Drugstore businesses and pharmacy delivery services are increasing their e-commerce presence in the retail space. Statista estimates that the global revenue in the online pharmacy segment will increase by 58% between 2024 and 2029.
Pharmacies and drugstores are embracing e-commerce
Bad headaches and seasonal flu. Empty prescription drawers and emergency refills. Condoms and pregnancy tests. Skincare shopping. Congested aisles, daunting queues, and health risks.
Consumers are shifting from physical supply chains to pharmacy delivery services. E-commerce pharmacies are taking the pain out of drugstore shopping by accepting orders online and delivering them directly to the patient's home or a convenient click and collect location.
It's a big pharmacy delivery business opportunity, but it does come with some unique challenges, like last-mile logistics and delivery pricing. While fast and convenient, drugstore delivery service has its nuances requiring smart delivery management and a great customer-focused delivery experience.
Questions industry leaders are asking themselves
If you are in this type of business, you're facing several questions at hand.
→ How do you connect physical retail with your online storefront in a unified commerce experience?
→ How do you enable a seamless delivery experience that matches your customer needs?
→ What delivery fee do you implement for your product catalog without compromising on conversion?
What makes pharmacy delivery experience so frustrating
We're entering the delivery-first era of retail. Consumers want (ultra)convenient deliveries when shopping online — and they want them today. They are more and more likely to go for products with a fast and flexible delivery over brand identity and prices, just as they do with restaurant and grocery deliveries.
This consumer trend is especially clear in pharmaceutical retail. Cold and flu medicine? Delivered in the evening. Routine medicine cabinet refill? Arrives the next day. A last-minute skincare gift? At the customer's door within an hour. Need an urgent prescription while traveling? Medications delivered directly to the shopper's hotel.
Product and price variety
It's the unique nature of both the product catalog and the medicine delivery business. Pharmacies offer everything from over-the-counter and prescription medications to everyday essentials, medical supplies, and skincare products.
The average order value (AOV) can range from as little as €5 to €100–200. While this variety boosts conversion, it also challenges delivery economics. Offering free next-day home delivery without a profitable fee structure means that low-value orders eat into margins.
Same- and next-day delivery
Pharmaceutical deliveries are time-sensitive for two reasons. First, they require special handling and delivery. Medicine and skin care products must be stored and transported with particular care in order to avoid the adverse effects of weather, temperature, humidity and light.
Second, consider an urgent cold and painkiller order or patients with high-risk conditions who rely on pharmacies for a prompt prescription delivery. Pharmacy delivery business needs to make it as easy as possible to get the medication consumers need whenever they need it.
Appropriate shipping methods
It's not only a short delivery timeframe and an accurate delivery promise that matter, but also appropriate delivery options like home delivery and in-store pickup. It hardly makes sense to store prescription delivery in the uncontrolled conditions of a mailbox or parcel locker for quality, privacy and safety reasons.
Centralized fulfillment
Traditional e-commerce relies on large, remote distribution warehouses. As a result, most online orders require hours-long, cross-country truck transport, leading to delivery times of at least two business days and even longer on weekends, public holidays, or in sparsely populated areas. Not only does it delay the delivery service but also drives up logistics costs for retailers.
Pharmaceutical laws and regulations
Online pharmacies are required to verify the identities of patients before they're able to purchase prescription medications. That's a natural thing to do when you're dealing with health products and must comply with associated regulations, but it may also be placing an additional burden on consumers and the pharmacy delivery service if not implemented efficiently.
Optimize your pharmacy and drugstore delivery experience
When shopping online, consumers are paying for convenience, including the delivery experience they expect. No matter the demand though, your customers can rarely admit that e-commerce pharmacy deliveries fit their basic urgent needs.
Integrate with multiple shipping carriers
Brands with multiple carriers visible in their checkout has an average of 54% checkout conversion rate over 51% that only use one carrier. This means you can increase your checkout conversion rate by 5.8% by introducing more carriers in the checkout.
Brands with multiple delivery methods have a 60% conversion rate in checkout over a 47% conversion rate if they only use one delivery type. This means you can increase your checkout conversion rate by 27.7% by introducing more delivery methods.
