At a glance
Order distribution by free-shipping vs paid-shipping. The promotional-cost view: how many orders are subsidising delivery, and what is the cost share of free shipping in the operating model?
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Shopify data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK DTC apparel brand on Shopify, free-shipping threshold £50. Period: 12 Apr 26 to 11 May 26. AOV £62.
Five things to notice:
- 80% free-shipping share is high but consistent with the £50 threshold. With AOV £62 sitting above the threshold, most orders qualify for free shipping. This is not a problem; it is the policy working. The cost is the foregone shipping revenue: a paid-shipping equivalent at £3.95 × 1,584 = £6,256/month not collected.
- Lowering the threshold pushes free share up; raising it pushes share down and AOV up. A common test: raise threshold from £50 to £65, expect free-share to drop to 60-70% and AOV to rise to £70+. Whether net revenue improves depends on conversion-rate sensitivity. Pair with AOV and Conversion Rate when adjusting.
- Next-day at 4.1% is the urgency-buyer indicator. These customers paid £8.95 for next-day delivery; they are time-sensitive shoppers. AOV in this segment is typically higher (urgent-need buyers don’t price-shop). Worth merchandising premium products to these customers via post-purchase email.
- Shipping revenue is meaningful: £1,966 in 30 days, £23,592 annualised. That offsets a non-trivial share of fulfillment cost. Brands with high free-shipping share often forget shipping is a revenue line, not just a cost line.
- POS local-pickup excluded by intent here. This brand has no retail; if it did, POS / pickup orders would all bucket as free (£0 shipping). For omnichannel brands, the headline free-share is inflated by pickup orders; filter to delivery-only for a clean view.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Free-vs-paid is a single dimension of shipping economics. Pair with these:Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Shopify Admin: Analytics → Reports → “Sales by shipping method” shows shipping methods with their associated revenue. To get the free-vs-paid split, filter to free-shipping methods and aggregate. There is no single dedicated free-vs-paid tile. Other Shopify Admin views:- Settings → Shipping & delivery: shows configured rates and zones.
- Apps like Bold Shipping, ShipperHQ: surface richer shipping-method analytics.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
This is a Shopify-internal shipping metric. Indirect cross-connector signals:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why is my free-shipping share so high? Three usual causes:- Threshold below AOV. If your free-shipping threshold is below your typical AOV, most orders qualify automatically. This is mechanical, not a problem.
- Always-on free-shipping campaign. Some brands run perpetual free-shipping; the bucket dominates by design.
- B2B contractual free shipping. B2B orders with negotiated rates often have £0 shipping, inflating the free-bucket share.
- Raise the free-shipping threshold (most direct lever).
- Make free shipping promo-only rather than always-on.
- Offer paid premium shipping (next-day, two-day) as an option above the free standard.
- Check whether a free-shipping promotion launched / ended.
- Check whether the threshold was changed.
- Check whether AOV moved (a rising AOV pushes more orders over threshold automatically).
- If unexpected, audit checkout flow; a configuration change may have broken paid-shipping methods.