, but overall those who offered real-time rate lookups had the highest conversion rate at 5.9%, followed by threshold at 5.5%, free at 4.6% and flat rate at 3.2%.

This wasn’t what we expected to see and believe shipping service levels come into play. Most free or threshold offers are for regular ground shipping, but we have no data to show us what mix of shoppers upgrade to premium shipping levels like overnight air.

Overall, almost half of Top 100 retailers handle shipping by doing a rate table lookup.

Note – rate table lookup included both real-time rate lookups from outside shipping vendors, and set rate tables created by the retailer.