Managing excessive product returns can be exhausting. Frequent returns will significantly lower your profit and waste your time. Not to mention that bad reviews will flood your website or your products. Although you’ve worked hard on your return policy, you might want to focus on reducing its occurrence.
Therefore, monitor the quality of the company’s product stock before shipping using the best asset management system from HashMicro. This article will help you discover 7 easy ways to reduce product return rate for your online shop/e-commerce.
Table of Content
Display and describe your products clearly
Offline customers have the experience of trying out the products before checking it out. They can try the gown or sniff a bottle of perfume. However, online buyers can’t.
Online buyers depend on pictures or videos and the description you provide. If the visuals are quite enough to represent the real products, customers can judge whether it’s the products they need. The same goes for the description. The more comprehensive the description is, the wiser the customers are in making a purchase. Hence, the return rate will reduce.
You can even go as far as adding size charts to your Shopify store, which provide ultimate clarity pre-purchase. It’s best to present sizing information in a formal, unambiguous way, regardless of the type of products you’re selling. This lets customers pick the right size item first time, further reducing return rates.
Add reviews from your customers
You don’t have to bleed to persuade your customers to make a purchase. Simply put a review section in each product. But, how important is it?
Most customers reasons their decisions for purchasing after they make careful research on the product’s review and rating. These reviews will determine whether it is the product that fulfills their needs or not. Also, it keeps you away from customers who are only going to return the products once they find it doesn’t fit them.Â
Review size information
One of the most common mistakes in online retailers is applying a default sizing chart to all products. Do not ever use the same measurement standard for different products, different product categories, or different brands. Each item or brand might have different sizing though the numbers are the same. If you use a model to capture your product, state the height and weight of the model.Â
Moreover, if you are serving for international shipping, make sure that you have a size and dimension convention chart, adjusted to your target country. Some of your customers may have known that they need to covert the size. But are you sure you want to solely depend on that?
Use live chat features
There is nothing that can combat the satisfaction of real-time customer service. And that includes live chat function on your website or e-commerce. It enables your customers to ask in detail about products that interest them. Moreover, it doesn’t only speed up closing the deal but also increases your customers’ confidence. Therefore, it will significantly reduce their possibility to return the product.Â
Be very careful when packing the product
A proper and careful packing process plays an important role in ensuring the safety of the products. So, make sure that the box that you use to wrap it fits perfectly so that the products don’t move around during the transporting. Use materials that can absorb impact and protect fragile goods.Â
Promote delivery estimation
Always display a realistic delivery estimation. Consider shipment delays during a particular period such as Christmas, Valentine, or mother’s day. Make sure that you promise accurate delivery time both regionally and internationally.Â
It helps the customers to project whether their products will arrive on time or not, especially if it’s seasonal products or gifts. On-time delivery surely reduces the product return rate.Â
Use an integrated inventory management system
If a return occurs, make sure that you’re more than ready to handle it. An inventory management system that is integrated with a barcode and warehouse management system will help you find the right products in a blink of an eye.
Moreover, this system can track the return process in real-time so that the new products arrive at customers’ hands immediately. They are surely already disappointed finding the products don’t appear as they imagined. Don’t make it worse with return management that takes forever!
Those are the 7 easiest way to reduce product return rate. Are you ready to implement it?
Related article: 5 Best Retail POS Systems in Singapore
