What Do Customers Expect from an Online Store in 2026? 10 Things That Influence Purchases

• Customers expect a simple, predictable buying process, from finding the product, through delivery and payment, all the way to returns. Every extra barrier increases the risk that they’ll abandon the purchase.
• Extra costs and delivery have a direct impact on conversion. As many as 40% of respondents named excessive extra costs as the reason they abandoned a purchase, so customers should know the full cost of the transaction before they reach checkout.
• Checkout should be as simple and error-free as possible. Forced registration, an overcomplicated process or technical problems can make customers give up even when they’ve already decided to buy.
• Easy returns reduce the risk of buying. Customers want to know that if the product turns out to be the wrong choice, they can easily reverse their decision. In the Baymard study, 13% of users named an unsatisfactory return policy as the reason they abandoned a purchase.
• AI in e-commerce can, above all, make choosing easier for customers. It should help them narrow down the offer, compare products and make decisions faster. According to DHL data, 38% of consumers already use AI tools or virtual assistants when shopping, and this trend will keep growing and gradually turn into agentic commerce.

Is a wide selection in a store a bad thing? Definitely not. It does become a problem, though, if the e-commerce store’s architecture is built so that customers have to process the entire range on their own. A wide selection is only an advantage if, with a few clicks, the customer can narrow hundreds of products down to a few that suit them best.

So online stores with large product ranges should aim to reduce scrolling and the extra steps needed to make a choice. To do that, an e-commerce store should have:

• effective filters
• personalization mechanisms
• product comparison options (especially in industries where technical specifications matter)
• quizzes that narrow down the choice based on the user’s answers

A customer’s irritation can lead them to abandon the buying process in a split second. According to research by the Baymard Institute, 40% of shoppers who abandoned their cart cited high extra costs, such as shipping, taxes or service fees.

High costs are one thing, but the other aspect, often deliberately overlooked by some stores, is hiding those costs. In the same study, 12% of respondents named the hidden costs of the whole transaction as their reason for abandoning the cart.

Source: Baymard

Logistics also determine whether a purchase happens at all. According to data published by DHL in its E-Commerce Trends Report 2026, as many as 70% of consumers said they wouldn’t buy if the brand didn’t offer delivery methods they trust and prefer.

Local preferences matter too. In Poland, for example, as many as 68% of consumers said in the same study that they prefer to pick up parcels from parcel lockers. If your store only offers courier delivery, you may lose customers this way.

Source: DHL (image was translated)

Going back to the previous point, the delivery price itself also matters. Those few extra dollars for delivering the product may be what makes the customer buy the same product from a competitor that offers free delivery.

Going back to the Baymard Institute study, respondents named slow delivery (20%) as the third most common reason for abandoning a purchase. Especially in periods of increased shopping activity (e.g., the holidays or Black Friday), it’s worth keeping delivery times as short as possible and, most importantly, making sure customers are informed about them before they buy.

While browsing the product, customers should already see the estimated delivery date on the product page itself. It’s also better to replace a dry message like “Delivery in 1 to 3 business days” with “Your product will arrive on Tuesday”. Direct communication resonates better with users and helps them make a purchase decision: when buying, customers care about when they’ll get the product, not what the standard delivery time is.

Imagine this scenario: a user asks an AI tool to recommend the best running shoes for beginners. In response, they get several recommended models with links to stores. They choose one, go to the website and find a message saying the product is out of stock. In many cases this will be irritating, but with the right product page setup, the situation can still end in a conversion.

First, it’s worth keeping availability data up to date in all systems, both inside the store and in Google Merchant Center. Second, it’s worth implementing solutions that help customers with their next steps. These could be:

• other variants that are available in the chosen size
• a section with similar products or alternatives, e.g., “customers also chose”
• back-in-stock notifications

Learn more: E-commerce in the Middle of Summer: How to Prepare Product Pages for GEO and Improve Their Readiness for the Sales Season

Most customers don’t like using new, unfamiliar solutions, especially when it comes to payments. Because the risk feels higher, customers are ready to abandon the order if they don’t see their favorite payment method at checkout.

Which methods matter most depends on the market. For Polish e-commerce stores, for example, the key payment methods are:

• BLIK
• Przelewy24
• Apple Pay and Google Pay
• cards
• deferred payments/installments
• traditional bank transfer

The faster and less complicated the buying process, the lower the risk that the customer will abandon the purchase. One thing that can unnecessarily lengthen checkout is requiring an account. According to the Baymard report mentioned earlier, about 18% of users name forced account creation, meaning they have to create an account before making a purchase, as one of their reasons for abandoning the buying process.

Checkout isn’t the place for extra features or interactive solutions that seem to make things easier for the user but in fact only complicate the path to completing the transaction. Checkout should be as simple and predictable as possible, which means following widely accepted standards. What should you keep in mind?

• The fewer fields, the better.
• Fields should offer autofill so users can fill in their details automatically.
• Test checkout on mobile devices, which is where errors most often appear, e.g., the wrong resolution, cut-off buttons or fields that don’t work.
• Checkout should have clearly separated steps and be as short as possible.

Buying online often involves risk: we’re essentially ordering a product “blind”, relying mainly on photos and the description. Free, simple returns take that risk off the customer, because they know that if the product isn’t right, they can easily exchange or return it.

These return terms will be especially important for products that are hard to judge without physical contact, such as clothing, footwear or home furnishings. According to data from the Baymard Institute report, about 13% of consumers abandoned their cart because of an unsatisfactory return policy.

As one of customers’ main challenges when buying, we pointed to having to process hundreds of similar products and narrow down the choice. This is exactly where AI can offer the most value, as a tool that genuinely helps people make decisions.

According to DHL data, 38% of respondents already use virtual assistants or AI tools (e.g., LLMs) when shopping online in 2026. But it’s not about jumping on the “AI everywhere” bandwagon and adding chatbots everywhere. It’s worth using AI where it actually shortens the path to a choice, helps compare products and recommends specific models.

For example, a customer might write to an AI tool: “I’m looking for a red maxi dress for a wedding, under $150. I’m 5’3″ and I want the dress to have an open back.” In response, AI can narrow 500 available products down to the 5 best, explain how they differ and answer any questions.

Learn more: SEO in the Era of Agentic Commerce. How to Prepare Your E-commerce for AI Customers and Agents

Today’s customers expect a smooth, predictable and secure buying process that reduces the effort involved both in choosing a product and in completing the transaction. Here’s a short summary of the challenges we’ve covered, in table form:

The best e-commerce store in 2026 is the one that gives customers a shorter, safer path to the right product and to completing the purchase. For years, e-commerce grew according to the logic of more products, more features and more options. In 2026, the advantage may come from the opposite: reducing the effort and risk on the user’s side.

Sources:

• https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
• https://www.dhl.com/pl-pl/home/prasa/prasa-archiwum/2026/dhl-ecommerce-trends-report-2026-wygoda-i-zaufanie-w-e-commerce-wazniejsze-niz-kiedykolwiek.html
• https://www.dhl.com/global-en/microsites/ec/ecommerce-insights/insights/reports/2026-ecommerce-trends-report.html