Get support in carrier API integration to reduce complexity and save time
Communicate shipping fees early
Stay ahead at the product search stage by adding your lowest delivery costs to your product data feed on platforms like Google Shopping, TikTok Shop, and Pinterest Shopping. Today’s shoppers care about delivery price and convenience as much as product selection.
At the consideration stage, display shipping costs right on the product page. This helps set clear expectations about the total order value and encourages shoppers to add more items to their cart to qualify for free shipping.
How to introduce up-to-date delivery costs in Google Shopping
Make an accurate delivery promise
Timely delivery is essential for a successful pharmacy delivery service. It can take anything from several hours to a couple of days. It's important to present an accurate and clear delivery information for every purchase, including delivery times, delivery fee, and available carriers. Then consumers can contextually tailor the delivery experience by choosing the delivery option that fits their needs.
Seven tips for getting your online delivery promise right
Extend delivery beyond store hours
Enable home delivery services during the day, in the evenings, and on weekends. Emergencies are likely to arise outside of regular working hours, so it's crucial to integrate with innovative carriers to deliver each online purchase in the shortest time possible. Some examples include early deliveries together with a morning newspaper, as well as on-demand apps.
Integrate with instant delivery apps
In late 2021, German pharmacy delivery app Mayd launched in Berlin with a prescription delivery service and pioneered medical courier business in Europe. Although they have started off with non-prescription drug delivery, Mayd later expanded to prescription medication delivery services as well.
Acting as an intermediary, Mayd serves as a prescription delivery aggregator, connecting shoppers with third-party pharmacies for fast, convenient medication access. Since the regulatory change in Germany in early 2022, patients can fill prescriptions and validate their ID information online.
Now the next frontier of super-fast delivery is here — medicines to your door in 30 minutes.
Sifted.eu
Implement in-store fulfillment
Micro-fulfillment means processing orders from small, strategically located warehouses in densely populated areas, bringing products closer to customers. If your online pharmacy depends on centralized fulfillment from remote distribution centers, consider fulfilling and shipping online orders directly from your physical stores. This approach optimizes inventory across all locations, shortens delivery times, and enhances efficiency.
In-store pickup, or click and collect
If your online drugstore operates alongside a physical store network, you can offer customers a click and collect option. This allows them to order online, collect their items at a convenient time, and avoid stock issues — especially with prescription drugs — without waiting in line.
Store-to-door delivery service
You can equally rely on your physical retail locations for same-day delivery and next-day delivery service. Not only are store-to-door deliveries faster, but fulfilling online orders directly from your local drugstores helps reduce your CO2 footprint and shipping costs.
Help your customers keep track
While 90% of consumers want to track their orders for peace of mind and a sense of control, the reality falls short — one in three online shoppers couldn’t track their most recent delivery. Giving customers accurate delivery estimates and detailed, harmonized tracking updates helps create a comfortable delivery experience, reduces delivery anxiety, and builds customer loyalty.
10 e-commerce order tracking optimization strategies
Build a data-driven delivery pricing strategy
Setting the best order of delivery options at checkout, delivery prices, and a free shipping threshold can be challenging, especially without data insights. Unless there's a way to experiment with your delivery configuration.
Should you offer free shipping?
Now, it's one of the most popular delivery tactics in e-commerce to offer free delivery on all orders. We’ve seen this time and time again. For many e-commerce retailers, it seems like a must in order to stay competitive. It doesn’t mean though that it’s the best solution for your brand.
To improve your net delivery cost, start charging for deliveries and use A/B testing to understand which delivery price point for each delivery option convert best at checkout. There's a 'sweet spot' where charging for delivery might mean selling fewer products but still earning more.
Set a free shipping threshold
Don't eliminate free shipping entirely. Instead, set a free shipping threshold based on a minimum cart value and test what works best. Pair this with a fixed delivery rate, adjusting for product categories like over-the-counter meds, prescriptions, skincare, and medical devices, and/or based on factors like size and weight.
Your consumers are likely to swap delivery fees for an additional item in their cart. They get a delivery experience perk, and you're able to encourage a more cost-efficient, high-value order, unlike a single tube of toothpaste or a box of ibuprofen with very low online margins.
A/B test delivery methods and price points
Find out what your customers prefer — and how it affects the bottom line — by A/B testing your delivery options. In simple terms, checkout A/B testing — also known as split testing — helps determine which version of the delivery checkout resonates more with the target audience.
