David Brackin is a contributing editor to ChannelX and founder of StuffUSell. Today he shares his own experiences and thoughts on the presentation by Richard Lim which was based on insights from the Retail Economics and GFS Annual Basket Abandonment Report 2025. The report found that retailers have a £38bn Gap and it’s all down to shoppers that don’t complete checkout!
I nearly bought £50 of motor oil on eBay last week. All I wanted was to tap and pay with my saved Amex card. But at checkout, eBay wouldn’t accept it. A minute later I’d bought the same oil from Amazon. Frictionless, familiar, done.
That decision, a small inconvenience triggering a big switch, turns out to be far more common than we admit. According to Richard Lim of Retail Economics, last-minute basket abandonment is costing UK retailers an eye-watering £38.3bn annually. That’s nearly a quarter of potential ecommerce revenue left stranded at checkout.
Bleary Eyes and Brutal Truths
This was the sobering message delivered on Day Two of Linn Academy, as Lim took the stage before an audience clutching coffee after the previous night’s customer appreciation party ran late. The room may have been slower to stir, but the presentation didn’t pull its punches.
Lim laid out the findings from the latest Retail Economics and GFS report, based on a survey of 2,000 UK consumers and over 100 ecommerce businesses with turnovers from £3m to £500m+. The headline: even high-value, repeat customers are ditching full baskets at least once a month.
The Delivery Disconnect
The reasons will be familiar to anyone running an online shop:
- 65% of Gen Z shoppers say they abandon baskets monthly
- The main culprits are poor delivery options, complex checkout journeys and rigid returns policies
- Nearly half of all abandonments are driven by limited or costly delivery choices
And it’s not just Gen Z. Millennials come in at 59%, and those of us in Gen X are still abandoning carts regularly when delivery (or payment!) doesn’t match expectations. Customers expect fast, cheap, flexible delivery. If you can’t offer it, they will go elsewhere.
Two Generations, Two Journeys
Lim used consumer journey maps to illustrate the growing complexity. His mum might have seen a TV ad, popped into M&S, then bought from John Lewis. Her grand-daughter, by contrast, begins on TikTok, researches across Zara, H&M, Google and Nike, adds to basket, then abandons when delivery or returns fall short. She might reappear on TikTok to resell or complain.
This is the modern purchase path: disjointed, impatient and increasingly unforgiving.
Small Sellers, Big Challenges
So why the gap? Retailers are overwhelmed. Particularly smaller ones. Managing multiple channels and carriers is hard enough without trying to compete with Amazon on speed, price and convenience. Lim called this the widening delivery gap, where consumer expectation outpaces operational capability.
He proposed a framework called Adaptive Commerce, a model for building resilience and agility into retail operations. But for many, that might feel more like a stretch goal than an immediate solution.
What Retailers Can Do
There are still pragmatic steps you can take:
- Simplify checkout and offer all major payment methods
- Provide multiple delivery options and make them clear up front
- Design returns to be easy, not just compliant
- Track where and why customers abandon and act on it
It doesn’t take an enterprise logistics team to close the gap. But it does take awareness and action.
Takeaway
Every abandoned basket is a customer telling you they almost bought from you. With £38bn at stake, this isn’t a marginal issue. As Lim reminded us at Linn Academy, it’s not just about what you sell. It’s about whether your customer journey earns the sale.
So where in your checkout are you losing £50 orders?
