Returns cost money. Everyone knows that. What’s less well known: most measures to reduce returns either frustrate the customer or lower conversion rates. The difference between an expensive approach and a good one lies in where you intervene.
Not at the return itself
The temptation is to start at the return. A form, a question about why, a cost threshold. In the figures we’ve seen over the past three years, that delivers at most one to two percent improvement. Often the NPS drops significantly.
What does work goes further back in the chain.
1. Improve product information where most traffic comes from
Which products consistently have high returns? In almost all cases, this can be traced back to one of two causes: the sizing doesn’t match what the customer expects, or the product is unclear in the product photos.
Take the top ten products from your return list and have someone work on them this week. Not your entire assortment. Add fit guidance (runs small, runs large), scale photos with a hand for small items, and a short video for products where tactile information is missing from photos. With our customers, the return rate for those specific products drops by 30 to 50 percent within two months.
2. Get package contents right
A surprisingly large source of returns in the figures we see: packages that don’t match the order. A wrong item, a wrong size, a missing article. The customer is then stuck with the choice between exchanging or returning, and often chooses the latter.
A fulfillment partner can help directly here. Our QC step with double scanning on departure reduces error rates from 1 in 200 orders to 1 in 2000 orders. For a webshop with 5000 orders per month, that means over 20 fewer returns per month, not counting the satisfaction boost.
3. Make delivery faster
If a package is in transit for four days, people have enough time to change their minds. With 24-hour delivery, that happens much less often. It’s a less well-known factor, but in our data, faster shipping is linked to a measurable drop in return rates.
What you should avoid
- Introducing barriers to returns (a fee, a form with too many fields). That does more harm than good with genuinely motivated returns.
- Hiding reviews. Customers read them anyway. Do collect them openly, and if fit is a common comment: display it at the top.
- Standardizing premium return rates (shipping paid by customer) as marketing. Do offer it as an option for customers who rarely return.
What this means for your numbers
A combination of better product information, higher QC, and faster shipping can bring a return rate from 25 percent down to 15 percent in half a year. Not through one major intervention, but through three small ones that reinforce each other.
Want to see what would work best in your situation? We’re happy to calculate it for you.