YouYour web visitors are shown two or more checkout versions at the same time, which helps you check which configuration they prefer and which delivery option impacts your business metrics the most. Using real-time data, you can validate your assumptions before making important business decisions. When done right, A/B testing improves your shopping experience and drives conversion.
Set up smart booking rules
Automated rules and scenarios in your transport management system (TMS) can also help you reduce shipping costs and increase delivery profitability. Look for features like smart 'if-this-then-that' booking rules that automate different shipment booking scenarios based on your catalog and delivery configuration and get you the best carrier product for the job.
11% net margin increase using checkout A/B testing
Kronans Apotek has over 320 pharmacies throughout Sweden, from Skåne in the south to Lapland in the north, and quick e-commerce deliveries all across the country. They offer prescription, health and beauty products tailored to anyone's needs.
The drugstore's e-commerce team identified three business challenges in delivery pricing strategy and sustainability. First, low-value orders affected profit margins. Second, product revenue margins in general weren't enough to cover the costs of deliveries. Finally, customers faced little incentive to choose climate-smart delivery options.
A/B testing hypothesis
Kronans Apotek worked out a delivery strategy hypothesis and started experimenting with consumer-facing checkout presentation and deliver pricing. They replaced the pre-selected free delivery option with a greener delivery method, presented at the top of the delivery checkout.
Then, the team explored five delivery cost combinations to identify which price would give the best conversion outcome. Shipping method and delivery pricing experimentation efforts paid off — for everyone.
A/B testing outcome
Kronans Apotek cut out low-value orders that hurt profits. This led to a 14% drop in conversion rates, mainly from low-margin orders that no longer had free shipping. However, net revenue margins grew by 11%. Plus, 25% of customers chose a climate-friendly delivery option.
"We’ve done a great job optimizing the delivery experience — from checkout to the moment customers receive their orders. It all comes down to having the right pharmacy delivery software and tools to consistently manage and adapt our offers based on business goals."
David Wolgers, Head of Product Management, Kronans Apotek
75% revenue increase with a data-driven delivery strategy
Apoteket, one of Sweden's leading pharmacy chains, faced a unique challenge in balancing fast, free deliveries with sustainable growth. As a key player in the pharmacy sector, Apoteket’s delivery model demanded next-day shipping at no additional cost to customers — a strategy that strained profitability.
They discovered that low-value orders like a single blister pack of over-the-counter pills led to significant operational losses. At the same time, Apoteket’s delivery promises lacked specificity, impacting conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
Optimizing delivery while delighting customers
Yes, you can solve the deliver dilemma. You can meet customer expectations and optimize for delivery profitability at the same time.
Data analytics
Granular data analytics provided actionable profitability insights, supporting informed e-commerce business decisions.
A/B testing
Delivery pricing experiments helped raise delivery fees for low-value orders in a conversion-friendly way while keeping free delivery for purchases with economically sustainable average order value (AOV).
Omnichannel
Customizable delivery checkout experiences created better customer journeys, allowing Apoteket to cater to both online- and in-store fulfillment needs without any headache for the e-commerce and logistics teams.
Shifting from reactive to strategic, profit-driven delivery
Here's how data-driven insights and advanced logistics tools can transform delivery into a revenue driver.
Revenue growth
Delivery configuration adjustments based on a granular analytics dashboard helped boost revenue by 75% in the second half of 2024 compared to the first half.
Steady conversion rates
Despite a small 1% drop in conversion rates due to higher shipping fees and business growth prioritization, the customer mix became more profitable.
Higher delivery accuracy
Offering specific delivery dates improved customer satisfaction and paved a roadmap for boosting conversion rates by 4-5% in 2024.
Market leadership goals
Apoteket’s smart shipping strategies are driving it toward market leadership, with plans to double profits in 2025 while keeping conversion rates steady.
"We solved our delivery dilemma, transforming logistics into a revenue driver while keeping customers happy."
Christoffer Andersson, Head of Logistics, Apoteket
Book a demo to see how Ingrid Platform can help you improve your pharmacy and drugstore delivery experience and make sustainable profit while at it.
Just what the doctor ordered.
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