There’s no question that retailers are always concerned with product returns. No matter the reason, these numbers keep going up (or maintaining at high rates).
As a consumer, you don’t always realize that retailers have a lot of costs when you return products. Besides the cost of the product itself, they also lose the shipping cost. Besides, even though some industries retag and sell returned products for full price, others are forced to resell products at a fraction of the total cost. What’s worse is some have to toss products in the trash. Above all these, there is the cost of losing a customer. After all, if a customer returns a product, he may not buy from the retailer again.
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However, there are ways to limit product returns and still maintain your customers happy. Let’s check them out.
5 Ways To Limit Product Returns For Good
#1: Carefully Look At Your Product Descriptions:
The product description is what allows customers to decide if this is the product they are looking for. Unlike when they go to a store where the can touch the product, try it on, and see it with their eyes, the same can’t be said for online shopping.
While well-written product descriptions help your customers make smart purchase decisions, poor product descriptions frustrate shoppers and leave you with more returned merchandise.
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#2: Add Great Videos And Photos:
An image is worth more than one thousand words. So, besides a great and well-written description, you should also add great photos and videos to each one of the products that you are selling. You need to remember that this is the only way your potential customers have to actually see the product. So, the more you show, the more real their expectations will be.
#3: Collect And Display Product Reviews:
There’s no question that product reviews are crucial in online shopping. More and more customers use these reviews to make their final decision about buying a product or not.
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#4: Look For Trends In Negative Product Reviews:
While no online retailer likes to get negative feedback on any of the products they are selling, this is something you need to deal with. However, when you keep seeing that some products keep getting more negative feedback fro users than others, then you need to look for a trend.
The reality is that product reviews are a great resource for brands and retailers wanting to improve the customer experience, gain better insights, and reduce product returns.
So, if you are able to understand what is the problem of a specific product, you can then improve it or simply stop selling it.
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#5: Highlight Size & Fit Info From Other Shoppers:
You know that shoppers have plenty of different reasons to return products. However, in what concerns apparel and footwear, these tend to be mostly related to the incorrect fit.
The reality is that this shouldn’t be a surprise at all. After all, customers can’t try on the products before they buy them. So, one of the things that you can consider doing is to help shoppers identify the right size with relevant shopper information. You can do this by asking shoppers who write reviews to include information about the size and fit of the product.
For example, a review writer can indicate that a jacket is small, large or true to size. Once you’ve started collecting this peer-provided size information, prominently display it on your product pages.