Why the delivery day belongs next to the price

Almost every comparison site sorts on euros. The day the box arrives stays a sentence written by the shop. That sentence is sometimes true and sometimes a habit. WebshopXL is built to separate the two.

How many people this touches

Statistics Netherlands asked this in spring 2024, from April to July, of about 6,000 people aged 12 or older. 80.8 percent had bought something online in the three months before. They round that to 81 percent and count about 12.6 million people. Among people aged 25 to 45 it was 94 percent. Source: CBS, 29 November 2024.

Eurostat counts a different group and a different period. It looks at people who use the internet, and at the twelve months before the survey. In 2024, 77 percent of internet users in the EU had bought something online. In the Netherlands that was 94 percent. Ireland was at 96, Denmark at 91. Source: Eurostat, 20 February 2025, datasets isoc_ec_ibuy and isoc_ec_ib20.

Two surveys, two denominators. We do not mash them into one number. Both say that buying online in the Netherlands is ordinary, not a side hobby.

The spend is large. In the first half of 2025, consumers in the Netherlands spent over 17 billion euro online, in 168 million purchases. 144 million of those were products. The study is by NielsenIQ, for Thuiswinkel.org and Retail Insiders, with PostNL and the Dutch Payments Association. Source: Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor, first half of 2025.

The day is a different question from the price

Almost none of those purchases get an independent look at delivery time. The shop writes tomorrow, or 1 to 3 working days, and the visitor has to hope the warehouse keeps up with the sentence.

The Dutch consumer authority ACM is plain with sellers. Say before the purchase when you will deliver, and do what you promised. If you agree nothing, a 30-day period applies. A line like ordered today, delivered tomorrow is allowed only when you can keep it. Source: ACM, Delivery. The 30 days come from article 18 of Directive 2011/83/EU.

WebshopXL is not that seller. We show the date that follows from the cutoff, the stock and the carrier, and we store which date the visitor saw at the click. Later it is possible to see whether the parcel met that date. That is a measurement, not a guarantee to the buyer. The buyer keeps their rights against the shop.

Fast is not the same as useful

In August 2025 Thuiswinkel.org cited Sendcloud's E-commerce Delivery Compass. Sendcloud asked 8,000 European consumers, including 1,000 in the Netherlands, what they expect from delivery. Over 81 percent of the Dutch respondents preferred a time window to as fast as possible. More than half would rather receive the parcel after four in the afternoon. When people may pick a shipping option at checkout, the study mentions evening delivery (20.1 percent) and a chosen delivery day (23.6 percent). Source: Thuiswinkel.org, 21 August 2025.

We did not commission that study. We use it because it explains why a list sorted only on fastest is too coarse. That is why our screen shows the cutoff, the same-day window, evening delivery and the pickup point, not only a crown for the earliest day.

The order of the list has to be explainable

ConsuWijzer, the ACM's consumer desk, writes that an online purchase should show how the order of search results is decided. That follows from the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161. For shops found through a platform, the P2B Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 asks the same towards the business: the main ranking parameters, and a complaint path.

Our default order is the number of days until delivery, plus a penalty when the shop hits the promise less often. That penalty is (1 minus reliability) times 3. An offer older than 12 hours drops. A labelled place can be visible and does not count. The full explanation, including measured, stated and estimated, is on How we measure. The studies are listed in the sources.