Delivery charges are what a shop charges a customer to get an order to them, either as a separate line at the basket or built into the product price. UK retailers usually say delivery or postage and packaging (P&P); “shipping” is the American word, though many ecommerce platforms and Google’s own tools still use it.
How delivery charges work
Most shops use one or more of these structures:
| Structure | How it works | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Flat rate | One price for any standard order | Shops with similar-sized products |
| Weight or size bands | Price rises with the parcel | Mixed catalogues, bulky items |
| Speed tiers | Standard, next day or named day at different prices | Most consumer shops |
| Free over a threshold | Free once the basket passes a set value | Shops wanting larger baskets |
| Zone surcharges | Extra for areas such as the Scottish Highlands and Islands or Northern Ireland | Heavy or large goods |
The same rules have to live in two places: your shop platform, which calculates the charge in the basket, and Google Merchant Center, which shows delivery costs next to your products in Shopping ads and free listings. Merchant Center takes delivery settings at account level, or per product through the shipping attribute in your feed. If the two disagree, Google can disapprove products and shoppers see one price in the ad and another on the site.
Why it matters
A delivery charge that appears late is one of the most common reasons shoppers give for abandoning a basket, so it feeds straight into your cart abandonment rate. It is also a legal point. The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 require the total price, including delivery, to be clear before the order is placed, and prices shown to consumers must include VAT. A delivery charge normally takes the same VAT treatment as the goods it delivers.
The DMCC Act 2024 adds a stricter test: compulsory charges must be included in the headline price, and hiding them is drip pricing. How this applies to delivery has been debated, because the charge often depends on the customer’s address and the speed they choose. At the time of writing (October 2026), follow the CMA’s current guidance, and at the very least make delivery costs easy to find before anyone reaches the basket.
Common mistakes
- Revealing the delivery cost for the first time at the payment step.
- Advertising “free UK delivery” when the Highlands, Islands or Northern Ireland are excluded or surcharged. The claim has to be true for the whole UK, or the exclusions must be clear in the ad itself.
- Delivery costs in the Merchant Center feed that differ from those on the site.
- Setting a free delivery threshold without checking what it does to margin on orders just above it.
- No delivery information page, or one that has not been updated since carrier prices changed.
How to act on it
Put delivery options and prices on every product page, close to the price, and link to a full delivery page with a simple table of methods, costs, timings and any regional surcharges. If you offer free delivery over a set amount, show the shopper how far they are from it in the basket, and work out whether a free delivery threshold pays for itself before you set the figure.
Then make Google’s version match the site’s. When I set up Performance Max campaigns for online shops, the delivery settings in Merchant Center are checked against the live basket first, because a mismatch there causes disapprovals and lost clicks before the campaign has had a chance to work.