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‘When will I get it?’ — How retailers can answer the most important question in eCommerce

Ana Ortiz - October 16, 2025
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Consumers are shopping online more than ever before, and with global eCommerce sales projected to top $5.5 trillion by 2027, shoppers are also dealing with more deliveries than ever. 

For every single purchase they make, they also ask the same fundamental question before they click “buy”: “When will I get it?”

As eCommerce becomes the dominant channel, the answer to that question has become a critical purchase driver.

For a decade, retail chased raw speed. But today, reliability wins. 

Consumers increasingly prefer on-time deliveries they can plan around, not just the fastest theoretical option. In fact, research highlights a clear shift: many consumers will happily wait for a more reliable delivery date to avoid extra costs, and rank delivery transparency just behind price as the most important factor in their purchase decision.

This trend will only be compounded as the future of search, and agentic commerce, promises to provide even more accurate delivery dates and makes vague offers like “get it faster” feel like empty promises.

It will also lead to Estimated Delivery Date (EDD) becoming a critical ranking signal. 

If your delivery promises are vague or frequently wrong, it’s not just that customers will complain, but AI systems, like those in ChatGPT, will learn to recommend someone else.

Here’s how to tackle this pressing issue.

The psychology of delivery promises

First and foremost, it’s important to understand the psychology behind what’s driving your customer’s buying decisions.

Uncertainty kills conversion. 

Vague “5–10 business days” windows erode trust and push customers to abandon carts, even when the price is competitive.

Today’s shoppers expect:

  • Clear “arrives by” dates in the product page and checkout (not just a tracking link later).

  • Accuracy backed by real, past performance trends (not optimistic guesses).

  • Real‑time updates if conditions change.

In the context of agentic commerce, these expectations also guide machine-learning recommendations. Accurate, reliable EDDs help your listings surface; unreliable promises push them down.

Why marketplaces have bigger challenges

Delivering accurate delivery promises is challenging when every order can originate from a different seller, warehouse or carrier. These challenges are compounded by:

  • Thousands of sellers with varying lead times and reliability.

  • Carrier performance that changes by route, season and context.

  • Manual seller‑configured promises that skew too conservative (lost sales) or too optimistic (broken promises).

Mirakl’s internal analysis shows that more than 70% of marketplace delivery promises are inaccurate, leaving revenue on the table (too conservative) or damaging trust (too optimistic). 

The operational load is real: auditing sellers, chasing tracking issues and firefighting late deliveries consumes time and margin. 

Meanwhile, leaders like Amazon and Walmart continuously compute, and tune, EDD using actual performance, sometimes overriding seller inputs. That’s the bar consumers are beginning to expect, and agentic commerce will only further raise those expectations.

The cost of inaccurate delivery dates

The consequences of inaccurate delivery dates aren’t just theoretical. In the real world, they have direct impacts on teams through a retailers organization, from customer service to finance.

In practice that looks like:

  • An influx of “Where’s my order?” (WISMO) inquiries that overwhelm support teams, reduce margins and harm efficiency.

  • More negative reviews and decreased net promoter scores (NPS) resulting  from missed or late deliveries.

  • Higher cart abandonment when delivery windows lack credibility.

Furthermore, according to Ipsos, 85% of shoppers won’t return after a bad delivery experience.

And it’s not just a customer experience issue — it’s a bottom-line issue, too. Every unnecessary support ticket, every lost sale, is a direct hit to growth.

Why real‑time tracking isn’t enough

Post‑purchase tracking is necessary, but it doesn’t influence the buying decision. 

Rather, the differentiator is upstream: a credible, data‑backed “arrives by” promise on the product page and at checkout. If you can’t answer “when” before the click, shoppers — and soon, shopping agents — will choose a retailer who can.

Beyond speed: the macro forces you can’t ignore

Shifting from “fastest possible” to “reliably on time” isn’t just a consumer preference — it’s a response to forces outside any single retailer’s control. 

Macroeconomic pressure and changing consumer values are resetting the rules of fulfillment. To compete, retailers need delivery promises that balance cost, transparency and sustainability without undermining the customer experience. Two dynamics in particular are reshaping what “good” looks like:

  • Cost inflation: Carrier and postal price increases, plus global logistics volatility, make “fast at any cost” unsustainable for many retailers.

  • Sustainability: A meaningful share of consumers now weighs environmental impact; smarter, not always faster, fulfillment often reduces waste and emissions, without sacrificing satisfaction.

The solution: Predictive estimated delivery dates

Predictive EDD replaces guesswork with evidence. By analyzing real‑world seller and carrier performance, retailers can forecast a reliable, order‑level “arrives by” or “delivery between” date.

Predictive EDD benefits everyone involved in the purchase journey, from shoppers to sellers and operators:

  • For shoppers, EDD provides confidence and better planning at the moment of purchase.

  • For operators, EDD provides fewer escalations, fewer WISMO tickets and fewer manual overrides.

  • For sellers, EDD provides clear benchmarks and guidance to improve their fulfillment setups.

Across Mirakl beta testers, activating AI‑powered EDD doubled on‑time deliveries (2.3x improvement) and cut late deliveries by 50% versus static configurations — directly lifting trust and conversion. 

These are exactly the kinds of results that matter to customers and to agentic systems optimizing for satisfaction.

Why “building” it yourself is harder than it looks

Retailers excited about the prospects of predictive EDD might be eager to engage their engineering teams to start to build this functionality out in-house. But, the reality is that path is a long and risky one.

Replicating promise accuracy in‑house typically demands:

  • Data engineering to unify multi‑seller, multi‑carrier signals with sufficient depth and quality.

  • Building and maintaining predictive models with monitoring and retraining.

  • Integrating dozens, or even hundreds, of carriers, taking on event normalization and exception handling, and dealing with an influx of notifications.

  • Creating robust product pages  & checkout UX with safeguards and fallbacks..

  • Accepting a long time‑to‑market while competitors continue to gain momentum.

All while the ecosystem, and agentic commerce adoption, continues to accelerate.

Mirakl’s approach: delivery intelligence built for marketplaces

Every marketplace should have access to reliable delivery promises — without building a data science team or stitching together complex integrations. 

That’s why we built Mirakl Delivery Manager (MDM): marketplace‑native delivery intelligence that unifies shipment data, automates compliance and now offers predictive EDD.

With MDM, retailers can:

  • Provide reliable delivery promises at scale, across any number of sellers and carriers.

  • Keep customers informed with proactive, carrier‑based updates.

  • Reduce manual work through tracking‑ID validation and automated status updates.

  • Use out‑of‑the‑box analytics to see where predictions apply and how they perform.

  • Prepare for agentic commerce, with accurate EDDs that help listings surface and convert.

The bottom-line benefits of getting “when” right

In a world where everything is available everywhere, brands are remembered for keeping their promises. 

Speed still matters, but reliability, transparency and cost‑smart operations matter more. 

The question “When will I get it?” isn’t just logistics, but the foundation of trust, conversion and long‑term growth. And now, it’s also a key signal for AI‑driven discovery.

Your customers are already asking if orders will arrive when promised. Agentic systems are asking too. With Mirakl Delivery Manager, your platform can answer — confidently.

Talk to our team and learn more about how Mirakl Delivery Manager can help you fulfill every promise.

Ana Ortiz Headshot
Ana Ortiz,
Product Marketing Manager

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