Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
Merchants search for a single shipping-cost percentage to budget against, but the public datasets that actually exist measure postal rate structure, conversion rate, and retail sales growth separately, and none of them hands over the one number the search term implies.
A merchant types “shipping cost report” expecting a single percentage, something like “stores spend X percent of order value on shipping,” and that number does not exist in any public dataset checked for this piece. What exists instead is three separate measurement systems that each capture a piece of the picture: postal rate tables that adjust specific mail classes, retail sales series that track growth quarter over quarter, and conversion benchmarks that measure how many visits turn into orders. None of them multiply together into a shipping cost ratio without a merchant doing that math on their own numbers, and treating any one of them as a standalone shipping benchmark produces a wrong answer dressed up as a precise one.
The US Census Bureau’s quarterly e-commerce retail sales release, loaded October 21, 2026, reports percentage changes in online and total retail sales from one quarter to the next. One comparison in the release shows a 0.4 percent change from the first quarter of 2026, and a separate comparison in the same release shows a 0.2 percent change from the first quarter of 2026, reflecting different series within the same report. Looking further back, the release also compares results against the second quarter of 2025, with total retail sales up 6.7 percent in one instance and 6.6 percent in another, again depending on which series line is being read. These figures measure how much is being sold, not what it costs to ship it, and a reader searching for shipping spend will find sales growth instead because that is what the Census release actually contains.
Notice 123, the USPS table of rates, weights, and dimensions, was checked October 22, 2026, and it does not contain a general shipping cost figure either. It lists category-specific adjustments: authorized publications receive a 5 percent rate, a nonadvertising adjustment factor of 1 percent applies per unit for a defined mail category, and a single issue purchased outside a subscription carries a 90 percent price relative to the table’s reference point. These three figures sit in the same rate table but govern different situations entirely, and none of them is a general-purpose shipping surcharge that a typical e-commerce store would apply to a parcel. A merchant comparing carrier costs needs the rate line that matches their actual mail class, not an average across unrelated categories.
| Source | What it measures | Figure found |
|---|---|---|
| Census quarterly e-commerce release | Online sales change from Q1 2026 | 0.4 percent |
| Census quarterly e-commerce release | Online sales change from Q1 2026 (separate series) | 0.2 percent |
| Census quarterly e-commerce release | Total retail sales change from Q2 2025 | 6.7 percent |
| Census quarterly e-commerce release | Total retail sales change from Q2 2025 (separate series) | 6.6 percent |
| USPS Notice 123 | Authorized publication rate | 5 percent |
| USPS Notice 123 | Nonadvertising adjustment factor | 1 percent |
| USPS Notice 123 | Single issue price relative to table reference | 90 percent |
| Shopify conversion benchmark | Global ecommerce conversion rate, Q1 2026 | 1.4 percent |
Shopify’s conversion rate benchmark page, checked October 22, 2026, walks through worked examples rather than a shipping figure. One example states that if 1,000 visits produce 50 orders, the conversion rate is 50 divided by 1,000, or 5 percent. A second example uses 1,000 visits and 20 purchases to arrive at 2 percent. The page also cites a global reference point, noting that 1.4 percent of e-commerce visits converted into purchases in Q1 2026. The same page recommends segmenting orders by price range, giving under $50, $50 to $200, and above $200 as example bands, so that a single sitewide conversion number does not obscure how different order sizes behave. None of this addresses what percentage of an order’s value goes to shipping, but the page ranks well for broad e-commerce benchmark searches, which is likely why it surfaces for shipping-cost queries too.
MailerLite’s email marketing benchmark report, checked October 22, 2026, lists an open rate of 43.14 percent for the authors category. Shipping confirmation and tracking update emails are a form of transactional email, and general email benchmark reports sometimes get surfaced alongside logistics searches because of that overlap, even though the authors category figure has no direct connection to shipping cost or shipping email performance specifically. A merchant trying to measure how well their shipping notification emails perform would need an open rate benchmark for transactional or logistics email specifically, which this dataset does not break out.
The numbers in this piece were taken directly from four public documents: the Census Bureau’s quarterly e-commerce retail sales page as loaded October 21, 2026, and the USPS Notice 123 rate table, Shopify’s conversion rate benchmark page, and MailerLite’s email benchmark page, all as loaded October 22, 2026. A merchant who wants an actual shipping cost ratio should pull their own order volume and total shipping spend from their store’s reports and divide one by the other, then compare that figure against carrier rate tables like Notice 123 for the specific mail class being used. No published report combines these into one number, so building it from a store’s own data is the only path to an answer that means anything.
Not under the search term most merchants use. The Shopify conversion benchmark page addresses conversion rate, not shipping spend, and gives a worked example where 50 of 1,000 visits convert to a 5 percent rate, and another where 20 of 1,000 visits convert to 2 percent. The global reference point it cites is 1.4 percent of e-commerce visits converting to purchase in Q1 2026. None of these figures describe what a store pays carriers, so a search for a shipping cost report on Shopify's own materials returns conversion data instead.
It lists rate adjustment factors tied to specific mail categories rather than a flat shipping percentage. The table includes a 5 percent rate for authorized publications, a 1 percent nonadvertising adjustment factor applied per unit, and a 90 percent price for a single issue bought outside a subscription. These are postal rate mechanics, not a retail shipping cost benchmark, and they apply to a narrow slice of mail classes rather than general parcel shipping.
No. The Census Bureau's quarterly e-commerce retail sales release tracks total and online retail sales growth, not carrier spend. The most recent comparisons show changes of 0.4 percent and 0.2 percent from the first quarter of 2026 depending on the series, and a separate pair of comparisons against the second quarter of 2025 showing total retail sales up 6.7 percent in one release and 6.6 percent in another. These numbers describe sales volume, which is the base a shipping cost ratio would need, but the ratio itself is not in the release.
Because shipping cost confirmation and tracking emails get folded into general email marketing benchmark reports, and search engines surface those pages for adjacent terms. MailerLite's benchmark table puts the open rate for the authors category at 43.14 percent, which has no direct bearing on shipping spend but often appears alongside logistics content because shipping notification emails are a subset of transactional email.
Track the inputs separately: order volume from a sales report, parcel weight and class from the carrier's own rate table, and conversion rate from site analytics segmented by order value, the way Shopify's benchmark guidance recommends splitting orders under $50, between $50 and $200, and above $200. Combining those three series by hand produces a store-specific shipping cost ratio that no published benchmark will hand over directly.