Some 73% of UK shoppers have experienced online packages that have gone missing

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Some 73% of UK shoppers have experienced online packages that have gone missing.

A new report has found that UK shoppers also suffer disproportionately from late or failed deliveries, with 73% affected, compared with just 66% of shoppers from the US.

German customers are comparatively better off with 48% of customers suffering a negative delivery experience, but that still amounts to nearly half of all shoppers.

The research from ecommerce data experts PCA Predict (a GBG company) also highlights the true cost implications of failed deliveries to online retailers and reveals that UK shoppers are more likely to experience lost or failed deliveries that those in the US or Germany.

PCA Predict polled over 300 retailers in the UK, US and Germany, and found that each British ecommerce retailer lost out on a staggering £183,000 a year through lost or failed deliveries, compared with £155,816.06 ($216,171) in the US and £107,538.30 (€121,804) in Germany.

The report found that over the last year alone, the average cost of per failed delivery to a retailer was £12.89 ($17.78). UK businesses in particular suffer from this, with 5.6% of orders not arriving at their destination, and an average cost of failed delivery to the retailer of £14.35 ($19.23).

Retailers realise the risk, with 65% of respondents said that failed or late deliveries are a significant cost to their business. The report found that following a failed delivery, 54% of retailers will refund the delivery charges to the customer, 54% will pay additional costs for redelivery, and over a third (38%) will offer the customer a discount as an apology.

How consumers feel about failed deliveries:

While failure to collect accurate customer address data was identified as the primary reason for orders not arriving on time, PCA Predict's report found that customers have such a low patience threshold for address entry that 61% would abandon their purchase if they encountered issues when entering their address details.

Cost of failed deliveries per region:

Average	Total	US	UK	Germany
Number of orders per year	227,834	278,109	228,524	176,345
% of failed deliveries	5%	4.7%	5.6%	4.6%
Cost per failed order	£12.81 ($17.78 / €14.51)	£11.95 ($16.58)	£14.33	£13.13 (€14.87)
Total failed delivery costs / year	£143,530.74 ($199,127 / €162471.70)	£155,816.06($216,171)	£183,132	£107,538.30 (€121,804)

Chris Boaz, ‎Head of Marketing of PCA Predict, (a GBG company) said: "If you consider that one in twenty of all online orders don't make it to the intended recipient first time, these costs quickly build up. Failed deliveries not only carry cost implications, they can also cause significant damage to the retailer's brand reputation, resulting in loss of repeat custom and failure to attract new customers."

"To mitigate against the issues caused by incorrect address data, retailers need to implement verification solutions that allow customers to provide as accurate data as possible. It's essential that online retailers facilitate a streamlined user experience that ensures customers can go through the checkout process with ease. Removing this friction from the checkout process will play a huge part in fixing failed deliveries, to the joy of both online retailers and customers."